How we check facts

Sources first

• We start from official and primary sources: laws and regulations, government guidance, official registers and databases, and the published rules of accreditation and standards bodies.
• When a guide relies on what an organisation says about itself — for example, a laboratory explaining how to check its reports — or on industry guidance or a law firm's commentary, the guide says who said it.
• Each guide lists its sources with links and the date we checked them. Every link is labelled with the kind of organisation behind it, such as "Official source", "Accreditation body" or "Company's own statement".

Every fact is traced

• Behind each guide is an internal claim register. Every factual sentence is linked to a registered claim that records the exact quotation, where it appears in the source, and the date it was checked.
• The numbers after a sentence, such as [1], point to the source list at the end of the guide.
• Where a guide gives Shop8's own analysis or advice, it is based on registered facts and worded as advice — "consider", "ask", "pause" — rather than as a rule.

What a check can and cannot prove

Every guide has a section on what each check, document or result can show, and what it cannot. A genuine certificate, a registered company or a confirmed report is not a guarantee about the goods you will receive or about any transaction.

Where a guide applies

Every guide is labelled with where it applies:

• Applies in any country — methods that work wherever the supplier and the buyer are.
• Your market — the rules of the market where the goods will be sold, for example the EU or the UK.
• Supplier's country — a country's own registers and rules.
• Country pair — facts that apply only to one buyer country and one supplier country.
• Country notes — notes inside a guide that apply only in one country. Each note starts by saying when it applies.

Our guides are written in English for business buyers worldwide, not only for buyers in the UK or the US. We add a guide or a note about a country only after checking that country's own official sources, and we do not copy one country's rules to another.

Testing official tools

• Many checks depend on official online tools, such as a company register or a database of approved bodies. Where we can, we test these tools ourselves and say how and when.
• "Shop8 access tests" are automated requests to official tools, made on a stated date from a stated network. They show what happened to those requests on that day.
• An automated request that fails does not show that a person using an ordinary browser cannot use the tool.
• If a person has not yet tested a tool with an ordinary browser, the guide says so. A core step of a guide does not depend on a tool that nobody has tested.
• We do not say that a record "can be found" in a tool until a person has tested it.
• We do not create accounts in anyone else's name, bypass bot checks, or use other ways around access controls.

How guides are reviewed

Keeping guides up to date

• Facts last checked is the date all facts in a guide were last checked against their sources.
• Next review is when we plan to check them again: every three months for guides that rely on official tools or on rules that change often, and at least once a year for others.
• Each guide lists events that would make us review it sooner, such as a change in the law or in an official database.
• When a guide changes in substance, we record the change in its update history.

Independence

• Shop8 does not recommend, rate, rank or verify suppliers, and does not issue "verified" badges.
• This site carries no advertising, sponsored content or affiliate links. We do not accept payment to add, change or remove anything in our guides.
• Mentioning an organisation or linking to its website is not an endorsement. The organisations we cite do not endorse Shop8.

Use of AI

• Shop8 uses AI tools to help research, draft and edit guides. Facts come only from sources recorded in our claim register; AI tools are not used as a source of facts.
• The pages people read are the same pages that search engines and AI assistants read. We do not publish separate versions or hidden text for machines.

Corrections

• If you think a guide is wrong or out of date, tell us what is wrong and send your evidence, such as a link to an official page.
• Anyone can send a correction, including a company that a guide mentions. We check every correction against the evidence and decide independently. No one can pay to change a guide.
• When we correct a fact, we update the guide and record the change in its update history.