Reputation scores cannot see a service that simply does not deliver

Six trust services were asked about a counterparty proven to charge twice and return nothing. An OFAC screen said PASS 100. A domain scorer said 50 of 100. A reliability check measured 100% reachable and 100% valid 402s, all true. A trust index called it live and operating. Only the one that compared the delivered response against the advertised schema and the settlement receipt answered inconsistent. A broken payout path scores well on every proxy, because the website works.

What to do: Use reputation for what it measures: sanctions, domain age, uptime, whether an address is KYC-linked. For whether you got what you paid for, check the goods against the promise. Keep the response, the settlement receipt and the advertised schema together, and compare them, either yourself or with a delivery attester.

Measured 2026-08-11 across lionx402, api.trustsource.cc, orcpin.dev, aeml-x402, 402.com.tr and groundcheck.seiche.info against api.jarvisclaw.ai. $0.054 spent; the only service that caught it charged nothing.