Shipping Feedback

Is there a reason shipping contracts are not automatically provisioned (i.e. upon posting items should disappear from inventory)?

I feel like a typical use for shipping contracts is - I’m about to make some flight, let me check the LM and see if anyone is shipping stuff to my destination. If so, and I have space, they yay! free money! However, in the current implementation, if I accept the contract, I then have to wait for the seller to provision the goods. If I’m on a tight schedule, this forces me to either not accept any shipping contracts, or check that the seller is currently online and can provision immediately.

Also, what happens if I accept a 5 day shipping contract, and the seller provisions after 4d 23h? There’s no way I can make it to the destination in time, but now I’m on the hook for the breach?!

Contract conditions that are dependent on another contract step only have their timer start once that other step is fulfilled. So your 5 day window to pick up the cargo does not start until they provision it.

However, I 100% agree with your main point: being able to provision goods as soon as you’ve posted ANY LM ad in which step 1 is you provisioning would be a great addition.

The goods would not disappear from your inventory, they’d turn into a BLCK item, but allowing your partners to receive the goods immediately would often be helpful… as long as you trust people. :slight_smile:

The main reason why we don’t auto-provision / block commodities on LM ad creation is that the LM ads and the contracts they result in are two very different technical things. We could add a flag to the Ad though that will tell the contract to try to auto-provision if possible and I like the idea very much.

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Signing under pre or auto provisioning in any form.
Also, want payment on delivery option, so I can pay for contract but hauler get his cash automatically but only after delivery.

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I would also like to see these items prioritized on the backlog.

The auto-provision is a great idea, I feel it should work the same way a CX order does, you put it up for sale and it is removed from inventory, this way ships are not tied to the dock waiting.

I also like the auto payment idea, but I also trust that my shipper will pay at some point

McG

Or even a half now half upon arrival situation, he gets some cash up front to help with fuel costs but he is incentivized to finish the shipment sooner so he gets (autopaid) the moment he delivers

Don’t think this would work. Pretty sure there’s at least one person out there willing to tank their rating in return for raking in half of the payments for ALL of the shipping contracts …

I think the goods have to sit in inventory until they are taken. Where else would they be?

The benefit of the CX is there is an entire infrastructure to broker deals and escrow inventory. So auto-provision would just BLCK it up and allow whoever accepts the order to immediately steal load the cargo.

Auto provisioning as an option would be great. Increase the contract fee for the poster if enabled.

Different payment options would be fine as well however I don’t want to end up in a situation of delivering goods and not getting paid, or having to wait x days for payment. Imagine delivering goods and having to wait for payment, or worst case scenario breach the contract at the end without paying. The payment for delivery must be automatic in those cases otherwise the risk is too high for people to essentially scam you.

As a new player shipping contracts are currently my primary source of income. I can’t produce fast enough yet to make anywhere close the same amount of profit that shipping provides.