Requests — asking about a listing

Until now, seeing something on OnlyTons and doing something about it were two different jobs. You could look at a producer's September chickpeas, and then you had to go and post your own requirement, describing from memory the thing you had just been looking at, and wait.

Requests close that gap. Every availability listing and every published requirement now has a button on it, and pressing it starts a conversation the portal carries for you.

The three things you can ask for

They are the same conversation at three levels of commitment, and one grows into the next — you never start again.

You can move a request up this list at any time, and never back down. If you want out, you withdraw it — which is honest about what happened, and the other side is told.

What happens after you press the button

1. You write to OnlyTons. Not to the other operator — to the portal. The quantity, window and price you set travel as structured fields; anything you type as a message is read by the portal first.
2. OnlyTons decides who should see it. For a request about a specific listing that is the operator who published it. For an open request ("we will need 40 t of processing tomatoes in September") OnlyTons looks at what operators have told it they handle, and forwards to a shortlist.
3. They answer, through the portal. Their reply comes back the same way.
4. If terms are accepted, it becomes a deal. OnlyTons creates the deal, and from there it behaves exactly like any other deal — same pipeline, same deal room, same broker in the middle.

You never learn who is on the other side

Everything on the Operator privacy page applies here, and one thing is specific to requests:

• A counterpart is shown to you as "Seller A", "Seller B" — a handle that means something on this request and nothing anywhere else.
• If your request went to more than one operator, they do not know about each other. Not their names, not their handles, not how many there are.
• And if you are a recipient, you cannot see whether anyone else was asked.

The market summary

On an open request you also get an answer straight away, before anybody replies:

3–9 sellers · September to October · 20–100 t · Southern Italy

Those are ranges on purpose. A single figure would tell you as much about the one producer behind it as their name would. If fewer than three operators match, OnlyTons publishes nothing at all and contacts you directly instead — a range over one or two operators is those operators.

Your message is read before it travels

The note you write goes to the portal, and a person reads it before any of it reaches the other side. Contact details, company names, VAT numbers and links are removed.

This is not a delay to apologise for — it is the thing that lets both sides speak freely without either of them being identified. It also means:

• Put the commercial facts in the fields, not in the note. Quantity, price and dates travel instantly, because they cannot identify anybody.
• Do not ask for a phone number. It will not arrive, and the request to OnlyTons is recorded.

There is one exception, and it goes the other way. Terms are not read before they travel — they are structured fields that cannot carry an identity, which is exactly why they can move instantly. The only term with free text in it is the variety on a crop proposal for land, and because nobody reviews it, it is checked instead: a variety containing an email address, telephone number, web address, VAT number or IBAN is refused outright rather than forwarded. Put it in the message.

Deadlines

Every request carries two clocks:

• The portal's review window — 24 hours for a question, 48 for a proposal. If OnlyTons has not got to a request with no message attached by then, the portal forwards the structured part itself so you are not left waiting. A request with a written note always waits for a person.
• The response window — 14 to 21 days, after which an unanswered request expires and everyone is told.

Where to find them

Requests in the sidebar, with three tabs:

• Sent — everything you have asked about
• Received — everything the portal has forwarded to you
• Awaiting the portal (broker only) — the review queue

Asking for a product that is not in the catalog

The catalog is curated by the broker, so if your crop is missing you ask for it to be added — the same button as before, on the Commodities page and in the signup wizard. That request is now tracked like any other: it has a reference, it appears in the broker's queue, and it gets closed rather than forgotten.

For producers: answering a requirement

If a buyer has published a requirement for something you grow, you will see Ask about this beside it. You pick which of your own listings you are offering — OnlyTons reserves exactly that lot if the request becomes a deal, so choose the one you mean.

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Under the hood. Requests are one table, not three: the kind escalates in place, so the broker sees one card per conversation rather than three rows to stitch together. Everything the portal did automatically is recorded as such, so "was this reviewed by a person?" is always answerable. See Messaging and the relay for how the same mechanism works inside a deal.

When a request is sent one notch softer

If your organization is in the Restricted reliability band, a purchase proposal is sent as an expression of interest instead. The conversation still happens; the commitment does not. The screen tells you it happened and links to your reliability page — it is never a silent downgrade.

Escalating an existing request to a purchase proposal in that band is passed to a person first, rather than refused. Same for accepting terms: the acceptance is recorded, and turning it into a deal waits for a human.