Troubles? Let me tell you about troubles….

This is a reply to Brian Stephen’s blog entry “What is an E-Rate Approved Vendor’ at Funds for Learning

Troubled? Let me tell you about troubled….

While you may be troubled by the ‘E-Rate Approved’ vendors posting their laundry lists of so-called eligible services/devices, it is even more troubling when these items actually get funded. I have lost track of how many times bandwidth shaping devices from Packeteer get listed on 470s as ’switches’ (funded), and CA schools that issue laundry lists (everything on the left side of the ESL for ‘all sites’) and get funded.

Each year we see about 40% of our requests for biddable information (quantity, type, sizing, hardware/service details) ignored by applicants after three contact attempts (voice and email). We just chalk it up to applicants having pre-selected a vendor before bidding ends. Of course, some of the vendors don’t make it hard to ’select’ them during the bidding process, just look at their websites (if you want our services, just put ’service x’ on your 470, wait 28 days, and then write our name on your 471).

The SLD has a ‘waste, fraud, and abuse hotline,’ also known as the ‘code 9′ line. You can ‘code 9′ an applicant or vendor you suspect of waste, fraud, or abuse of the E-rate program, anonymously. Of course, during the investigation of your call, you name will probably get out. This CAN be used to stop some abusive practices, but in reality, any SMB would be insane to use it. Since I started working with the E-Rate program in 1998 (year 0), my companies have seen many, MANY abuses of the rules. Sometimes the abuses cost us big ($millions) contracts. Did we ever ‘code 9′ an applicant? Nope. Never; and none of the vendors I have spoken to will admit using it; the potential backlash is too great. Everyone talks to everyone else in the K12 market, and all it takes is a SUGGESTION that a company did a ‘code 9′ on an applicant or another vendor.

So we just sit back; we complain, we bitch, and we moan, hoping that someday, someone (but not us) will do something to fix these problems.

I suppose that this is the most troubling of all.

CILF

Amy Wong
Leela
Lois Griffin
The Crushinator