Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs

Support issues related to jobs listed in Fencebids

Many support issues, we're afraid, are not our fault and there is little we can do about them. We are getting the links and information directly from the government sources. So, wrong addresses, incorrect email addresses, broken links to a specific job, incorrect phone numbers are, for the most part, beyond our ability to fix.

The government, however, often corrects broken links very quickly, so if a link is broken, click on it again in an hour or so because it could be fixed. Same with incorrect email addresses, and so on.

Notes and Abbreviations in Fencebids

Some jobs listed refer to numbered notes. For a list of the notes, click here. Many job descriptions use abbreviations which may be unknown. For an alphabetical list explaining those abbreviations, click here. .

Other Problems with Fencebids

• My newsletter appears to have a lot of computer code and no graphics.

Most likely, your email has a filter which is not allowing you to receive html. You have two choices. Either turn off the email filter (click on Help in your email program to find out how) and turn on "allow executable html" or some other words meaning the same thing.
or
let us know an we will send you the text only version. The HTML version, however, is much preferred

• When I receive my newsletter, my email system asks me if I'm sure I want to download this email.

Most likely, you have set an email size threshold too low. We try very hard to make the newsletter as small as we can, but when the government has a lot of jobs, the newsletter can get quite big. If you set your email size threshold to accept email up to 40k, you should be okay.

• Why are some newsletters huge and some others with hardly anything in them?

The Federal Fiscal year ends September 30th. So often, many procurement officers try to award available work before the current year's budget expires on September 30th. July and August are almost always jammed with bids. By September, bids can rarely be converted to awards in the old budgets, and the number of bids go way down. In October, the agencies do not yet have new budget priorities set. By November, things begin getting back to normal. It happens every year.