A polished page is not evidence by itself. Our process starts with the specific claim a buyer needs to verify, then records the strongest available source, its limits and the date checked.
Source hierarchy
For platform procedures, fees and time windows, we begin with current public notices, help pages, official app listings and checkout or warehouse documentation. Those sources establish what a company publishes; they do not independently prove the outcome of every order.
For customer-experience articles, we examine multiple public reports and the review platform’s own notices. We label customer statements as reports or claims and do not convert a few anecdotes into a universal conclusion.
Publication workflow
- Define the buyer question and the claim that needs evidence.
- Record the source title, relevant rule, date checked and important exclusions.
- Separate documented policy, editorial inference and customer report.
- Check quantities, currencies, time windows and units twice.
- Add practical limits: what a QC image cannot prove, why an estimate can change and when a seller rule controls the result.
- Review the final page for unsupported certainty, duplicated advice and misleading calls to action.
Research records and outbound links
Long-form guides identify the source titles and research date in a visible record. Platform sources may be listed without an outbound link so the site can document the basis of a claim without turning the article into promotion for the subject being reviewed. Readers can search the exact source title independently.
Catalog monitoring, prices and exchange-rate evidence
The catalog monitor uses full GET requests because some valid catalog pages reject or mishandle HEAD requests. A product counts as active only when the response succeeds and the matching page still contains both a product title and its source-price block. Category and search routes must return a successful, non-empty page rather than a soft 404.
The public status record is refreshed daily. A first failed product check moves that card behind healthy listings. Two consecutive failed daily checks hide it from the rendered catalog; a later successful check restores it automatically. This delay avoids removing a valid listing because of one temporary network or origin error.
USD amounts are estimates derived from the source listing amount. The monitor reads the European Central Bank’s working-day EUR/USD and EUR/CNY reference rates, then calculates CNY per USD as CNY per EUR divided by USD per EUR. The displayed source date and check time are part of the public record. The reference rate is informational and is not a promise of a checkout, card or agent transaction rate.
The current machine-readable record is available at catalog-health.json. It contains the check time, response state, source amount, estimate rate, consecutive-failure count and stale-listing decision for every monitored product.
Reviews, comparisons and first-hand experience
We do not fabricate orders, parcels, conversations, screenshots or personal experience. When an article analyzes customer feedback, it explains that the reports cannot be independently audited from review text alone. Positive and negative themes are both considered, and known review-platform warnings are not hidden.
Corrections and updates
A material factual error is corrected when reliable evidence supports the change. A policy that changed after publication is updated and dated rather than described as if the earlier research never occurred. Broken product links may be removed or redirected to the closest relevant catalog section.
Send a correction with the page URL and evidence through the contact page. The author team and its limits are described on the Editorial Research Desk profile.