The General Accountability Office has denied a protest from a collection agency that was not selected by the Internal Revenue Service for private debt collection services, ruling that the Treasury Department’s selection process was reasonable and that the agency’s plan to use an unproven call analytics program opened the IRS to complaints or incidents.
A copy of the GAO’s ruling can be accessed by clicking here.
Last September, the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, solicited bids from six different collection agencies, each of which were approved to bid on federal contracts. All six agencies, including Pioneer Credit, which filed the protest, submitted bids. Five of the six bids were viewed as “technically equal” but only one bid — the one from Pioneer — received a weakness. That weakness was in the area of Technical Approach, deemed to be the most important factor in the decision-making process. The weakness was identified because Pioneer mentioned in its proposal that “it was going to employ a call analytics software that it had not previously used. Based upon this statement, the agency concluded that without prior experience in using this particular software analytics system or something similar, that ‘there is potential for risk to the IRS of having incidents, complaints, or negative audit findings result from Pioneer-taxpayer interactions.’ “
The IRS selected ConServe, Coast Professional, and CBE Group for the contract, choosing the vendors that quoted the lowest price/commission fee. ConServe quoted 13.9%, Coast 17.95%, CBE 18.75%, and Pioneer 21%.
Pioneer filed its protest, arguing that the process “gave undue weight to adjectival ratings and price, and that the agency failed to credit its quotation with various strengths assigned to other vendors’ quotations.”
But the GAO did not agree with any of the arguments raised by Pioneer in its protest.
