I had to check my calendar to make sure this wasn't some kind of April Fool's joke: USAC has sent out an announcement that starting Monday (that's one business day from today), we will not be able to file BEARs and SPIs online for an indefinite period.
I'm pretty sure I'm reading this right: no more online invoicing until the new forms are ready. When will the new forms be ready? "As quickly as possible."
So the online BEAR is vanishing just as BEAR season gets into full swing. (You aren't filing your BEARs before paying your June bills, are you? Take a closer look at the certifications on the form.)
Unbelievable.
Oh, and by the way, if you were thinking that you would stay late today filing BEARs before the system goes down, USAC has also announced that the system will be down for maintenance this evening. So we can still go to Happy Hour, and this week, we need it.
Three updates:
ReplyDelete1) The outage is expected to last longer than a week, but less than a month. USAC got the new form dropped on them this week, so they're not sure yet how long it will take.
2) The new paper form will be available on Monday morning, but not before.
3) BEARs which are submitted by applicants before Monday can still be certified by service providers after Monday.
In the "be careful what you wish for" department: the reason for the long service interruption seems to be the need to allow applicants to put the discount on the form, and to put a remittance address on the form. Those changes were added due to comments made after the NPRM for the form. So we brought this on ourselves.