Certificates fail in three ways. Forged, expired, and — much the commonest — genuine but issued for a different model, variant or factory than the one you are buying.
The three failure modes
It does not exist
The number returns nothing in the issuing body’s register, or returns a different holder entirely. The least common and the easiest to detect — if anybody looks.
It has expired or been withdrawn
Real once, not current now. Certificates lapse, are suspended, and are withdrawn when a factory audit fails. The PDF in your inbox never updates.
The scope does not cover you
Genuine, current, and for a different model, a different rating, or a different production site. Nothing is faked. It simply is not evidence about your order.
It belongs to somebody else
Issued to a sister company, a former trading partner, or the trader’s own supplier — and forwarded to you as though it were theirs.
What we can check
| Document type | Verified against |
|---|---|
| CE declarations and notified-body certificates | The named notified body’s public register |
| Management-system certificates (ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 and similar) | The certification body’s directory and, where applicable, the accreditation body’s register |
| Product safety and EMC test reports | The issuing laboratory’s report-verification service |
| Chinese national certification (CCC) | The national certification authority’s public query system |
| Factory and social-compliance audit reports | The scheme owner’s member or facility directory, where one is published |
| The certificate holder itself | China’s national company registry — is the holder the entity you are contracting with |
Where a scheme publishes no verification route, we say so plainly rather than dressing an absence up as a finding. An honest “this scheme cannot be verified from outside, and here is what that means for how much weight it carries” is worth more than a confident tick.
Where this sits
This is the cheapest and fastest engagement we offer, and it is deliberately narrow: it is a document check, not an assessment of your supplier or your product. If the question is who is this company, start with the Supplier Registry Check. If a customer or regulator is asking you to evidence your supply chain, the Compliance-Grade Supplier File is the document you actually need. If you need to know which documents you should be asking for in the first place, that is the Documentation Readiness Check.