I was scared to order from overseas but these vendors are legit — looking for input

Dr.NateNeph said:

Prices dramatically below market are the strongest single signal, and the reason is arithmetic rather than suspicion.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. Import rules are jurisdiction-specific and this board keeps giving US-shaped answers to non-US questions. What is a personal-import allowance in one country is a controlled-import offence in another.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. 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.

InsuranceTom said:

Import rules are jurisdiction-specific and this board keeps giving US-shaped answers to non-US questions.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. 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.

One thing that is still open after RegAffairsDC’s answer:

What a vetting checklist should actually contain, as opposed to a list of things that are easy to fake?

Reporting back.

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.