Posts

I am going to put together a tender, for a low value government contract, for the first time and I am looking for a webpage or site that tells you how to put together good tender proposals. Can people point me to any sites they know?

Thanks

So, with 10 cm of snow the country comes to a halt. People who arranged meetings with me (private and business) 1 or 2 weeks ago have been cancelling the visits. One of them told me today: "I cannot get my car out of the drive". He is local so I know he does not have a 50cm layer of ice outside.
They closed my daughter's school, why? because the teachers are not going to the school. We were more than ready -and able- to take our daughter to school. The teachers cannot (will not) make it.
My car is broken so yesterday I made a trip, I had to make, by bus.
If this country had Russian weather it would have ceased to exist a long time ago.

I have been trying to avoid the Business link for years, but I usually end up with them. I have a new product I want to get to the market, but all the websites that mention assistance for new businesses and ideas lead you to the Business Link; once you are there you know you at a dead end.
And the minister who is getting rid of them says they only act as signposting for other places that provide assistance. Picture in your mind a road map to get assistance then.
The sooner they get rid of them the better, but they have to replace them with individual, separate, bodies that provide real assistance. This way, if you get nowhere with one, you can go to another one. With the existing system, you are always stuck in the loop that goes through the Business Link.
Today I called a body that provides assistance to local businesses and that has a website that does not have any Business Link contact details. They took my phone number for someone to call me back and guess who called me back? Yep, the Business Link

I guess a lot of time and even money. I have heard they want pages and pages of proposals, which you have to spend a lot of time on, only to start getting frustrated when you realise they do not shortlist companies like yours.

I have a small new business, I would not show my accounts, 2 people working from my home, but high expertise in the services I sell. Is it worth putting in bids for government tenders? I do not mean

Thanks for the feed-back so far. Yes, I am already planning to go public with the matter: I am gathering contact names with the local press, BBC, internet sites, etc. But the thing is I still do not have the judgment in my favour. This could be the equivalent of the press saying that someone is guilty of murder before the jury gives its decision. I do not know if this rogue company also starts litigation for defamation; remember Robert Maxwell, he used to sue everyone just because they could not prove what they said even though it was true.

I have approached Which (of which I am a member), Trading Standards and other regulatory bodies, but they all wash their hands saying that they do not get involved in individual cases (I say even if they know the company in question to have a track record of unlawful activities).

At the moment I am just trying not to make mistakes, because this company relies on their targets, which they regard as being vulnerable, to be ignorant of the legal process, contract law, consumer rights, etc and to make mistakes along the way. I have already made a couple of mistakes and I do not want to make more.

The way that I am going to make my existing provider help me is to get from them all records of communications I made with them while the rogue company was preparing to steal my service. I left a long trail of communications to my existing provider, my bank (the rogue company had my bank details to set up a direct debit) and even my wife (as a witness) which prove that I always thought I had been dealing with the existing provider and that I did not even know the name of the Slamming company until they had already taken my service. I sincerely doubt that my existing provider is going to act a witness for me, even less send someone to court to give evidence, but I could ask (or subpoena them?).

Any more feed-back will be appreciated.

Yes, in my case they caught me completey off-guard because they guessed (or found out) my existing supplier the first time. But with this supplier being the largest in the country it would have been a pretty safe guess to make.

I would like to ask for feed-back from people who have been on the receiving end of "slamming", i.e. getting their electricity/telephone/etc service switched to another company without ther consent and where the rogue provider demanded money in return, for cancelling the service, when you got your service returned to your original provider. How did you resolve the matter, especially if you made a claim against them?

I think my case is quite typical. I am a home worker, I got a call from someone posing as a member of the sales team of my present provider asking me if I wanted my service plan to be switched to a cheaper one, from the same company, I said I was interested, I wanted paperwork with the plan/contract sent to me to check it, they did not send it, next thing I was with this new provider and my existing one did not know anything about the salesman who called me. Then I refused to pay their bills saying I never entered into any contract with them; then they cut my service; they did not even bother to send me their ridiculous bill for "cancelling" the service and went straight to make a court claim for the money.

I now need to make a counterclaim for what they have cost me: getting expensive alternative services, inconvenience, possible loss of work, my time and anything else I can claim.

Thanks

Is it only me who thinks so or are people in business getting a worse attitude in difficult times than before?

Where I am businesses are falling like flies, yet in the past two days I have had these responses from businesses I have contacted saying I am interested in their services:

1- "We select very carefully who we want to do business with, we set standards for our clients and give them targets that they have to meet"
I felt I was in a job interview, I said to them thank you and good-bye.

2- "Well, I don't know mate, pop in some time and I will see if I am interested, but not today, I am finishing at 12:30"
I guess he was not going to miss his Friday evening appointment with the pub just for the possibility of getting a new cutomer.

3- Another company was not at the address I got from Yell.com and when I called them they did not answer the phone.

4- Another company had a fax machine connected to the telephone number they give in their website.

Another one from the regional business advice agencies that are about to get the chop from the government. I got in touch with three of them a few weeks ago. After initial meetings with all of them they went away saying they would come back to me with advice and results soon and I have not heard from them since then. Who was it that said "I am not going to miss them"?

Thanks for the feed-back. Yes I am linking the advert directly to the relevant page in the site.
I decided to separate into 2 different campaigns adverts that are not completely related to each other for fear of one affecting the other in the quality score.
Yes, I have added a lot of negative words, especially: free, downloads, jobs, vacancies, recruitment, etc
Like sjr 4x4 I was hoping that low bids I have would at least show sometimes in my local radius, but what is still not clear, if anybody knows please, is if a lower bid will put your advert on any page after the first one. When I search in Google I don't stop at the first page. Sometimes I look at 25 pages if I am not finding what I am looking for.

I am now going to write more keywords in the landing pages. I guess Google will be furious if I hide them, I don't think that you can get away with that anylonger.