HN Explorer

Ask HN: Your worst RFP horror story?

4 points by corry ↗ HN
Let's compare RFP scars. What's your worst story involving an RFP from a public agency or large enterprise?

Having to print out 10 hardcopies and drive overnight to hand-deliver them?

Being disqualified for a $1M+ project because of some minor, stupid reason (i.e. your formatting was off)?

Being forced to use a weird web portal from the 90's that requires IE6 to use?

Share your worst RFP experience here and at www.bonfire9.com/horror (we're compiling a report of the best stories and aggregated feedback)

I think those of us on HN suffer the daily humiliations of the RFP process more keenly than others.

2 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 16.3 ms ] thread
corry
I'll start. In a former life, we were bidding on an RFP that had to be hand-delivered to the purchasing office by 12:00pm. For various reasons, we ended up getting there a bit late at 11:50am - so 10 minutes to get to the office. The elevators were down. The office was on the 11th floor. We didn't make it, and even though we were just minutes late 'the rules are the rules'.

The irony is that I know FOR SURE that we were cheaper and better than the company that ended up winning the project.

brudgers
In the worst one, I got the job.