TL;DR. A supplier passing ten or more of those is overwhelmingly likely to be legitimate. A supplier passing fewer than six is overwhelmingly likely to be a flip-and-burn operation. We score ourselves at the bottom of the article.

Why this article exists

The result, predictably, is a market with two categories of supplier: a relatively small number of legitimate UK operations, and a much larger churn of short-lived "flip and burn" sites that take payment, ship low-quality or wrong-compound product (or nothing at all), and disappear before the bad reviews catch up with them.

This is bad for buyers, and it is bad for legitimate suppliers - we lose new customers who try a fake site first, get burned, and conclude the whole category is untrustworthy. So this article is in our self-interest as well as yours: more buyers learning to vet suppliers means a less hospitable environment for the bad ones.company-information.service.gov.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. A real UK supplier will have a verifiable company number, named directors, an active confirmation statement filed within the last 14 months, and (after their first year) annual accounts on file.

Green flag Active company, named directors, recent confirmation statement.
Red flag No company number on site, dissolved/struck-off status, or 8-digit number that doesn't resolve.