01/12/2025
Hello everyone… Well, there was great excitement at mr.h hq today…. Trevor (the H in mr.h) received a personal invitation by email from a very important person at to tender for a very official looking RFP for a place on their roster… Champagne corks were almost popped, Speedos were being hastily packed and countless exec PAs despatched to buy Factor 100 sun cream in bulk – in readiness for jetting offto a potential client briefing meeting in Dubai…
An airline account at last! We always rather rashly thought of ourselves as high fliers, but little did we know there was soon to be quite a lot of turbulence ahead! The RFP ran to over 50 pages and would take a lot of work to complete (as tenders often do). But we have successfully completed them before and won quite a lot of business on the back of them too. So,Trevor began to meticulously go through the requirements: IPA membership, past experience, VAT, company registration, staffing numbers, accounts, capability… blah, blah, blah…Oh, and what was this in the small print? – A fully refundable $16,150 participation fee to be paid upon submittance of application? Hmmmm… pull the other one…
Luckily, one of us still had their feet still firmly on the ground… so Luis (the R in mr.h) ingeniously tracked down the oblivious very important person and he rather apologetically informed us that it was far from bona fide. And that there was currently a spate of scam RFPs from Qatar Airways flying around. Our hopes were dashed before we even reached the departure lounge… On the bright side, the very important person now knows who mr.h is (which may prove to be useful in the long term). And, one could argue, the scammers showed a great sense of good taste by targeting usin the first place… But seriously everyone, there are a lot of false, but very authentic looking RFPs around at the moment– so do watch out, don’t be fooled, check them thoroughly – no matter how real they look… More soon… take care… x