Mike

Well we can get GSA pricing from the vendors own GSA website. Where I hit my biggest roadblock is that the AFFARS says: AFFARS IG5313.303-3?(2) says: ?The contracting officer should establish firm unit prices or obtain price lists from each BP holder? and AFFARS IG5313.303-3?(3) states "Requiring activities do not negotiate or solicit prices." I have argued that it says "should" not "shall" as far as establishing firm unit prices! But the last part where requiring activities do not negotiate or solicit prices is my biggest flaw in that. If they are requesting quotes they are soliciting prices... With a FSS BPA you have to compete it between all the BPAs that are setup for that same commodity. Is there a way that I could use their website that shows GSA pricing as my pricelist? Its maintained by the vendor but gives the GSA discount to the prices. They would also be able to give a further discount dependent on volume and the publishers discount for that volume. But the websites will not show that discount.

Yes, any calls below the micropurchase threshold they would just go out and get it with the GPC.

I have argued that point but, I have been pressed to obtain some kind of pricelist. They then shot down my idea of the % discount per vendor. So I will keep arguing the fact and see where it gets me. I am not a CO only a specialist so I can't sign the award otherwise, it would of already been done!

Yes, you are right and I have been pushing that since I started on this quest of BPAs two months ago.I think I will press this harder and see what I can come up with. Thanks!!

Its actually simplier than that. Publisher A gives one flat discount for all prices and the same for Publisher B.C.D..... That is how their GSA Schedule is set up and that is their pricelist for GSA. I will push this further because if it can work as a GSA price list why can it not be one for us?

The customer does not know their needs until at the earliest 2 months out. The instructors have to finalize their teaching plans and don't do this with a whole lot of time left before the class start date. They decide on the book tehy want when doing their teaching plans. I have had some come in 2 weeks before the class start date and that was pretty much impossible to get them on time. Their class started without the book. Had I had a BPA it would have went much faster because they could of ordered a week before I got the purchase request. As for recurring contracts I intend to set up BPAs with multiple Book distributors that have been providing us with these reqyuirements anyways.

I am trying to set up a couple BPAs with book distributors. It would normally be easy to set up this BPA except getting an all inclusive pricelist is impossible. The customer will not know what titles they want until a month or so before they need them in hand. The distributors pricelist with GSA is a percentage discount per publisher and not on individual titles. So, they can give GSA pricing on any book that is published by those publishers. GSA Advantage has a small number of titles listed for each distributor but it is not all their titles. Where I hit my snag is what can I use for my pricelist? I have tried using the pricelist established with GSA, with the percentage per publisher, but have had it rejected as a pricelist by the powers that be. Some of the vendors have a website set up where you can obtain GSA pricing for all of their titles but can I use those websites as a pricelist? There is no way to get all those titles off the website and into physical form to be approved and maintained. An all inclusive list would be in the millions with thousands added every month. I have searched the FAR section 8 and DFARS as well as AFFARS and I'm not sure if this is going to be possible. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in Advance!