What happens after you send us an RFQ: samples, inspection, contract

Where your request actually goes, what the reference on it does and does not mean, and the three stages between a quotation and a signed contract.

Buyers ask us this more often than any question about a commodity, and it is a fair thing to want to know before typing a specification into a stranger's website. Here is exactly what our request-for-quotation form does, where the request goes, and what happens between it and a contract.

The form does not email us and it does not store your requirement on this website. It assembles what you have entered into a structured WhatsApp message addressed to our sales line, and then it hands that message to you. Nothing reaches us until you press Send in WhatsApp — if you close the tab at that point, we never saw it. One practical consequence: a specification or tender document cannot travel through a WhatsApp deep link, so if you have a file, attach it yourself in the chat before sending.

You will see a reference on the message, in the form IBS- followed by a date and a short code. Be clear about what it is: a label, so that you and our sales team can refer to the same enquiry later without re-describing it. It is generated on your device when the message is prepared. It is not an acknowledgement of receipt, not a record held on our side, and not a confirmation that anything has been accepted.

The first thing our sales team does is check availability. A commodity appearing in our catalogue means we source it, not that a given volume is available today, so the grade, quantity and delivery window you have asked for are checked against the current crop position before any price is written. That check is also why a precise enquiry is answered faster than a general one: commodity and grade, quantity with its unit, packaging, destination city and discharge port, your preferred Incoterm, the delivery window, and any certification or inspection your market requires.

The quotation that comes back covers price, packaging, lead time, Incoterm and payment terms. We do not publish a turnaround promise anywhere on this site and we will not make one here: the answer depends on the commodity, the crop position and the volume. What we will say is that a quotation is written against a checked position rather than a hopeful one.

Where the order warrants it, samples come next. A sample is only useful if it is representative of normal production rather than the best lot we could find — an unrepresentative sample wins a single order and loses the relationship that would have followed it, so samples are drawn from the material the contract describes and labelled with commodity, grade and origin. For a high-value line such as cloves a small trial lot often does the job better than a sample, which is why the indicative trial quantity on that line is 1 MT.

Inspection is a commercial decision and it has no default. You can appoint a third-party inspection company at loading, send your own inspector or agent, or waive inspection altogether. Who appoints the inspector and who pays for the inspection are agreed in writing before loading, not assumed — and if you are not sure what is usual for your market, ask us and we will tell you what buyers in that trade normally do.

Then the contract, which is the document that matters. Everything this website publishes about a specification is indicative; the binding specification for your shipment is the one written into the sales contract, together with the packaging, the Incoterm and named place, the delivery window, the documents that will accompany the consignment and the payment terms. Read the specification clause against the quotation before signing, and raise any difference then rather than at the discharge port.

If you would rather talk it through before filling anything in, message our team on WhatsApp with the product, quantity and destination in the first message — that much is enough for us to check the crop position before replying.