Self certification is a way to go also and save the money. Usually happens with companies that have been registered for awhile and have fairly mature systems in place. I would definitely let your Customers know why you are doing this. There should be a thread where we had discussed this years back. Do a search "ISO 9000 manifesto" should get you to a past discussion. I have put away most of my ISO, as I am not involved in this much anymore. Here was my comment to the thread back then. would be interesting to see how many of these companies have self-declared?
"This thread seems to focus on the ICSCA (Industry Cooperation on Standards and Conformity Assessment) and their 40 Resolution Manifesto, as I believe that it was called. In April of 98 there were 58 members including : Bell Labs, Boeing, Ford, GM, HP, IBM, UT, Texas Instruments, Lucent, etc. They were calling for self-declarition to ISO by the year 2005, mainly due to the high cost of registration. Resolution 9 covered ISO 9000,Resolution 17 covered ISO 14001,Resolution 19 covered Occupational Health and Safety, Resolution 25 covered Social Accountability and Resolution cover the distribution of standards "free of charge",which has been discussed in other threads."