How we check every listing

1. Where a listing starts

Every shop on this site starts as a raw record — a name, an address, a set of category tags, a rating and a review count, pulled from public map data. That is the same starting point a scraped directory uses. The difference is that for us it is the first step rather than the last one.

A raw record on its own tells you nothing useful. It does not tell you whether the shop is still trading, whether the number rings, or whether the unit number in the address matches the shutter. Half the value of a hardware directory sits in exactly those details, which is why we do not publish a record until someone has been through them.

2. What we confirm before a shop goes live

• The address. That the shop is at the unit stated, on the road stated.
• The phone number. That it rings the shop, not a dead line or a previous tenant. Where there is no number on record, the listing says so instead of leaving a gap you would only find after driving over.
• The hours. Day by day, against what the shop itself says.
• What it actually stocks. A shop tagged as a building materials supplier out in an industrial estate is a different trip from a counter that will sell you one hinge, and the listing should make that obvious before you set off.
• Anything public and specific. If a shop keeps a website, a Facebook page or a Shopee storefront that says something real about it, we read it and use it.

3. The note we write

Each listing carries one or two sentences from us. It is there to tell you the thing you could not get from the address line — that a shop also runs a machine workshop, that it also cuts keys and does passport photos, that three of the shops on this list sit on the same road so one trip can cover all of them.

When a shop has nothing distinctive on record beyond a name and a rating off two reviews, the note says that plainly and stops. We do not write "a great local hardware store offering quality service", because that sentence is true of every hardware store on earth and therefore tells you nothing about this one. A thin note that is true is worth more than a padded one that is not.

4. What gets a shop pulled

• It has closed, or moved somewhere we have not yet checked.
• The number has been dead across repeated attempts and there is no other way to reach it.
• It turns out not to be a hardware store at all — the tags on a raw record are sometimes wrong, and a shop that is really a furniture showroom does not belong here.
• The owner asks to be removed. We take it down and do not ask for a reason.

A shop is never pulled for having a mediocre rating. There are 3.7s on this site sitting next to 5.0s. That is the honest picture of what is out there, and burying the middling ones would make the good ones meaningless.

How often we go back

Hours are the thing that rots fastest, especially around Raya and Chinese New Year when half the trade closes for a week and does not update anything. We re-check hours and phone numbers on a rolling basis across the whole list, and we re-check a shop straight away when someone tells us it has changed.

That last part works better with your help. If you drive to one of ours and find the shutter down at a time our table says it should be open, emailhello@seekhardware.net. Every listing page has a correction link that fills in the shop name for you.

More on who "we" are is on the about page. What we take money for, and what we do not, is set out in how we make money.