This is odd, but it’s consistent with previous years so it’s not necessarily new. ISO has released its ISO 9001:2015 standard for CHF 138, or $142 US. It’s US counterpart, ANSI, is selling ISO 9001:2015 at a higher cost of $173, which is unusual since ANSI usually sells it at a slightly lower price than ISO. For this latest edition, they’ve inflated it by $31, so you’re better off buying it from those bearded Swiss, for once. It’s like ANSI wants you to grow a beard and eat fish at every meal.
It gets even weirder. SAE just released AS9100 Revision D at a price point of only $74 US. The thing is, AS9100 includes the full text of ISO 9001:2015, so you’re essentially buying ISO 9001 with some additional boldface text, but doing so for less than half of what you’d pay for ISO 9001 without the extra text. Except for my Pre-Order Edition of Surviving ISO 9001:2015, I haven’t heard of too many cases where you can buy something at a cheaper rate and get more than you would if you paid full price.
Presumably, SAE has to pay the same licensing fees to ISO as ANSI does, so ANSI can’t justify its price hike by claiming it’s due to some additional charges coming out of Geneva. So how on earth can ANSI justify charging nearly 2.5 times the cost for a standard that has less content?
I’ve reached out to ANSI to find out, and will update this article with their response, but we shouldn’t hold our breath. They’ll probably demand I pay them $1200 to get an answer.
UPDATE: Eagle-eyed reader Anthony Mason noted that you can purchase ISO 9001:2015 — in English — for only $31 US at the Estonian standards body’s website. Yes, I said thirty-one dollars, as in $142 less than ISO, or $107 less than ANSI. In short, there’s no rhyme or reason to this.
It does appear that both ANSI and ISO are price gouging. There’s supply and demand, and then there’s just demand and demand. Since ISO has a cozy deal with Randy Dougherty and the IAF, buying the new edition at the inflated price is mandatory, since the IAF has invented made-up rules about sunsetting certificates to ISO 9001:2008 in three years. This ostensibly forces you to buy a copy of the new standard in what a court is likely to rule as anticompetitive monopoly abuse. (I’m working that angle to actually get a court to rule that. Stay tuned on that note.) The fact that SAE can effectively publish ISO 9001 at less than half the price will undercut any argument that ANSI’s Joe Bhatia, ISO’s Charles Corrie or IAF’s Dougherty is likely to mount.
In short, ISO and ANSI can charge an exorbitant fee for ISO 9001 because they have an army of accreditation bodies and registrars to enforce an arbitrary demand that you buy it at whatever price they set. Heck, ISO could charge $500 and you’d still have to buy it, lest you lose your certification after September 2018. SAE has the same powers in place, but for whatever reason they haven’t abused them.
So if you want to save a lot of money on ISO 9001, buy AS9100D instead, and just ignore the boldface.
If you’re reading this from the FTC — and I know I have a few of you on my mailing list — let me just ask: can we get an investigation?
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
