Should you buy pre encoded tags?

Two different things

Encoding you ordered is a service: you supply the content, the supplier writes it, and the tags arrive ready. That is a legitimate option with real trade offs.

Encoding you did not order is a nuisance: tags arriving with a demonstration address, a supplier's own page, or leftover content from a previous job.

The second is common on cheap tags and marketplaces. It is usually harmless, since the tags are unlocked and you overwrite them, and it costs a step you did not plan for.

The one that cannot be undone

Tags arriving locked with content you did not choose are not a nuisance, they are a write off.

Locking is permanent. A locked tag cannot be rewritten, cannot be erased, and cannot be returned to a blank state by any tool or by the manufacturer. The tags are only good for whatever they already say.

This happens through carelessness rather than malice, and the cause does not change the outcome. It is the single most expensive thing that can arrive in a box of tags.

Which is why "supplied blank and unlocked" belongs on the purchase order in those words. It costs nothing to specify and it is unrecoverable to omit.

When you did order the encoding

It saves the writing step, which is real work at volume, and it is the right answer for large runs of identical or systematically varying content.

What you give up is flexibility. The content is fixed at manufacture, so a late change means new tags rather than a rewrite.

You also give up your own verification unless you insist on it. Ask whether every tag is read back after writing, and ask for the failure rate on that step.

And decide the locking question deliberately. Factory locking suits content that will genuinely never change, and it removes your ability to correct a mistake that reaches you already frozen.

Where the content is a redirect address you control, factory encoding is at its most attractive, because the tag content is stable by design and everything changeable lives on your server.

What to put on the order

Blank and unlocked, unless you ordered otherwise. In writing, on the order.

If encoding is ordered, the exact content, who supplies it, and whether tags are verified after writing.

Whether tags are to be locked, stated explicitly either way rather than left to the supplier's habit.

And read a sample on arrival before writing anything. A locked delivery discovered at sample stage is a conversation, and one discovered halfway through a production run is a loss.