The Postal Service has been resolving purchasing protests (commonly referred to as "bid protests") administratively since postal reorganization in 1971. Protests are handled in the Postal Service Law Department by the Senior Counsel, Contract Protests and Policies, under procedures found in Purchasing Manual Section 3.6. The complete Purchasing Manual is available here. While postal protest decisions are public documents which are on file with and available from the Postal Service, they have not been widely available. The posting of these decisions on this World Wide Web Server is an attempt to correct that situation.

The Senior Counsel's address is:
Senior Counsel
Contract Protests and Policies
U.S. Postal Service Law Department
Room 6437
475 L'Enfant Plaza West, SW
Washington, DC 20260-1120

The Senior Counsel's facsimile number is:
(202) 268-5329

Postal Purchasing Protest Decisions Digest
Postal Service decisions are numbered by calendar year, e.g., Protest 95-01, Protest 95-03, etc. Not all protests are the subject of formal decisions, so the listings here omit some numbers.

The annual lists which are attached to the links below include brief summaries (digests) of the decisions. An HTML version of each decision is linked to the protest citation; an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) version of the decision can be accessed from the Acrobat icon to the right of each decision.

New decisions are added to the current-year listing periodically, and prior-year decisions are added as time and resources allow. Users are cautioned that although care has been taken to see that the annual collections are complete and that they accurately reflect the printed decisions issued by the Postal Service, the absolute accuracy of these files cannot not guaranteed. Prior-year decisions not included here are available for inspection and copying at the Postal Service library.