Time flies like an arrow...

[ffutures]

...fruit flies like a banana.

Which leads me to one of my periodic rants on laboratory supply prices.

I wanted some fruit flies for work - nothing fancy, just the ordinary wild type.

Lab catalogue says £7.55, which I thought was a bit steep considering they're... well, they're flies... but everyone else seemed to be charging about the same, so I added it to an order I was placing yesterday, which was mostly glassware etc.

Today the supplier got back to me - since they're living organisms, they come from another company, with a surcharge of (wait for it....) £7.50. So the flies now cost £15.05.

So I told them to cancel it, and went looking for alternates. And ended up buying a pack for £4.50 inc P&P on Ebay UK, sold to feed lizards.

And the moral here - if you want something that is used for a narrow specialisation, look outside the box. You may be pleasantly surprised...

This isn't an isolated case, incidentally.

Vacuum pumps sold via school science suppliers cost about £250-£300. Vacuum pumps sold via air conditioning companies (used to get the air out of pipes) cost less than half that, for apparently identical pumps.

When I wanted some bottled gas and couldn't justify renting full-sized cylinders, the scientific suppliers wanted £60 a cylinder for the disposable type. We ended up getting them from a welding supplier who offered some of the gases we needed at £14 for TWO slightly smaller cylinders...

And one of the lab supply companies is selling laser light boxes (basically, laser levels) at £75 for 5. They appear to be identical to the ones I got in a pound shop last year...

Comments

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to say this and forgetting, but I really admire your ingenuity and creativity in sourcing the materials you need without paying through the nose for the stuff.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I wish I could do it every time - it takes a lot of time, and I'm sure we pay more than we have to for quite a lot of things.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

Of course, if you factored the cost of your time into the equation, how much are you really saving? Part of what you are paying for is being able to find everything you need in one place, rather than spending your time hunting around for it.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

If he has a fixed budget for supplies and he's not paid hourly, it becomes a win (for his employer, at least).

You know he's got those old-timey values :-D

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Exactly right - I have to be there, I do the ordering when we're not busy. When we equipped our new labs our old ones were closed for refurbishment, and we had a period of three months when we were pretty much doing no practical science. I ordered about £15,000 worth of equipment, it would have been more than £20,000 if I hadn't been able to spend several weeks looking for best value etc.