Protest of Bid Rejection as Nonresponsive for Omission of Required Price

A firm requested a reconsideration of a decision in which GAO upheld the determination by the Government Printing Office (GPO) that the firm's bid was nonresponsive to an express solicitation requirement for a bid price on all items listed. The firm admitted that it had made a clerical mistake by not submitting a price for one of the items listed in the invitation for bids, but the firm stated in the original protest that it had notified GPO of its mistake within 1 hour after it had submitted its bid. In the request for reconsideration, the firm alleged that the correction of its mistake in bid should have been allowed under regulations involving mistake in bid procedures. Since the firm failed to show that GPO had received notice of the mistake prior to bid opening or that the alleged notice was intended as a modification of the firm's bid, GAO held that its decision was affirmed. A bid modification must be processed according to the late bid clause of the solicitation and cannot be modified on the basis of oral telephone modifications.