Educational Procurement Journal - December 2007 - (Page 6)

HEARD O N T H E ST R E E T S Going Once… Going Twice… Sold to the University by Cory Harms Iowa State University i. My name is Cory Harms and I am (or at least used to be) an online auctiona-holic. I spent endless hours searching and looking for bargains and items to add to my collections. I bought and sold several things and most of the time, things went well… but I got burned a couple of times too. That is one of the reasons I am always intrigued when I get the call from a department about buying some lab equipment or a laptop on one of these sites. What I hear most often is that they are going to save SO MUCH on the particular item because the price on the item is only 10 percent of what it should cost. I typically ask them how much time is left in the auction, and more often than not, the answer is, “Oh, only four days, but I don’t think the price will go up very much.” I know I am not the only one who is dealing with this because I have seen the auction site question so many times on the listserv. It always makes me wonder if some of our faculty and staff are addicted to these sites as well. I do believe there are some deals to be had on these sites and that some Universities use these sites to sell excess property, but our staff and faculty need to be aware of the other factors to be considered in these online purchases. The ﬁrst to come to mind is that we have no idea what the price is going to be until the auction is completed. This makes it very difﬁcult to determine if we are paying a fair price for the item. Many times in an auction, people may get carried away with the competitive nature and bid more than is reasonable just to win. Also, for some federal funds, a “price reasonableness” assessment may need to be done and would be difﬁcult to justify if the comparison can’t be done until the item is already purchased. The time that is spent browsing and bidding also should be taken into account. How much did that add to the overall cost of the H …Or Is It? item? Is it the best use of a professor’s or graduate student’s time to search for items and monitor the auction, or to do research? Other issues could arise if the item never arrives, doesn’t work or is stolen property. Many times, you have nothing more than the person’s auction site username to track them, and getting your money back from anonymousauctionguy@aol.com might be problematic. Fraud could also be perpetrated by individuals by purchasing items from friends, relatives or themselves. As much as we hate to believe it, there are people who will ﬁnd ways to use our systems for their own gain. There are ways to deal with the issues that I have mentioned above, and there may be others that come to mind when talking about different auction sites; but the idea I want to get across is that if we are going to allow our users to participate in these auction sites, we have to educate them on the potential problems that may arise with purchases of this type. We also need to have systems in place that protect the University and ensure that we are getting the best overall value. Cory Harms is the associate director of purchasing at Iowa State University. He is ﬁrst vice president of the MINK (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas) region and serves on the NAEP Editorial Board. He has presented at both regional and national NAEP meetings and has spoken for the Missouri Association of Public Purchasing (MAPP). e-Mail: clharms@iastate.edu 6 EDUCATIONAL PROCUREMENT JOURNAL www.naepnet.org | December 2007 http://www.naepnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Educational Procurement Journal - December 2007

Educational Procurement Journal - December 2007 Contents Letter From the CEO: Sustainability in Higher Education Heard On the Streets Calculating Procurement's Value Cost-Per-Copy Contract and Site-Based Funding At a K-12 School District Bargain-Basement Solutions to Automate and Streamline Procurement Processes LEED & Leadership Certification Roamin' with Yeoman Best and Final

Educational Procurement Journal - December 2007

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