Some cost-minded homebuilding companies are turning to online reverse auctions to obtain rock-bottom prices for portable restroom services. While this may suit service consumers, reverse auctions – in which bidders try to win contracts by submitting lower and lower bids in real time – aren’t attractive to pumpers already working with slender profit margins.
Because the auctions are held in real-time, prices often fall more rapidly – and are likely to go lower – than in a traditional bidding process. This has frustrated some pumping contractors to the point that they’ve talked about boycotts against reverse auctions. But Geoffrey Green, a
