Eight months with one supplier, then a change in how they communicate that I noticed before I noticed anything about the product.
Red flags, in rough order of how much they should worry you: no verifiable address, no batch numbers, prices far under market, vendor-commissioned tests only, pressure toward irreversible payment, and shipping with no temperature control.
The question I want answered is what a vetting checklist should actually contain, as opposed to a list of things that are easy to fake.
If the honest answer is that nobody knows, that is a useful answer and I would rather have it.
This one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. Prices dramatically below market are the strongest single signal, and the reason is arithmetic rather than suspicion. Synthesis, testing, and cold-chain shipping have floors. A price well under the floor means something was skipped, and the two things that get skipped are testing and content.
FDA_TrackerJim said:Prices dramatically below market are the strongest single signal, and the reason is arithmetic rather than suspicion.
Agreed, with a caveat about community reputation: it is a lagging indicator. Reports arrive weeks after orders, so a supplier can look excellent for a month after quality has already changed.
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View Resultsben_calgary said:Eight months with one supplier, then a change in how they communicate that I noticed before I noticed anything about the product.
Same position here, arrived at the long way round. The pattern that distinguishes a bad batch from an exit is behaviour rather than product. A bad batch comes with communication, a reshipment offer and a batch number. An exit comes with slower replies, pressure toward less reversible payment methods, sudden discounting, and the same reassurance repeated without any new information. The product tells you less than the correspondence does.
From the other side of the consultation, briefly.
Vendor reputation tracking for vendor vetting: I maintain a personal spreadsheet with every order I've placed — date, vendor, batch number, Janoshik result, personal efficacy assessment (1-5 scale), and any issues.
After 15 orders across 3 vendors: average purity 98.7%, zero sterility concerns, 1 shipping issues (all resolved). This data gives me confidence in my current source and documentation if issues arise.
I encourage everyone to track their orders systematically. Community data aggregation makes us all safer.