// EDITORIAL
The Chef, the kitchen, and the price tags.
checkzon is a one-person editorial workshop with a real-time price scanner bolted on. Every review is written from a kitchen full of gear the Chef actually owns and uses. Every price is fetched live from the 9 European Amazon stores. No paid placements, no "as featured by," no SEO fluff dressed up as opinion.
Photographer, beatmaker, occasional cook, full-time software engineer based in Belgium. Builds checkzon, tests every product reviewed on the site (gear is bought, used for weeks, then written about), and answers every email personally.
How reviews are written
The rule is simple: checkzon does not review what the Chef has not personally used for at least two weeks. No press loans, no manufacturer-supplied units, no opinion-shaped affiliate filler. If a product appears in a review, it was bought with the Chef's own money, used in real conditions, and the impressions stand whether or not the affiliate link converts.
Every review answers four questions in plain language:
- What it does well — concrete strengths, with examples
- What it does badly — every product has flaws; pretending otherwise is a tell
- Who it's for — and, equally important, who it isn't for
- What it competes with at the same price — context is half the value of a review
Reviews are dated, and the publication date and last-tested date are visible on each card. If the Chef revisits a product after a firmware update or long-term use surfaces a defect, the review is updated and re-dated. Old reviews don't get quietly retired — they get marked, refreshed, or replaced with a new write-up that links back.
How prices are sourced
checkzon queries all 9 European Amazon marketplaces (amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.nl, amazon.com.be, amazon.pl, amazon.se, amazon.co.uk) for any ASIN you submit. Prices are fetched through a commercial scraping API (Decodo) that mirrors what a real shopper sees in each country's logged-out browser.
Prices are cached for 1–2 hours at the edge and refreshed automatically every 6 hours by a scheduled cron job. Currency conversion uses daily ECB reference rates — not Amazon's internal rate, not a payment-processor markup. The number you see is the number you'll be charged at checkout, give or take micro-fluctuations from FX intraday movement.
The lowest delivered price wins the comparison, but checkzon also displays delivery estimates per store so you can weigh "save €15, wait 5 extra days" honestly.
The affiliate model, in plain language
checkzon is an Amazon Associate. Every outbound link to an Amazon store carries the editor's affiliate tag. If you click through and complete a purchase, Amazon pays checkzon a small commission (typically 1–4% of the item price) — at no extra cost to you.
Three things follow from this:
- The site is free, no account required, no tracking pixels beyond Vercel's anonymous analytics. The affiliate revenue covers hosting, the scraping API, and the Chef's coffee budget.
- Affiliate revenue does not influence which products are reviewed or how they're rated. The Chef pre-buys gear; commissions arrive later, if ever. Reviews praising the Chef's actual workhorse tools and reviews savaging products the Chef wishes were better both exist on the site.
- If a product is bad, the review will say so. The 1-star review is more useful to readers than the 5-star one, and a one-shot Amazon commission isn't worth burning trust over.
As an Amazon Associate, checkzon earns from qualifying purchases. This affiliate relationship is disclosed in the footer of every page and at the start of every review. checkzon receives no other form of compensation from manufacturers, retailers, or sponsored partners.
What checkzon will never do
- Sponsored reviews. No brand pays for placement, period. If that ever changes, the policy will change first and be announced loudly.
- Auto-generated review text. The Chef writes the reviews. Tools assist with grammar and translation; tools do not write opinions.
- "Best of" listicles assembled from product specs. Lists are built from products the Chef has used. If the Chef hasn't tested it, it doesn't get a recommendation.
- Email harvesting. No newsletter signup walls, no email-gated content, no pop-ups. If the Chef ever launches a newsletter, it will be opt-in and obviously labelled.
- Selling user data. checkzon doesn't have user accounts, doesn't ask for emails, and doesn't profile visitors. There's nothing to sell.
Why 9 stores and not just the local one
Because Amazon's pricing varies wildly by country, and the EU single market means anyone in the EU can buy from any of the 8 EU stores with zero friction. A camera body listed at €1,499 on amazon.fr might be €1,279 on amazon.de, with the package shipped from the same warehouse either way. That's a €220 saving for clicking a different flag.
The Chef got tired of opening 9 tabs to compare. checkzon is what came out of that tedium. For the technical and tax background on cross-border EU shopping, see the EU customs & VAT guide.
Get in touch
The Chef reads every email at hello@checkzon.app. Bug reports, review suggestions, corrections to old write-ups, and "you got that totally wrong" emails are all welcome — especially the last category. Most emails get a reply within 48 hours.
If you spot a price that seems wrong on checkzon, please flag it. The scraping pipeline is good but not perfect, and a heads-up beats a refund email later.