A supplier spends two hours estimating your job. They don't win. They hear nothing — not that week, not ever. They find out when the next RFQ arrives and the last one isn't mentioned.
Nearly everyone does this. It's worth understanding why, and what it costs.
Why nobody sends the message
It feels like bad news to deliver. Nobody enjoys it, and no deadline forces it.
It's genuinely unclear what to say. Too little sounds dismissive; too much gives away another supplier's pricing.
It's invisible. No customer is waiting on it, nothing breaks, and the cost surfaces months later looking unrelated.
All understandable. None of it makes the outcome cheaper.
What it costs
Suppliers are making a return calculation on your RFQs, whether or not they'd put it that way. Quoting takes estimator time, and estimator time is the scarcest thing in a small shop.
If they've quoted eight jobs, won one, and heard nothing about the other seven, your RFQs move down the pile. Not out of spite — a request with an unknown outcome ranks below one from a customer who closes the loop.
You see this as a slower quote, or no quote, on the job where you needed three numbers. You won't connect it to the seven times you didn't reply, because those were months ago.
What to say
Three sentences, sent the same week:
Thanks for quoting the bracket job — we've gone with another supplier this time. Your price was in the right area; the deciding factor was lead time. More of this type coming next month, hope you'll quote it.
Why each line is there: the first closes the loop, the second tells them something actionable, the third says the relationship continues — which is the part that keeps them quoting.
Where the line is
Fine to share: the deciding factor in general terms. Price, lead time, capacity, certification, delivery record.
Not fine: the winning number, the winning supplier's name, or anything specific enough to reverse-engineer either.
That distinction matters beyond fairness. A supplier who learns you share numbers assumes theirs gets shared too, and prices accordingly. You've made every future RFQ slightly worse for a moment of transparency that helped nobody.
When honesty is worth more than politeness
If a supplier is consistently 20% off, "your price wasn't competitive" does them a kindness and does you one. They'll either come back with a real number or stop quoting — and both beat a third round of the same.
The same applies to a supplier whose lead times have drifted. "You've been the slowest quote on the last three" is a hard message and a useful one. Most suppliers would rather hear it than be quietly dropped, and a few will fix it.
The reciprocal version
Worth noticing: this cuts both ways. When a supplier tells you early that they can't quote something, that's the same courtesy — it saves you waiting on a number that was never coming.
Say thank you when it happens, and remember who does it. A supplier who declines quickly is more useful than one who goes quiet, and they're rarer than they should be — for exactly the reason you don't send the losing message.