First-vendor checklist, thirty seconds
The six things to check before ordering from a vendor you have never used.
Before ordering from a vendor you have never used, run this checklist. Takes about thirty seconds.
- Dispute ratio under 5 percent?
- Finalisation ratio over 95 percent?
- Last twenty reviews consistent with older ones?
- PGP key published on the vendor page?
- Average shipping time reasonable for the vendor's stated location?
- No FE-only requirement?
All six yes: proceed with a small first order. Any no: read the recent reviews before deciding.
What the checklist cannot cover
No checklist replaces ordering small. Every item above is a filter that removes obviously bad choices, and the residue is a vendor who looks fine and may still not be. Selective fraud exists precisely because profiles can be made to look correct: small orders honoured, large ones taken. The only defence against it is order size, applied to everybody until your own experience says otherwise rather than until their numbers do.
How long the check should take
About two minutes. Recent feedback with dates, the dispute count against the order count, and whether the listing states what arrives and within what window. Longer than that is usually somebody talking themselves into an order they had already decided against, which is a different problem and not one a checklist solves.
When to skip the vendor entirely
No recent feedback at all, or a long dormant account suddenly listing heavily at attractive prices. Neither is proof of anything, and both are cheap to avoid when alternatives exist. The cost of skipping a vendor who would have been fine is nothing. The cost of the reverse is the order.