Product Verification Addons

Counterfeit hearing aids are sold as the real thing, and the person holding one has no way to find out until it stops working. This gives them one: a page on your own website where a serial number is typed in and answered from your own records.

It answers from what you already keep. The serial numbers you book into stock and the warranty cards you register are the record. Asking a centre to maintain a second list for a verification page means the page and the stock room quietly disagreeing within a month.

Your own rules come first. Old stock that was never booked in, a batch bought before you had a system, a model whose serial numbers all begin the same way: a fixed serial number, a prefix or a keyword that always answers "genuine" covers those without back-dating anything. A rule can also answer the other way, for a number you know is being copied.

It never says more than it should. The answer is the product, the warranty and nothing else — never the customer, never the price, never which dealer has it. The page is open to the whole internet and a serial number is a short string, so it also counts how often one visitor asks.

Every check is logged. The same unknown number asked again and again is a counterfeit in circulation, and that is worth knowing before the customer arrives holding it.