Do not get bamboozled
Paste a shop address. We read its terms, check the owner, the domain and the payment methods, and tell you whether it is safe to buy there.
- shops checked
- lookups in total
- shops that raised flags*
* We call a shop suspicious when it scored under 70 out of 100. Each shop counts once, however many people looked it up.
Recently checked shops
Hardly anyone reads the terms
We do. Those piles of legalese exist to put you off. We wade through them and pick out what actually matters: are you entitled to return within fourteen days? Who is the seller at the end of the line? Where do you get a complaint dealt with quickly? And what if the order never turns up?
Ten habits of a careful shopper
We check things you would not think to look for
A family firm with twenty years of tradition, on a domain registered last month? Something may not add up. A shop that takes nothing but a bank transfer up front? That is you giving up every protection a buyer has. A seller boasting of a trade association membership you cannot find in the official list? That may be borrowed credibility. We watch all of it for you.
Ten habits of a careful shopper
We give the shop a score
If there is nothing to worry about, we tell you so. A company that checks out in the register, a domain that has been running for years, terms written down plainly, ordinary card payments. Most shops work exactly like that and come through our check without a single reservation. Keep one thing in mind though: our green does not mean buy here. It says only that we ran into no warning signs.
Ten habits of a careful shopper
The last word is yours
We are not here to decide for you. When we run into a shop we are unsure about, we admit plainly that we would not buy there ourselves, even though it is not outright fraud. What you do next is entirely up to you. And you can be certain that no trader buys a better rating from us. We will always be on your side.
Ten habits of a careful shopperWhat ShopDetektiv checks
- 1
Terms and conditions
The 14-day right to withdraw, complaints handling, out-of-court dispute resolution, who the seller is and where returns go. We look for the documents in the sitemap too, and read them out of PDFs.
- 2
Unfair terms
The model reads the whole text looking for clauses that strip your rights: a shortened return window, or fees buried in paragraph twenty. Every finding is backed by a quotation.
- 3
The company in the register
Does the company running the site exist? Since when? Is it in liquidation or insolvency? And who is allowed to act for it — the gap between a company existing and there being someone to hold to the contract only shows up when you need a refund.
- 4
EU VAT and national registers
Any EU VAT number is validated against VIES, Czech traders against ARES and Slovak ones against RPO. Company registers reach only as far as their own border; VIES works across the whole Union and is often the one independent confirmation that a seller exists at all.
- 5
Tax standing and declared accounts
For Czech traders the tax administration says whether they are flagged as an unreliable VAT payer, and which bank accounts they have officially declared. Money sent anywhere else is money sent outside the record.
- 6
Domain: age and name
A domain registered two months ago behind a shop with thousands of products is a warning sign. We also watch for names built to resemble a known brand, and for a gap between the history a site claims and the date it was actually registered.
- 7
Regulator blocklists
The lists the Czech and Slovak consumer authorities have already publicly warned about. It is the strongest single signal we have. Most other countries publish no equivalent.
- 8
Contacts, and whether mail arrives
Is there a phone number, an email and a real address — or only a form? And does anything actually reach that address, or is the legally required contact met on paper only?
- 9
Ways to pay
We read what the shop promises about payment itself – in the footer, in the terms and on its delivery and payment page. A shop that wants an up-front transfer, or crypto, and nothing else is taking away your way of getting the money back, and we say so. We also try putting something in the basket; where the payment choice appears before a personal-data form, we compare it with what the site promised.
- 10
Stars and badges against their source
A rating is compared with the profile the shop itself links to. A membership badge is compared with the member list the association publishes.
- 11
What changed since last time
We keep a fingerprint of every legal document, so the next check can tell that a shop has quietly shortened its return window or rewritten who the seller is.
- 12
Security and pressure
HTTPS, links to review platforms, pre-ticked consents, countdowns and discounts that do not add up.
Why trust this
- 1
What's on the record beats what's on the page
What a shop says about itself is not evidence. We take the facts from places the seller cannot touch: company numbers from the Czech ARES and Slovak RPO registers, VAT numbers through the EU-wide VIES system, the exact age of the domain from RDAP. For Czech traders the tax administration also tells us whether they are flagged as unreliable and which bank accounts they have declared. Company registers reach only as far as their own country; VIES and RDAP work across the whole EU.
- 2
A better score is not for sale
There is no fee for a nicer score, a better position or the removal of a finding. A seller can improve the result in exactly one way: by fixing what is actually wrong on their site. And if we got it wrong, we put it right — the model is still learning.
- 3
Green is not a recommendation
A hundred points means only that we found no warning signs. Do not read it as an instruction to buy. We are not a guarantee of safety, so we say where our limits are. When a shop sits in the grey zone we tell you plainly that we would not buy there ourselves, even though it does not look like a scam.
- 4
Free, no account, and the shop is never told
Checking a shop costs nothing and we ask for no account and no email address. The shop never learns that you asked, so it cannot dress its site up for the occasion. You have the result within a minute and it is identical for everyone. The only paid thing is the PDF report, and it holds exactly the same data you can read free on screen.
Frequently asked
- Does a green score mean it's safe to buy there?
- It means we found none of the warning signs we know how to spot. It is not a guarantee. A good score won't update itself the day a shop stops shipping.
- Why did a well-known shop score lower than I expected?
- The score reflects what is findable on the site, and size adds nothing to it. We look for the documents beyond the footer link as well: in the sitemap, under dozens of different names, in PDFs meant for downloading, and we have the page rendered by a browser when there is little text or the footer carries no links. When a detail really is missing, or the documents contradict each other, a big name loses points too. The breakdown shows where and why for every finding.
- What does it mean when you cannot assess a shop?
- Some shops will not let us in. They defend themselves against bots, and because we ask from a data centre we fall into the same bucket. In that case we do not say something is missing, because we do not know — we say we could not read it. If we read the shop earlier, we show the last result we got, with its date.
- Does this work for shops outside Europe?
- Partly, and it is worth knowing where the line is. Reading the terms, domain age, payment methods, contact details and the content checks work for a shop anywhere. EU VAT validation covers the European Union. Company registers and regulator blocklists are national — we query the Czech and Slovak ones — so for a shop in the US or Asia those two signals are simply absent and the score rests on the rest.
- Do you store what I searched for?
- We keep a scan result for 30 days, keyed by the shop's domain. A shop's terms and its company record do not change from one day to the next, so a stored answer still holds and it comes back instantly. We don't store who asked. When we fix one of the rules in the meantime, the stored result is thrown away and the shop is recalculated from scratch — which is why a score sometimes changes without the shop having done anything.
- What if a shop is fine and scored badly?
- The scanner is still learning and it can get a shop wrong. Tell us what it missed. A finding that does not hold up gets corrected and the shop is checked again. Tell us
Tips and news on shopping safely
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