GSA needs to lower prices

One thing I notice that "Interagency contracts worry GSA" does not say the General Services Administration is doing is bringing the cost of items down to what we can get on local purchase. We needed to update our UPS batteries and had a quote from a local vendor for next-day delivery to the front door. But when we went to cut the purchase order, we were told we had to use GSA, spend three times as much, and got no promise as to when we would get the merchandise. Oh, and as far as we can tell, GSA and local purchase batteries are the exact same item and manufacturer.

In this day and age of budget crunches for those of us doing the work, it is not acceptable to be forced to spend our hard-fought-for budget on an overpriced supplier. Maybe that is a large part of the real reason those contracts that are cutting GSA out of the picture? It is much cheaper and faster to pay another company for a contract to do purchases than to go directly to GSA.

Raymond White
Air Force