<story><title>Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for Celeron laptops</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/philippines_laptop_procurement_fraud_probe/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>I never quite understood how competitive bidding processes usually end up with similar outcomes.&lt;p&gt;If you personally need a Dell server, you go to dell.com and buy it.&lt;p&gt;If the government needs a Dell server, they start a tendering and bidding process and will end up paying double for the same server through some middleman who buys the server from Dell and resells to the government for double the price because they&amp;#x27;re good at writing bids for government projects.&lt;p&gt;Quite why there isn&amp;#x27;t competition I don&amp;#x27;t know.   Maybe writing bids really is that expensive?   Or maybe there is just collusion?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sillystuff</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve worked in government (California), in the past, and this was not my experience.&lt;p&gt;Most large vendors had contracts with the state which we would use to buy equipment which avoided having to go out for bid.  And, competitive bid only came into effect if a purchase price exceeded $50K (and no existing state contract).  For equipment purchases, I never saw the bid process used-- the preferred vendor always had a pre-existing contract.&lt;p&gt;We got very good prices from Dell, much less than their retail pricing (I don&amp;#x27;t recall the exact percentage off list, but Dell orders were a fraction of the retail pricing the Dell website &amp;quot;build your server&amp;quot; page stated).  Cisco would not discount hardware more than 30% for us (software and contracts 40%), but Alcatel Lucent gave us 73% off list.  Nobody but giant telecoms buying massive volumes could get an equivalent discount from Alcatel Lucent.&lt;p&gt;We did however favor local contractors for services (somewhat rural area), and often times, those contractors were less competent &amp;#x2F; did poorer work than out of area alternatives at similar cost.  The last contractors that expanded the fiber plant were complete clowns, and took 30 times longer to do the equivalent amount of work (they had to redo a lot of their work that failed testing, and they were just plain slow) compared to a great contractor, from LA, that we used previously (before the &amp;#x27;use local companies&amp;#x27; mandate was handed down).</text></comment>
<story><title>Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for Celeron laptops</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/philippines_laptop_procurement_fraud_probe/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>I never quite understood how competitive bidding processes usually end up with similar outcomes.&lt;p&gt;If you personally need a Dell server, you go to dell.com and buy it.&lt;p&gt;If the government needs a Dell server, they start a tendering and bidding process and will end up paying double for the same server through some middleman who buys the server from Dell and resells to the government for double the price because they&amp;#x27;re good at writing bids for government projects.&lt;p&gt;Quite why there isn&amp;#x27;t competition I don&amp;#x27;t know.   Maybe writing bids really is that expensive?   Or maybe there is just collusion?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zubiaur</author><text>Usually the bid process is circumvented (say, multiple smaller purchase orders) or the bids are directed.&lt;p&gt;A directed bid is one that makes very specif requests or weights them in such a way that only a &amp;quot;preferred&amp;quot; supplier&amp;#x2F;contractor can meet.&lt;p&gt;Of course, the preferred contractor is provided with the info through different channels. There may even be some back and forth to &amp;quot;tune&amp;quot; the bid before it officially makes its way into the formal bidding process.</text></comment>