After you send
What you can see while an enquiry is pending, what changes the moment it is accepted, what comes back if it is declined or ignored, and when to stop waiting.
The enquiry is gone and the decision is not yours any more. Here is what actually happens next, and what you can do at each point.
While it is pending
You can see it, and you can see the date the business is expected to respond by. That date is visible to both of you.
What you cannot do is nudge. There is no channel to message a business that has not accepted your enquiry — deliberately, because a platform where you can is a platform where anyone can message anyone, which is the thing this is built to avoid. See Contact privacy.
Your details are still hidden
Until acceptance, the business has your requirement and your standing, not your phone number.
When it is accepted
Three things change at once.
Contact details are exchanged. Both directions — you can reach them, they can reach you.
A person is named. The business assigns someone to your enquiry, with their
preferred email and number. You are dealing with a named individual, not
sales@.
The commercial conversation is now off the platform as much as you want it to be. Bidancer's job was to establish that both sides are real, verified and committed. Where you take it from there — call, email, meeting, site visit — is yours.
When it is declined
Your credits come back. Nothing about you was revealed.
A decline is worth reading as data. The frequent causes, in order:
- They do not actually do this. Their listing was adjacent, not matching.
- It could not be priced. See Writing a requirement.
- The volume is wrong for them — too small to be worth setting up, or larger than they can serve.
- The timeline is impossible for their current book.
Only the first is unfixable from your side.
When nobody answers
If the response date passes with no decision, the enquiry is marked missed and your credits come back.
This one is not about you. A business that lets enquiries lapse is telling you something about how it operates, and the platform records it against its response score where the next person can see it.
When to stop waiting
Before the response date, the answer is: don't. The date exists so you do not have to decide when to give up.
If you need an answer sooner than that date, the requirement was more urgent than a single enquiry can serve. Send to a second supplier in parallel, or float a tender and get several answers against one clock.
What you carry forward
Every enquiry you send builds a record on both sides. Yours accumulates into how you read to the next business that receives one from you: verified, responsive, and someone whose enquiries turn into real business, or not.
That is why closing properly matters even when the enquiry is over — and why submitting the rating earns credits back into your wallet. The five minutes you spend saying how a supplier actually performed is paid for, because the next buyer choosing between suppliers is reading it.
See Closing and ratings.
Writing a requirement
What separates an enquiry a supplier can quote from one they have to phone about — units, specifications, scope, timing — and the failure modes that make good requirements unanswerable.
Overview
Receiving enquiries — why acceptance costs you something, what you can see before deciding, how to keep a queue from rotting, and what unanswered enquiries do to your standing.