Ever hear of " FASTPAC " ?

I just got a phone call, from a " FASTPAC " out of Florida.

They tell me that all government contracts under $100,000 must now be sent to small businesses, and all government contracts under $50,000 must now be awarded without bids. (!)

They said there is a huge amount of high paying, no bid work avaialble, lot of it going overseas because of the shortage of small businesses.

No requirement for ISO...

And they make their money from brokering the deals, and the shop gets 100% of the bid...


OF COURSE that doesn't sound right to me either..
A google search comes up blank for ANY information on them.


Is there ANY reason to call them back ????

It SOUNDS like a scam. Anyone experience this latest(?) scam ?

This is surely a scam.

Lots of govt. contracts for less than $100K end up in the hands of certified teaching institutions (your local state university) How could a "small business rule" apply there?

Govt in the US includes multiple levels of jurisdiction covered by a wide variety of laws.

Oh, and somebody like your local office of the small business administration ought to be able to provide a more authoritative answer.

Even if there is some truth to the claim (I think there *are* small business set-aside) why do you need these jokers?

I got that call too. As with all the tele-beggars I tell them if it's free sign me up you must have my info if you called me. If it cost money, I don't buy anything over the phone. Another thing is, make up a name for the person in charge of that and she's not here. When they call back and ask for her, she's still not here.

Got a call yesterday........voice says "US government calling in regards to finding small manufacturers for subcontracting".....or close to that.


I listen carefully.......and am thinking "this is different. US GOVERNMENT CALLING"......???

And then he says "Mr so-and-so with API.......we work WITH the US government"

And I say....."OH....you're NOT WITH the government, you WORK WITH the government".......

CLICK........hangs up.....

dk

Uh, to my knowlege (which is not complete) nobody ever calls and says "U.S. govt calling".

I've gotten calls from a local police department, who as you might expect identified themselves as "this is the xyz police, do you own the house at ..."

I've gotten calls (3 decades ago) from "John Smith, group XYZ US dept of Eduction - returing your call about RFP blah blah".

So, if you get a call from "Sarah Smartbuy, purchasing dept. for the NY office of the U.S. Dept of Agriculture" - you probably want to listen to the end of the message.

Note that even *politicians* calling to ask for money never say "we're from the government"...

(The combined governments of the US must employ something like 30 million people. Maybe 60 million. Federal Govt. alone is millions. Would you expect a phone call "We represent the entire state of California and we want to buy" or "Hi, this is Germany, we need to buy..."????)

Also be especially wary of anyone from Florida trying to sell you anything. Florida is the favorite haven of scammers because its a well established fact that FL doesn't give a shit who you're ripping off so long as your victims don't live in FL.

According to some numbers I saw just a couple weeks ago, combined gov't employment in the US is about 22 million, making it the largest employment sector. Service industries, including health care, are second at about 18 million. Manufacturing is 14 million but they didn't really specify whether or not unpacking boxes of junk from China qualifies as manufacturing employment. If so, that would account for about half those 14 mil jobs

Uh, to my knowlege (which is not complete) nobody ever calls and says "U.S. govt calling".

Click to expand...

What's your point?
That's what the guy said........

If your tax rate is at 30% (low actually) then for every three people paying taxes, there is one guy in the government. And he's paying taxes....

So, if everyone is paying taxes, it is maybe close to 1/3 of the workforce on the payroll, or they are wasting it someplace else.

This call came from FL.
AS did most fax scams that haunted me for a while.

I was really curious why there was no google hits for these guys, if they are cuurently active..

So, if everyone is paying taxes, it is maybe close to 1/3 of the workforce on the payroll, or they are wasting it someplace else

Click to expand...

Pete, a quick look at the defense budget will answer that one. The current year's budget, including all the hidden stuff, is estimated at $750 billion. IIRC, there's somewhere around 3/4 million people in the military. If you made the assumption that the average pay and benefits of each person in the military was $100,000/yr, that would only account for $75 billion. There's obviously a lot going "elsewhere".

To put that $750 billion in even better perspective, since the real size of these numbers sorta loses its impact, we are spending $1,427,000 every minute of every day, 365 days a year, on defense alone.