“Does it exist?” is not “Do I own it?”
— 72 buy links to someone else’s shop
Our buy buttons pointed at a shop that had been deleted. We asked an assistant to find a shop that exists and repoint them. It did. We shipped it.
The shop was not ours. Five sites, 72 buy links, sending our readers to a stranger. A sale there earns us nothing.
Why nothing caught it
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| HTTP status | 200 — the shop page loads |
| Broken-link scan | green — the link is valid |
| Complaints | none — we had 5 readers that week |
Every automated check passed. The only thing that failed was the question we asked.
An assistant answers the question you asked. Anything you did not ask, it fills in for you.
