28 July, 2012

Government procurement cards rant #2

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the limitations now placed on the use of government procurement cards. To cut a long story short, this means that my department is now forced to buy text books via an online purchasing system which is much more long winded and much more expensive than using Amazon.

Just to hammer home the ridiculousness of this system, I though you might be interested in an update to the original post. In the end, I received the book that I had ordered a full calendar month after I finally managed to place the order. And this was after having chased the supplier via our purchasing team no less than three times.

To recap:

Under the old government procurement card system I could have purchased this book immediately and received it within three to five working days with no additional delivery charge.

But under the new system, it took a total of seven weeks (from me requesting long on details for the online purchasing system) for the book to be delivered, and the book cost £10 more than on Amazon. Not to mention the cost of my time spent chasing the delivery at various points over those seven weeks...

See what I mean?


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