Why a batch code lookup fails

We kept every failed lookup and sorted them by what the user actually typed. Out of 1,099,248 failures, here is the breakdown.

Seven in ten failures are our fault, not yours

The largest slice by far is codes that look completely legitimate — the right shape, the right length, printed exactly where a batch code belongs — that we simply cannot decode, because we have not verified a rule for that brand's format.

We could guess. Many tools do: they pattern-match a date out of any string and present it with confidence. We would rather tell you we don't know. A wrong manufacture date is worse than no date, because you act on it.

Three in ten are the wrong string

The rest is worth knowing about, because it is fixable in about ten seconds. The single most common mistake is typing the barcode — see batch code or barcode? Second is shade names and reference numbers, which look plausible but encode nothing about when the product was made.

What to do when it fails

• Check you copied every character, including leading zeroes
• Check it isn't the barcode — that's the long number under the stripes
• If it still fails, send it to us. We add brands in the order people ask for them, and that queue is built from exactly these failures.

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