An unfamiliar online shop with prices well below the market, a tradesman from a classifieds ad, a travel agency out of social media — they all ask for prepayment, and prepayment is where money is lost most often. You can vet a seller by hand: search for reviews, dig for complaints, check whether the site lists company details — but that's a dozen queries and tabs, and the crucial part is easy to miss: glowing reviews surface at once, while complaints hide on page three of the results.
The "Seller check before you pay" skill runs that check for you: it searches reviews and complaints from several angles, reads them in full, opens the seller's site to inspect the company details, and if a legal entity turns up, checks that too. The result is a one-line verdict with the findings listed and linked, so you can verify each one yourself.
What it does
From a name, a site or a link to a listing, the skill assembles a picture of the seller: what buyers write, whether there are traces of fraud, whether a legal entity is registered and whether the site lists company details and real contacts. If you name the amount and what you're buying, the strictness adjusts: the bigger the prepayment, the less the skill is willing to write off as coincidence.
How it works
- The skill runs several searches from different angles: "X reviews", "X scam", "X order never arrived", "X fraud". One phrasing finds one side of the picture — flattering or damning — so there are always several queries.
- It then opens the seller's site and looks for the signs of a real business: company details (tax and registration numbers, the legal entity), real contacts and an address, a contract or terms of service. A "shop" with no company details is a warning sign in itself.
- Next it reads two or three review or complaint pages in full, not by snippets: "slow delivery" and "took the money and vanished" are different things. Fresh complaints weigh more than old praise, so it looks at the dates separately.
- If a tax number or a legal entity's name turns up, the skill searches those too: courts, bankruptcy, mass complaints about the same outfit under a different name.
What you get
The chat returns a one-line verdict: red flags — don't pay up front; no serious signals found; or too little data to judge. Below it, the findings are listed with links — what raised concern and what looks normal — so the conclusions can be checked independently. The skill is also honest about the limits of the check: an absence of complaints is no guarantee of honesty, especially with new sellers, and for a large prepayment, payment on delivery or a safe-deal escrow is the wiser route.
When to use it
Before prepaying any unfamiliar seller: an online shop you've never seen before, a tradesman or crew from a classifieds ad, a tour operator from a social media ad. It's especially useful when the price is suspiciously good and someone is rushing your decision — the classic scammer combination. And simply as a habit for large amounts: five minutes of checking is cheaper than months of chargebacks and police reports.