[TowerTalk] US Tower Pricing

[Tom Robertson]

If what you are insinuating is true then  shame on the GSA procurement officer for not doing proper market research and due diligence.  It wasn’t like US Tower was hiding their amateur radio prices.  Vendors tend to increase prices because they have to deal with the Government bureaucracy (paper work, slow payments, installation access, etc).


73,
Tom - KQ5S

On Jan 7, 2017, 10:05 AM -0600, Don W7WLL <w7wll at arrl.net>, wrote:
> Let’s get some facts on the table re US Tower prices than maybe this thread can be closed or taken off-line. Don’t worry about cost pricing, IFB’s and all that.
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> 1. US Tower is considered a Commercial Off The Shelf supplier (COTS) and a Small Business (giving it a preference over non-small businesses)
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> 2. US Tower has a GSA Schedule contract that runs Feb 15. 2015 through Feb 14 2020. It appears everything they make or sell is on it.
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> 3. Prices exclude shipping cost.
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> 4. TO THE ISSUE - It would appear (a guess on my part but I negotiated such contracts for many many years) that US Tower increased its amateur radio and other non-government buying prices based on its price disclosures (or maybe not in this case) when negotiating its GSA Schedule. I would hazard a guess that after the contract was in place the GSA Contracting Officer might have found US Towers selling the same items to non-government entities at lower prices than under the GSA schedule. I’d further guess that perhaps the prices to amateur radio folks had not been disclosed to GSA when negotiating the schedule contract (by oversight I’d hope) but other factors could prevail. If there was a nondisclosure issue their choice to satisfy the Feds may have been to reduce the prices to the government via the GSA Schedule or raise the lower prices (to the non-government and amateur radio market). If there was a non-disclosure issue there may even have been some nasty penalties involved, not least which would be refunding the difference in price for all sales to the those eligible to buy through the GSA Schedule contract until the price issue was resolved.
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