gsa advantage

GSA ADVANTAGE

All gsa contract holders have a published schedule on the gsa advantage web site. All of the products they have can be categorized. So, if a potential buyer wants sleeping bags, they can go to an individual company’s schedule or the sleeping bag list.

Not being a contract holder, I cannot offer Wiggy bags directly but a gsa contract hold who choses to list Wiggy bags on his schedule can show them.

The other day I logged on to the gsa advantage web site and clicked on sleeping bags. I did not go through all of the pages but I never did see any Wiggy bags although they might be listed. What I did see did not surprise me. I saw a series of bags with the most erroneous and outrageously wrongly temperature rated “no sleep sleeping bags.” I further noted that the country of origin was not the USA but in one case the United Kingdom. While our government wants our products to be made in America under Berry Amendment criteria, they give the UK a pass since we are friends. Of course, the materials used to make these no sleep sleeping bags has its origin in Asia, probably China.

There are numerous gsa contract holders who list these no sleep sleeping bags on their schedules. This being the case any potential buyers only see this brand so this is what they chose to buy. These buyers being ignorant of the performance capabilities believe what is published about these no sleep sleeping bags, so they buy them.

There is no concern when these bags are issued and the grunts who are the recipients learn very quickly the meaning of what a no sleep sleeping bag is.

Our military is now training in the Alaskan theater where the elements are not forgiving. These foreign made no sleep sleeping bags shown on the gsa advantage web site are showing temperature ratings to minus 30 or 40 degrees below 0. Tragically they have ZERO chance of performing in arctic conditions. But the buyers see the rating published and the sellers confirm it. Here we have the manufacturer lying and the seller swearing to it. What shocks me is knowing and I have been aware of this for years, the sellers working for the gsa contact holders are ex-military. They could care less what they put in the hands of the grunts.

In recent times I have received calls from many guys in units that were deployed to Alaska last year or the year before telling me they were cold in the bags they were issued and were doing training with the search and rescue squadron who told them they were using Wiggy’s bags, so should they. I then get calls.

There is a reality out there where those in the military who do the procuring do not have much if any knowledge about sleeping bags so they get firsthand information from charlatans.

At this time of year, the military as well as all government agencies are looking at their yearend budgets. If the money is used to procure no sleep sleeping bags that are erroneously temperature rated and the end item users, the grunts in the field come to realize very quickly they have been issued no sleep sleeping bags that I believe are very dangerous there is no longer any money to replace them. So, the grunt is told to grin and bear it.

If there is any one out there who chooses to dispute what I have said or inferred, step to the plate and prove me wrong.