IN OTHER WORDS

Read this story to gain an insight into my world of purchasing, previously unfettered by such things as terms and conditions. 03/10/2016

IN OTHER WORDS

In 196 SRP’s standard purchase order forms contained no “boilerplate” terms and conditions. George, a lawyer who never passed the bar, wrote a page of them and had them printed in small font on the back of our purchase order form. I can’t recall if he asked our Legal Department to review or approve them. His intentions were laudable as he sought to bring a new level of professionalism into SRP’s procurement process.

When we started issuing these new purchase order forms, many large corporations such as GE and Westinghouse objected to them because the terms and conditions were so one-sided in SRP’s favor. Many vendors acknowledged our orders by returning acceptance forms containing their terms and conditions.

Thus began the battle of the forms. Nothing ever occurred that required either SRP or a supplier to determine in court whose terms and conditions governed such transactions. I firmly believed SRP would lose such a case, reasoning that the vendor’s lawyers were a mite more experienced than George.

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