[Protest of Rejection of Bid as Nonresponsive by GSA]

A firm protested the rejection of its bid by the General Services Administration (GSA), arguing that: (1) GSA erroneously assumed that its bid complied with the material terms of the solicitation when in fact it proposed different payment terms; (2) GSA should be estopped from rejecting the bid because it did not submit the issue to the Small Business Administration for consideration of a Certificate of Competency until after it rejected the bid; and (3) rejection would have been too costly to the government. GAO held that: (1) a bid's failure to obligate the bidder to perform in accordance with a solicitation requires rejection; (2) a contracting agency cannot be estopped, because of erroneous acts of its agents, from rejecting a bid required by law to be rejected as nonresponsive; and (3) maintaining the integrity of the bidding system outweighs monetary advantages which might be realized in a particular instance if a bid were corrected or waived. Accordingly, the protest was denied.