At a prior employer usually a team lead (without purchasing authority) would be told to go get a quote, go through all the BS, and only then hand over to “the higher authority” who can actually make the decision.

Which predictably often lead to vendors losing out because their sales people ghosted team leads.

If I’m tasked with finding a price, the VP or whoever I report to will only find out about the services that have meaningful replies. And if a reply ever insinuated I was too low level to communicate with, that’s the last they’d hear from where I work.

At every company I've seen the executive asks a manager to develop a report comparing a up to a dozen options. Then the manager delegates to a few of their directs to actually slog through all the sales discussions and compile the analysis.

The only possible way I can imagine someone with the title "VP" going to a vendor's website and clicking a "get quote" button to get a sales call at a random time from some junior salesperson is if we're talking about one of those companies where they give inflated titles and anyone who isn't an intern is a VP-of-something-or-other.

Yeah, VP clicking that button is <10 people company that has 5 C-Level titles, a few VPs and a few SWEs that do the without fancy titles.