The questions that decide it.

A person physically standing at your supplier’s address, recording what is there, and writing down what it means. You are not buying a database lookup or an automated score. You are buying presence — the one thing that cannot be faked from a desk.

Because a video tour can be filmed in someone else’s factory. This is the single most common failure we see: buyers get a polished walkthrough, the supplier subcontracts the run to another facility, and the buyer only finds out after the goods arrive. Unedited footage filmed by someone who is physically present, at the address you were given, is a different category of evidence.

By default, no. We arrive at the address and then call the contact. This preserves the chance of catching the everyday reality rather than a staged one. If you prefer an announced visit, tell us in your brief — some suppliers react better to it.

That is a result, not a failure. We still deliver the footage from the street, the sign on the building, the address, and their exact response. We do not refund for refusal — the information you get is often the most useful part. We refund only if we cannot locate the address or the visit does not happen at all.

No. Not a commission, not a rebate, not a gift, not hospitality. We are paid by buyers only. We hand every factory we visit a written no-commission notice, and every report has a signed interests declaration. This is the whole point of our position — see Our position.

No, and neither will the expensive one. We report observations, not verdicts. We tell you whether the company exists at that address, whether the sign matches the business licence, whether production is actually running, and what we could not confirm. Judging whether they are the right supplier for you is your call, and we deliberately do not take that decision away from you.

No. We will tell you what we saw, what did not add up, and what the visit could not confirm — and we will be blunt about the parts that look wrong. But we will not make the call, because a call needs your margin, your customer and your appetite for risk, and none of those are visible from a factory gate. Any service that hands you a verdict after a two-hour visit is guessing at your business and dressing it up as certainty.

A quiet day is not evidence of fraud. Factories have slow weeks, holidays, and product changeovers. Our reports state this explicitly: “no dispatch observed today” is recorded as an observation, not as a red flag. Anyone who tells you a single quiet day proves a factory is fake is selling you certainty they do not have.

Because it is what everyone in China actually uses, including the factories we visit, and it carries text, voice notes, video and live video calls in one app. The call from the factory floor arrives on the same thread we have been talking on, which is worth a lot when the person holding the camera is standing next to a machine. If you cannot use WeChat, the request form will generate a brief you can email instead.

Tell us in public, with the report attached. The eight commitments are listed on one page precisely so that breaking one is checkable rather than arguable. The founder name and face are on this business, and the audience that would see a complaint is the same audience we depend on for work.

WeChat Pay or Alipay, arranged directly with us after your brief is confirmed. We do not take card payments through this website, and we do not use escrow platforms.

Site Verification is typically scheduled within 3–5 working days of payment and reported within 72 hours of the visit. Full-Day Observation depends on the production calendar — we need a day when the line is actually running.

Usually yes. Cities inside our four main belts are included in the price. Outside those belts we quote travel separately, and we will tell you honestly if the trip makes the job uneconomic for you.

No. Quality inspection is a different discipline with different standards (AQL sampling, defect classification) and different liability. We deliberately do not do it. If you need it, we will tell you who to talk to — and we take no referral fee from them either.

A named member of our team who lives in that industrial belt. Their name is on the report. We do not subcontract to anonymous couriers, and we do not send someone who has never walked a production floor.