Your first order with any vendor on WeTheNorth is calibration, not commerce. You are buying information about the vendor, and the product is a happy side effect.
The protocol
- Small quantity. Minimum size the vendor offers.
- Cheap product. Not the most expensive thing in their catalogue.
- Standard shipping. Not express, unless you specifically need speed.
- Standard escrow. Never finalise early on a first order.
- Polite factual messages only.
- Address encrypted to the vendor PGP key.
Wait for the order to arrive cleanly
Check the item against the listing. If everything matches, that vendor gets a second order from you, larger. If anything is off, open a dispute early with clear evidence and move on.
Why calibrate
Because vendor pages describe what vendors want you to see, and reality often deviates in small ways from that description. A first small order tells you whether the vendor's advertised stealth actually works, whether their advertised shipping time actually holds, whether their advertised weights match reality. All of these are worth knowing before you place a bigger order.
Vendors who fail calibration
Are the same vendors who write to the Bureau most often after buyers open disputes. If your first small order goes wrong, the second larger order would have gone much more wrong. Calibration is cheap insurance.