A bid the platform cannot read now says so

A bid carries a status, and the platform matches it exactly. A stored value that differs from a known status by letter case or surrounding spaces is not that status — it is one we cannot read. Until now those bids were treated as if they had no status at all, and two things went wrong.

Accepting or rejecting one told you “This proposal has already been answered.” Nobody had answered it. Now the refusal names the value actually stored on the bid, because having it corrected is the only thing that will make the bid answerable again.

The bid’s expert had the mirror problem: the edit page opened a form, and saving it failed every time. The page and the save now agree — an expert who cannot save a bid is no longer offered the form, and is told to ask their manager to have the status corrected.

A bid like this offers no accept, no reject, no change request, no resubmit and no edit link, and shows “Unrecognised status” where its status would be. A draft or an archived bid is still refused as a draft or an archive, whatever its stored status.