How we check and disclose commercial tool links

Last updated 24 August 2026 · OBDCode UK editorial

Affiliate disclosure: some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission. We only enable a link after the shop has passed a current pathway and compliance check, regardless of whether we may earn from the sale. See the rest of this page for how we choose what to enable.

Some of the shops we link to are owned by the same team as OBDCode (RETRETO NEXT LIMITED, Company No. 15166864, VAT GB 493 7070 67). Those links are still commercial. They use rel="sponsored". We do not claim that a commercial relationship cannot affect price.

Enabled commercial supplier links appear only on the relevant Tools category pages, after the safety notes and the “you may not need to buy this” guidance.

Before a link can be enabled, we require current evidence for the shop operator, the exact product page, the basket and checkout path, the final payable price, and material stock, delivery and origin claims. These are supplier and purchase-path checks, not independent product testing. A page that returns HTTP 200 is not treated as compliance evidence.

Every enabled commercial link must be labelled “Sponsored” before the link and identify the verified shop operator and whether a related business may benefit directly from the sale.

A commercial relationship does not change the order of Tools cards: the /tools/ category grid and the supplier cards on each category page follow fixed editorial lists, not payment, commission, or sponsored status.

Commercial links use rel="sponsored noopener noreferrer" and sit after the safety notes and the “you may not need to buy this” guidance.

We do not put number plates, VINs, or other personal data into click tracking. This site does not set a first-party analytics cookie and does not use localStorage for attribution. Commercial clicks on Tools category pages go through a first-party /go/{outlet_id} redirect. Each click writes one JSONL row kept for at most 30 days: UTC timestamp, outlet id, the path of the OBDCode page that referred the click (or “-” if that referer is missing or external), a 128-bit random hid that is meaningless across clicks, and a coarse agent class (human-like or bot-like). No IP address is written. After 30 days only aggregates remain. Exact hid matches and 7-day window estimates are reported separately and are never added together.

The shops that may currently appear, and the company that operates them, are listed on /about-our-shops/.