Ya'll.....here's my deal........as the father of a super-high-IQ-and super-bored-and super-aggressive and very much NOT-chinese son who was 14 years old when COVID started and living in Pennsylvania and my son deduced how to make nearly as much as his father does (which is pretty decent I don't mind saying) via drop-shipping and selling junk goods from China, I have learned and have to laugh at our collective delusion that many of these "vendors" are anything near deserving of the title or expectation other than it is a full blown miracle that we receive anything at all.
I am certain that my son (now 19 and still in PA) could very readily setup a relationship with another teenager in China or elsewhere and present a "vendor face" to score a few successful shipments, take a ton of crypto and paypal, and disappear overnight. Let me be clear - he is NOT doing this and has a reputable position and is not dabbling in China anymore - - -- but he absolutely could. And he's only one of millions.
Like I said - I don't get the draw of the completely unproven vendors.
Your son’s story kind of proves the point that anyone can put on a vendor face these days. That risk never really goes away, no matter how long someone’s been around.
But that’s where I struggle with the word unproven.
Unproven where?
Is “proven” = a Telegram channel?
A Discord?
Pep-Chat?
GLP-1 boards?
Length of time in business?
Or just that enough people haven’t complained yet?
Because by that definition, every single vendor was “unproven” at some point… and realistically, every vendor is still one bad day away from disappearing tomorrow.
I’m not advocating throwing money at random pop-up sellers. I’m talking about trying new vendors in small, low-risk ways, watching community feedback, and building redundancy. If you only ever rely on one source, you’re actually more vulnerable when (not if) something changes with them.
The community figuring out who’s legit doesn’t happen without some people cautiously testing the waters. That’s how reputations are built in the first place.
So I don’t think it’s thrill-seeking or FOMO as much as it is:
risk management,
diversificationy,
and not putting all your eggs in one vendor basket
In a space where literally any vendor could vanish overnight, “proven” is always temporary.
Curious what your definition of unproven really is...... platform, time, volume of reviews, or something else?