acqitdepends Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 I am fairly new at the pre-award acquisition process and would love some input on a recent acquisition assigned to my co-worker. She asked for my advice and I need help. She was asked to prepare a solicitation for the acquisition of postage for a government agency. Currently there is a monthly fee along with the actual postage cost. There are six locations that currently purchase there own postage with a government purchase card and they pay a minimal fee. They have been notified that the fee is going to increase substantially, taking it over thresholds for each location so they are looking at combining all locations into one contract that covers the fee and the postage. The postage amount will be estimated based on the prior year usage in order to determine the amount, so really we are just looking for the best value for the fee portion. My question is, since the actual postage is based more on usage, how much information do we include on the soliciation? Obviously this is a very simplified acquisition and because of the simplicity, I think we are all very confused. Additional information- Based on research, the vendor would set up an online account and add money to it so that all of the sites can print postage as they need to but the postage isn't a cost that would be negotiated or have an actual amount determined because that portion would be based on incurred cost. The only thing to determine is what the vendor charges for the service. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how to proceed with this acquistion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C Culham Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Well I think there may be information missing in the original post that might help for further discussion.....but as a first thought my mind went here https://www.usps.com/business/welcome.htm And then here http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/101046 And then here http://www.abilityone.org/secure_mail.html And then I thought I am probably missing something important that is not covered in the original post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ji20874 Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 acqitdepends, Are you buying ONLY postage? Or are you buying other services, such as weighing, sorting, labeling, and so forth? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acqitdepends Posted June 30, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2015 We are buying only postage. They have had a meter on contract but are doing away with it. There are three websites that allow for a vendor to act as a go between for postage. Two of the three don't charge a fee so once again I come back to why are we even doing a contract for just postage. I don't believe that we would even use the actual postage dollars as a factor to determine a threshold, it would only be the cost of the service, right? Which if we go with one of the two, is ZERO dollars, so why would we even be doing a contract? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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