One concrete data point for the thread. 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.
One thing that is still open after DebRD_ATL’s answer:
How people are distinguishing a supplier having a bad batch from a supplier on the way out?
PharmacoVig_BOS said:Red flags, in rough order of how much they should worry you: no verifiable address, no batch numbers, prices far under market, vendor-commissioned…
Coming at PharmacoVig_BOS’s question from a different direction. 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.
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Shop Reference StandardsOP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.
Went back through my own correspondence with an earlier supplier and the warning signs were all there in the replies, weeks before the quality changed. I was reading the product and not the behaviour.
Dr.PeteFamMed said:The pattern that distinguishes a bad batch from an exit is behaviour rather than product.
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.