Trust · how we work
How We Review Vendors
THCA Verdict exists to answer the question this market is built to dodge: does the paperwork behind this product actually check out? Vendor sites answer with photography. We answer with the documents.
We are a desk-verification operation, and we say so plainly. Our reviews are built from published sources: the vendor's COA portal, their live menus and prices, their shipping and refund policies, state statutes, and the accumulated consensus of people who have ordered from them. We verify lab accreditation in the accreditor's public directory, match batch numbers between reports and listings, and recompute every potency claim with the total-THC formula. We do not claim physical product testing — no fabricated smoke tests, no pretend lab of our own — and when a question can only be settled by testing we have not done, the review says exactly that.
Two standing rules sit over every page. First: this site is for adults 21 and over, and nothing on it is medical advice — no dosing protocols, no condition claims, no promises about how anything will make you feel. Second: the required honesty gets said wherever it is relevant — THCA converts to THC when heated and is intoxicating, it will show on a drug test, and the federal ban arrives November 12, 2026.
The review rubric
Every vendor runs the same five-axis rubric, so a budget smalls program and a boutique indoor drop are judged on one ledger.
- COA integrity
- The gate everything else waits behind: batch-matched certificates of analysis from a genuinely accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) third-party lab, current within twelve months. No batch-matched COAs, no recommendation — regardless of commission.
- The math holds
- Total THC recomputed from the raw lines: THCA × 0.877 + Δ9, checked against the advertised number. Where marketing and lab report disagree, the review quotes both and grades the gap.
- Price per gram
- Every listed price divided by its grams and compared within tier — indoor against indoor, smalls against smalls. Menu theater (bundles, tier names, sale banners) does not survive division.
- Shipping & legality clarity
- Does the vendor maintain an honest no-ship list that tracks state law, say so before checkout, and publish the policy plainly? A vendor willing to ship anywhere is a red flag, not a convenience.
- Terms & track record
- Return and refund terms as written, COA portal quality, freshness of drops, and owner consensus on what actually arrives — weighed as reported experience, clearly labeled as such.
Where our numbers come from
Cannabinoid figures come from the vendor's published COAs, read against the issuing lab's own records where available. Prices are pulled from live menus at write time and normalized to dollars per gram; because menus move, reviews carry representative prices with a checked date rather than false precision, and affiliate links land on the live listing where the current number governs. Legality statements cite the statute — and carry a last-checked date — on the state pages they link to.
Facts about a vendor are verified against the vendor's own live site at the time of writing. Anything we could not verify is written as "not published" — an answer we consider more useful than a guess, and one we wish more of this market gave.
On verdicts and paperwork
A recommendation here means one thing: the vendor's published evidence held up under the rubric at the date on the page. It never means a product is legal in your state (check the legality pages), never means it suits any medical purpose, and never means the next batch inherits the last batch's grades — which is why batch-matching is the first check and the one we repeat.
Independence and disclosure are covered separately on our editorial standards page. Questions about a verdict? Reach the desk.