Rejection of Bid as Nonresponsive for Failure To Acknowledge Amendment

The protester objected to the rejection of its low bid as nonresponsive for failure to acknowledge an amendment to the solicitation. The bidder's failure to acknowledge the amendment could not be waived, even though the net effect of the amendment was to decrease performance cost, since the portion of the amendment increasing the cost by $3,583 was not de minimus. Failure to acknowledge a material amendment justified rejection of the bid even though the bidder claimed it never received the amendment as long as there was no deliberate effort on the part of the agency to exclude the bidder from competition.