Bad Buying cover art

Bad Buying

How organisations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Bad Buying

By: Peter Smith
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Why is the Berlin Brandenburg Airport ten years behind schedule and nearly four billion euros over budget? And what possessed Kenya's government to spend a whopping $35 million on a chain link fence just six miles long?

In this hilarious, fascinating and insightful expose, industry insider Peter Smith reveals the massive blunders and dodgy dealings taking place around the world as private companies and public sector bodies buy goods and services. A recent report showed that over 90% of procurement projects fail. So, why are so many billions wasted on ineptitude, mismanagement and, in some cases, fraud?

By turns an entertaining account of some of the worst procurement scams in history and also a resounding lesson in how not to operate, Bad Buying offers clear and practical advice on how to avoid embarrassing mistakes, minimise needless waste and make sound, strategic procurement decisions on your next initiative.

'Had this been published pre-Covid, some of the recent f*ck-ups and waste might have been avoided. It's a must read for the public and private sector alike' Lt-Gen. Sir Andrew Gregory, SSAFA: The Armed Forces Charity

'Hilarious, enlightening and brilliant....This book will make you think twice about buying anything - but do buy this' Antonio Weiss, bestselling author of 101 Business Ideas That Will Change the Way you Work, and Director, The PSC

© Peter Smith 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 Engineering Forecasting & Strategic Planning Management & Leadership Negotiating Project Management Business Management

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Decline and Fall of IBM cover art
Buy, Build, Sell cover art
TED Talks cover art
How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't cover art
The Agenda cover art
Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business cover art
Stick Out Your Balance Sheet and Cough cover art
No Bullsh*t Leadership cover art
The Upside of the Downturn cover art
Follow the Money cover art
The Boutique cover art
The Risk-Driven Business Model cover art
The General Theory of the Translation Company cover art
The Ethical Capitalist cover art
Billion Dollar Lessons cover art
Innovation and Entrepreneurship cover art

Critic reviews

Colossal, costly disasters could be averted if those holding the purse strings read this book.
Bad buying tells story after story of bad buying for both novices and experts alike - and shows us a roadmap to doing it better.
This book is a revelation ... actually it's full of them, all costly catastrophes. Factually rich, funny and full of practical hard-earned wisdom, it is also an extensively-referenced portal into a parallel how-to universe where great buying delivers remarkable business results. If you don't read this book, you may find yourself in the next one!
A refreshingly different take on how to be great at procurement by learning from a plethora of examples of painful, unbelievable, funny and downright stupid buying by organisations, or more precisely the people in them. A brilliantly unique and insightful read from one of the most experienced individuals in this space
A great opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes, not your own. Through exceptionally well researched examples, Peter teaches both new and established professionals how to avoid the same mistakes. I thoroughly recommend this book to anybody involved in, or responsible for spending money for their organisation
An unusual business book in that it is both useful to readers and also genuinely entertaining with fascinating stories of failure and fraud from around the world and every sector
A hilarious, enlightening and brilliant look at how organisations - public and private - have been guilty of horrendous buying failures. Not content with just lifting the lid on some of the most egregious excesses in history, Peter Smith provides insightful and practical advice to avoid repeating such disasters. This book will make you think twice about buying anything - but do buy this
This book is a fascinating account of the biggest buying blunders by private and public sectors alike. Written in his trademark dashing and fluent style, doesn't just expose hilarious dodgy stories with Schadenfreude but offers insightful and practical advice on how to avoid career limiting mistakes
This book is a great effort to dig the challenges out of the back office of procurement and bring to the fore the opportunities for improvement... If you want to improve your chances of not being done by Bad Buying, there's no better place than this book to see what the risks are and begin to understand how to avoid them
Covid-19 restrictions have put the spotlight on global supply chains and the difficulties caused when everybody wants to buy the same thing at the same time. Peter's book highlights where buying can go catastrophically wrong and how to avoid these pitfalls. Had this been published pre-Covid, some of the recent c*ck-ups and waste might have been avoided. It's a must read for the public and private sector alike
All stars
Most relevant
I thought this book was quite misleading as it's written more for someone who owns a company and is involved in procurement. I got it for the blurb expecting lots of tales of amusing anecdotes and disastrous decisions. There were parts on that but they will only a small fraction of the book. It didn't feel like a "popular" work to me.

Misleading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.