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Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for Celeron laptops
- Ma8ee 4y agoGood! Corruption is a cancer in all societies.
- bananatype 4y agoProbes are dime a dozen in the Philippines. I expect senators and congressmen would milk all the publicity they could out of this, but after a week or so this issue will be forgotten like many other issues where these legislators wasted our taxes on.
- wyclif 4y agoI know I'll be totally shocked when it's announced that money went into the pockets of Filipino government officials. For those who don't know, about 40 rich and powerful families (like, say, the Yansons, Tans, Aranetas, or Cojuangcos) pull all the strings in the Philippines and these families all have prominently placed senators, congressmen, mayors, all the way down to barangay officials in their pockets. The entire government is completely and utterly corrupt.
- lock-the-spock 4y agoCurrent government is the son of the former ousted dictator and his vice (separately elected) the daughter of the previous president. Just ouch.
- Bilal_io 4y agoSomeone in the government is very corrupt, and I am glad they're not getting away with it. I wish more companies did that. My home country in North Africa is dominated by this unethical practice, sometimes even worse, people in government and army officials own businesses and don't allow competition.
- lock-the-spock 4y agoNote that the person quoted as requesting an investigation (Sar Duterte) is the daughter of the president that was in office when this happened (Rodrigo Duterte).
- bananatype 4y ago
- jqpabc123 4y ago
- messe 4y agoYeah, because a Celeron is definitely equivalent to an M1. I’m sure screen resolution, color calibration and build quality were as good too.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
- gambiting 4y ago....it doesn't though. If you think it does, then I invite you to post an example please, for instance of anything that can compete against an M1 MacBook Air or Pro at half price - and by compete I mean anything that offers the same performance, same battery life, all in an aluminum body.
- google234123 4y agoAnd not a 1080p screen
- nicolaslem 4y agoI see IPS 1080p (or the equivalent in 16:10) as a feature. What's the point of a 4K OLED if it doubles the power consumption?
- gambiting 4y agoSure, but Macbooks have retina(their stupid resolution) screens and yet still work 12 hours+ on battery. So it's not like your only options are 1080p(which is very low nowadays, I'd argue it actually limits productivity) and 4K power hungry high-brightness OLED panel. There are options in between those two.
- firstSpeaker 4y agoI wonder if the seller is also part the problem.
- bananatype 4y ago
- gandalfgreybeer 4y agoIt is commonplace here in the Philippines during bidding that the inflated prices are because both the sellers and government officials get their own share of the profit.
- abudabi123 4y ago
- gambiting 4y agoAnd if you excuse me asking.....this is relevant how?
- abudabi123 4y agoFraud. Technology.
- donkarma 4y agodoes it have to be fully relevant? i thought it was interesting
- abudabi123 4y agoI keyed on "fraud probe" and would like on of those for the situation I raised. I was charged and I paid. Next time I pass the store which was more than a year later, I discover they didn't get paid.
- stuckinhell 4y agoThis happens a lot in american universities as well. I was once contracted to help implement oracle for an Ivy League university. It was shocking to see the preferred minority suppliers overcharging by 200% for same things you could get at Office Depot. Apparently research labs were furious, and went out of their way to game the system to get cheaper office supplies, and so HR needed a custom dashboard to monitor them as well.
- zubiaur 4y agoHard to be a non-profit with so much revenue! better hire some more admins, build a new gym...
- ta988 4y agoI have the same experience. Had to use the preferred providers for some things and was charged with a hefty premium. At some point you had to use the preferred travel provider that was asking for twice the price of a plane ticket you could find by yourself. Thankfully it seems that in the last decade those things got dismantled little by little. For the bids, that's yet another attempt at regulation that in the end proved unable to solve a problem and caused many more.. But if you leave individuals to handle large purchases without oversight you can be certain a lot will take the offer that has personal advantages attached (be it gifts, vacations, additional equipment, your name on a communication...). Even if those are usually banned in state universities, again there are ways around that.
- zubiaur 4y agoAs an immigrant from a country where corruption is more common, I'm amazed (and somewhat delighted) by the level of trust in institution and processes in the US. The amazing part, is that, it somehow works most of the time. On education though, the corruption is plain to see. But most people don't notice it. It's amazing. And when brought up, it rubs people the wrong way. What you saw was corruption. The way these "preferred providers" become "preferred" is not by sending the purchasing department clerk a box of chocolates.
- 4y ago
- londons_explore 4y agoI never quite understood how competitive bidding processes usually end up with similar outcomes. If you personally need a Dell server, you go to dell.com and buy it. If the government needs a Dell server, they start a tendering and bidding process and will end up paying double for the same server through some middleman who buys the server from Dell and resells to the government for double the price because they're good at writing bids for government projects. Quite why there isn't competition I don't know. Maybe writing bids really is that expensive? Or maybe there is just collusion?
- zubiaur 4y agoUsually the bid process is circumvented (say, multiple smaller purchase orders) or the bids are directed. A directed bid is one that makes very specif requests or weights them in such a way that only a "preferred" supplier/contractor can meet. Of course, the preferred contractor is provided with the info through different channels. There may even be some back and forth to "tune" the bid before it officially makes its way into the formal bidding process.
- londons_explore 4y agoBut even when the government side of the process is an honest government employee just wanting a dell server and with no kickbacks or preference who supplies it, you still seem to get a substantially inflated price.
- MikeAshley178 4y agoSame thing happens all the time in UK gov contracts https://schoolsweek.co.uk/96m-laptop-contracts-went-to-tory-donors-firm/ https://schoolsweek.co.uk/96m-laptop-contracts-went-to-tory-... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/218211-geo-geobook-1e-education-laptops-horrible.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/218211-geo-geobook-1e...
- stuaxo 4y agoGreat, the same should be done in the UK where a similar scheme had similar results