How we review

The method we actually use

A merchant page starts with the merchant’s own published pages: shipping, returns and refunds, warranty, payment, support. We read them, quote the terms that matter (windows, fees, who pays return postage, what cannot be returned) and record the date. Then we read the public record — regulator decisions, recalls, news coverage, complaint data from bodies such as the Better Business Bureau and review sites such as Trustpilot — and say what it shows and what it cannot show.

From that we write a verdict with conditions: who a merchant suits, who should buy elsewhere, and for each category what to check on the listing before you order. The guidance is about risk, fit and the rules that protect you. It is not a judgement of product quality, because we have not tested the products.

What the status labels mean

Verified: we read the fact on the merchant’s own policy page on the date shown. Not independently verified: the fact comes from a third party (news, a guide, a review site) or from the merchant’s marketing rather than its policy, and we have not confirmed it ourselves. Not verified: we looked and could not find it, and the line says what we looked for. Policies change; when the merchant’s page and ours disagree, the merchant’s page wins.

How the picks are chosen

Where a merchant publishes a product feed through its affiliate network, a script reads it every night and selects items for each category section by rules: in stock, priced inside the range the page states, discounts within a plausible band, sold as a single clear product, no children’s, safety-critical or trademark-heavy items on marketplace pages. It spreads picks across price levels so a section is not ten of the cheapest items, records the price it saw, and retires anything the feed drops or flags out of stock. Editors can pin, annotate or hide a pick; they cannot add one the feed does not contain, and nothing is selected because it pays more.

The price on a pick is what the feed reported at the time shown with it, in the merchant’s currency. Availability is not verified by us; the merchant’s page is the source of truth.

Research versus testing

A claim is labelled hands-on tested only when a test record exists with the tester, the method, the date and the conditions. No such record exists on the site today, and no page implies one. Supplier photographs are never presented as test photographs.

Samples and limits

Complaint sites and review platforms are self-selected samples: they show what goes wrong, not how often. Where we quote them we give the score, the count and the date. Where a conclusion rests on one policy page or one news report, we say so rather than round it up.