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Placing orders

Yoon: Yes, please. Go ahead, Mr. Peters.
Peters: To be honest, we may not be able to order more than 10,000 units regardless of the quality.
We have adequate supplies in our warehouses and adding units beyond 10,000 may make a big
dent in our profits, and we can’t let that happen, Mr. Yoon. We can only order 10,000 units, at
least for the initial stage of the deal.
Yoon: Let me get this straight, you mean you can’t order more than 10,000 units? Are you sure
about that? Have you checked with your finance team? I thought you’d be getting a rather big
order.
Peters: This figure has been approved by the finance team. In fact, the suggestion even came from
them. The truth is, we’d like to place an order for about 5,000 units to start with: as a sort of
preliminary stage just to get this negotiation rolling. And if the demand is strong, we would like
to gradually increase our order according to the current market situation. The placement of
5,000 units will come at a later date. This will depend too on the reception that we will have in
the market.
Yoon: We know what you mean, and we understand. My company would greatly appreciate your
rather large order, but your first placement is still good. We trust that there will be a follow up
bigger order since our products are leading in terms of quality. We’re sure that more place-
ments will follow.

1. What is the most convenient way of placing orders?

Sample answer:
I usually place orders by logging on to the website of our supplier. Then, I follow up on this by
calling the main office. The secretary checks on my online order and confirms it.

2. Have you ever encountered a problem in placing an order? If yes, how did
you deal with it?

Sample answer:
Yes, I had. Since I usually log on to place my order, I inevitably get affected by technical prob-
lems once in a while. There was one time I thought I had placed my order, but in reality it was
not. I kept on waiting and waiting for the supply to arrive, but it did not. It was a good thing
that there was no urgent demand for the supplies. They were just used to replenish our stocks,
so I simply placed another order and checked what went wrong. After I got into a mess because

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