Email and phone confirmation

Individual sellers earn the contact-confirmed badge after confirming their email address and phone number. That confirms we can reach them — it is not government ID verification and does not prove who they are. Shelters and rescue organizations go through a separate nonprofit review at the organization level. We still recommend the practices in our buyer safety guide for every purchase.

Documentation on file

Sellers can attach documents to a listing — veterinary health certificates, breed registrations, pedigrees, and lab results. Listings and market pages show which document types are on file and how many listings carry them; the documents themselves are shared with buyers in the course of a purchase rather than published publicly.

Health certification labels

Certification labels shown on listings come from a controlled, species-specific vocabulary (for example, NPIP status for poultry or disease-testing statuses for cattle). Sellers can propose additions, but new labels only appear after review — which keeps the certification counts on our market pages meaningful.

A certification label is a seller declaration; a document on file is evidence. When a certification matters to your purchase, ask to see the document behind it.

Reputation over time

Completed transactions and buyer feedback build a seller's standing on the platform, and problems reported by buyers are reviewed by our team. Contact confirmation, documentation, and track record together give you a fuller picture than any single badge.