> Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:47:12 -0600 Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> wrote >> There does need to be some expertise to determine if models are >> comparable. The bid request for a school here in Laredo was quite >> specific as to level of quality desired and a "dealer" from Dallas >> sold a very poor likeness of a piano to them (underbid everyone >> else) and insisted it was the same quality. No-one in purchasing >> wanted to be educated or bothered to check his claim. >> > > > The people from purchasing can hardly be blamed - how and on what > basis could they check his claim? I don't know of any way to "spec" > pianos in a meaningful way on a bid request. It is possible to load > the dice by specifying "diaphragmatic soundboard," ABS plastic action > parts, or the like, but that kind of spec only steers towards one > specific brand. With state institutions, this is a real problem I don't know, but maybe this is where we here at SFSU have had it easy. The last time we purchased pianos (about 5 years ago) we simply got bids on Yamaha P-22's from three different dealers, and went with the lowest bid. As long as there are multiple bids and we take the lowest one - "purchasing" is satisfied that the mandated procedures have been followed. They are not really interested in saving money (it's not their budget) - only in covering their rear ends as to proper procedure. So if the administrators can be convinced that they really don't want to buy the inferior product, they will find a way to follow the rules for the benefit of "purchasing" - and still get what is best for the department. Margie and I simply convinced the Director that the P-22 is the best piano we can get in our affordable price range - and he made sure that the right hoops were jumped through (i.e, multiple bids from several dealers on the piano we wanted). It wasn't hard to convince him, since we already had a dozen of these out in the practice rooms (and a bunch more in a group piano room - which we since broke up) - and the students fought over them, sometimes even "swiped" them from the group piano room and avoided the other pianos if they possibly could, (and complained vociferously about the lack of good practice pianos), especially the two nice new Kohler & Campbell 48's - which sort of started falling apart two years after being purchased (We moved them to voice faculty offices). Maybe the best way to deal with this is to let them purchase a few lower quality pianos and learn the hard way why they shouldn't... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100829/d9463716/attachment.htm>
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