Lowest Bidder

[plonq]

The city went with (in their words) "the lowest bidder" for our new garbage and recycling collection. People who were supposed to have their garbage collected last Wednesday are still waiting to have it picked up, and now they are complaining about the lousy service.

We went with the company who promised to do the work for the least amount of money, and now we wonder why the service is not the greatest. It's possible that it is because they are using cheap equipment, with the fewest, lowest paid staff they can manage to get away with in order to come in with a really low bid but remain profitable.

Comments

[kamiten.livejournal.com]

Because my workplace is partially federally funded we're obligated to go with the lowest bidder on everything. All our equipment provided by whoever was the cheapest.

When I started working there we were "a year away" from a completely new PC based database to handle our infrastructure, replacing a mainframe that has been operating since the mid 80's. This was being developed by one of these lowest bidder companies. It's now over five years later and we're being told it will be ready in three months.

I am told we've never not ended a bid contract without suing the other company, because they never meet the demands of the contract for the price they claimed.

[enveri.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's the deal with our garbage pickup. We're right on the city line (back end of the house is in one city, front end and our address in another). TECHNICALLY both cities do trash pickup on different days.

Neither has picked up our trash in two weeks.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Our garbage collector had a little problem with our green bin today.
My spouse watched as he lifted up and tipped the bin into the truck, waited a second for the stuff to spill out, then threw the bin on its side on the ground as its contents were continuing to spill out. This left a pile of green bin refuse on the roadway which started to blow away in the wind, so my spouse had to run out behind the truck and pick up our stuff they weren't smart enough to get by themselves.
I guess having two weeks worth of stuff in the green bin is confusing them (we were away last Monday, naturally). Unfortunately, we will have an excess every week until they finally decide to take the full contents or it eventually blows away before we can re-pick it up.

[dronon.livejournal.com]

I'm on a Monday pickup, and lo and behold, they actually picked it up... at 7:30 p.m. And left one of my bins in front of the garage on the other side of the alley, opposite to my neighbour. I'm very glad I wrote my address on it, or I wouldn't have been able to figure out where it had gone. :-/

[kfops.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the lucky few (by the sounds of it) that has Monday pick-up, and I'm right at the beginning of the route. I usually get pick-up around 8 - 10am so far.

I know this isn't the same for everyone, and yeah... lowest bidder... no surprise there.

Just think of the upside though, by completely out-sourcing all garbage pick-up we won't keep any of the machinery so that the city can do it themselves. Then, once things go completely into the toilet the barrier to entry to do it ourselves will be so high that we'll just perpetually be in a cycle of out-sourcing!

I always maintain that the city should've kept some of the work themselves. It was always timely here.