"Request a Quote"

Lawrence

There is now a feature for allowing buyers to request a shipping quote. I have added a shipping method called "Request a Quote" to every store, it is visible in your shipping method screen and can be disabled if you want.

At checkout, a buyer can either choose one of your predefined shipping methods, or they can choose to request a quote. If they do, you will be sent an e-mail. You can then see the cart they have from the quote screen in your store pages. You can then set the shipping price you want to charge for that cart.

The buyer will then receive an e-mail letting them know the amount, and they can go to your store and complete checkout using the shipping quote you gave.

To clarify, a shipping quote is not an order, the buyer is under no obligation to do anything after they received a quote and the order items are not reserved for them.


Does this sound like it would deal with many of the issues you are experiencing with trying to make the shipping rates fit for everywhere?

Lar

Non binding quotes that are not orders yet are not ideal. I'm going to give this a try though! I have some miltontrainworks.com lots that are not listed at BL. They are not LEGO items, they are custom kits, but I know the weights and measures pretty accurately already.

Thor

Thank you for your time and effort on this issue Admin. Unfortunately, I have some reservations and questions about allowing buyers to so easily request shipping quotes. This has been repeatedly requested on BL for years, but rejected by BL and its members every time it is raised. The main objection is that buyers will over-use this feature and cause sellers more work for less orders. Right now on BL buyers can already send a BL message asking for a shipping quote. 8 times out of 10 responding to these requests does NOT lead to any orders being placed. It seems that most buyers who submit these requests are simply on a fishing expedition and not really serious about placing orders. They are just fishing for some really great deal or discount.

One question that always comes up is whether items in the buyer's cart will remain reserved for that buyer after he submits a request for a shipping quote. Since most such requests do not lead to orders, sellers are understandably concerned about their inventory being tied up by wishy washy buyers who can't make up their minds. On the other hand, if the cart items are not reserved and other buyers buy some of these items during the interim, it renders any shipping quote I give meaningless and may cause the first buyer to become upset that items he wanted were not held for him and are no longer available.

So again, I think the better option would be for sellers to opt in to giving more experienced and knowledgeable buyers the option of being invoiced later after the seller can more accurately determine shipping. Keep the current BO immediate pay system. But also offer the Invoice Later method for those who want it.

Thor

walstib

It sound like an awesome fix for now. Thanks.

I have no issues using my time to quote orders for people. The way I see it the system will already have the right quote most of the time for me now already.

As long as the request has the postal code/country, weight and items I can usually quote in less than a min. No biggie for me.

If the request also had the calculated volume of the cart and what shipping methods the system will allow it would save even more time for me.

Please continue with the assumption most people are great and will not waist sellers time rather than try and cover for every worst case scenario in everything.

Thor

Why make any assumptions at all? Ask most experienced BL sellers and they will confirm that the vast majority of messages requesting shipping quotes do NOT lead to orders. That is not an assumption. That is actual experience.

But if we are going to make assumptions, then we can assume that making it even easier for buyers to request shipping quotes will mean sellers will get more such requests (the vast majority of which will not lead to more orders). The net result is more work for no gain.

BTW, I wish all my shipping quote requests included the country/postal code, weight and items. Unfortunately, many shipping quote requests I have received go something like this" "How much is shipping to Singapore?" Yes, that is an actual message I received. And many more very similar to it.

No, I am not asking BO to address every possible worst case scenario. I would just like the ability to offer my more experienced buyers a way to be invoiced later after I have determined more precise shipping. Predetermined shipping with immediate payment upon checkout is great for many or most buyers! BUT it will make sellers err on the high side and buyers will generally pay more for shipping.

Thor

Lar

Thor is right....

I have never had a quote request actually lead to a sale. Never. Not once.

So I stopped giving them altogether unless a 5 USD charge was paid. I have a canned message that gives the info on how to get a good estimate, (one that would be higher than what the actual cost is) instead. (get the weight, fudge up by 50%, then go to the USPS site and see what it says). when I get quote requests at BL that's what I send them.

I'm willing to try that approach here, because this is the route Admin has chosen to go. Admin seems very responsive to suggestions and requests, which is awesome. Meet halfway seems a good approach.

But I'd rather have post sale invoicing with the sale being binding.

misbi

"it is visible in your shipping method screen and can be disabled if you want".

Lawrence

Thank you for your responses. Firstly, the quote request will contain everything you need to do the shipping quote including full addresses, order content, item weight, order weight etc. Pretty much the only thing it doesn't include is coupon/tax/payment details.

I fully understand if a buyer requests a quote rather than doing instant checkout there is a good chance they will not act on a quote they receive. If you have suggestions on how to reduce this issue using methods other than binding the customer into some sort of obligation, I'm happy to hear them.

I'm afraid I think Brick Owl will always be different to BrickLink in that we never want to force buyers into paying amounts that they do not know up front. Precalculated shipping or requesting a quote lets the buyer decide if they are happy with the cost or not and allows them to blindly shop anywhere without a care in the world for reading terms.

You can of course turn this option off, but ideally I'd like to make it useful for you.

Lawrence

With regards to possible improvements to make it more useful. I have already noted allowing you to reject a quote if it is something you can't ship for example. I could potentially show you statistics with regards to ratio as to how many quotes this person requests and how many they actually act on. Maybe a figure with reduced accuracy such as a 1/5 number. You could then choose to reject it if you want rather than making a quote for them.

walstib

Why make any assumptions at all? Ask most experienced BL sellers and they will confirm that the vast majority of messages requesting shipping quotes do NOT lead to orders. That is not an assumption. That is actual experience.

Well, I have some selling experience.... The vast majority of my requests for quotes have lead to sales and the start of a relationship with my customers. May not be everyone's experience but it is mine.

The more clear and open your terms, the less you compete to have the absolute lowest price, the cleared your shipping chart, the less non serious quotes you get is what I have seen.

Sure there are phishers out there, with time it becomes easier to recognize them.


All the best,

Joe

walstib

With regards to possible improvements to make it more useful. I have already noted allowing you to reject a quote if it is something you can't ship for example. I could potentially show you statistics with regards to ratio as to how many quotes this person requests and how many they actually act on. Maybe a figure with reduced accuracy such as a 1/5 number. You could then choose to reject it if you want rather than making a quote for them.

If implemented something the other way too for buyers it would be good I think.

Show if a store is the kind who won't bother to answer you if you ask something. "4/5 quotes go unanswered" Or a lead time on how fast a response will come?

Something in the process mentioning it could take a day or more to get to the quote would be good to so no one ends up sitting in front of their cart hoping it will only be a few min when it could be days in some circumstances.

Thor

Good morning Admin. I like your idea of letting sellers know how many quotes from a particular buyer lead to actual orders. In fact, if you are going to code for this maybe you could take it one step further and give sellers an optional setting where they could choose to disable or block quote requests only from buyers who act on less than certain percentage of such quotes (let's say 50%, for example). Thus, for example, I could opt to tweak this feature so that I do not allow quote requests from, say, a buyer who has only ordered once out of five quotes submitted; but I would allow quote requests from, say, a buyer who has ordered four times out of five quotes submitted.

Thor

Sir Troys

I like this idea and it fills a need that I currently have! because I have not yet had time to set up all of my intended shipping methods, there are actual items in my store that can not be shipped via an existing shipping method. Large sets that are too big to fit in any of the USPS Flat Rate boxes are listed but could not actually be purchased.

Now, when i put an Airport in my cart and try to check out, I get the option to request a quote. This is perfect as these large sets are the ones that are most difficult to handle via the shipping bands.

I think that this implementation will likely lead to MORE completed sales after requesting a quote as I assume once the quote is sent they can complete the order as normal. Much better than having random e-mail contacts requesting a quote, usually without all of the necessary information.

I too have received requests along the lines of "How much is shipping to Hong Kong?" There is just now way to answer that sort of request.

Troy

Lawrence

Once the quote is sent, they can check out their cart in your store. Your quote appears as a shipping method that they can use that only applies to that cart.

I think I will leave the implementation as is for now, when it starts getting used more I will add statistics and thresholds etc.

Sendmebricks

I may be missing something here. I've got a customer that requested a quote, accepted the quote and paid by bank transfer. How do I now move this to an order? Currently its still a quote so stock has not downdated and my customer can't see when it ships. This is probably really obvious but I cannot for the life of me see how to move to an order status.

Stellar

@Sendmebricks when you as a seller enter a quote amount it is displayed in the buyer cart as the shipping costs, the buyer needs to do the checkout to place the order.

The text box below the quote is not to share the payment details, as when the checkout is done the buyer will receive the details in the order email and displayed in the screen.

beaverbrick

@Sendmebricks
You don't have to do anything as a seller to convert it from a quote to an order... it's all done on the buyer's side.
So, if you can still see it as a quote, I'd say the buyer hasn't gone through checkout.

Mrs Swoop

@Sendmebricks It sounds to me like you've done this outside of the quote system, was it done through messages? Someone may correct me on this but I believe that if you still have the quote then you haven't actioned it. You should enter the price on the quote using the action menu at the top of the quote screen, that then sends it back to the customer so they can create the order from it if they want to accept the quote. I suspect you should still be able to do that and then you can mark the order as Payment Received, but I'm not 100% on that.