Stop Trusting. Start Verifying. How AI Changed the Way We Find Suppliers.
I want to tell you about three months of frustration, because there is a lesson buried in it that could save you money, time, and a whole lot of heartache.
Someone very close to me runs a business. Like every business owner, she needs suppliers. People to provide the parts and services that keep the whole thing running. Over the last three months, she went looking for three of them.
The first one never really answered. She asked for a quote, and got delay after delay after delay. Weeks passed with nothing solid. The second one was worse. She paid a fifty percent deposit up front, and that supplier took the money and disappeared. It turned out to be a fraud from top to bottom. A fake operation built to rob people. The third one strung her along for two weeks. Every phone call felt like starting the conversation over from scratch, no progress, no follow through. She even went in person, and the one she needed to speak with was never there.
Three suppliers. Three failures. One stolen deposit. And here is the thread that ties them all together. Every single one of those companies was found the same way. Scrolling Facebook.
Now I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to make Facebook the villain. It is not really about Facebook. Facebook was just where the trust came from. The real problem is that there was no step between “I found them” and “I paid them.” No checking. No verifying. Just a page that looked legitimate, a phone number, and hope.
That is how most people still operate in 2026. And it is risky. When you find a supplier that way, your money is at risk, your time is at risk, and your brand is at risk, because a bad supplier does not just cost you, it lets your own customers down too.
So we tried something different.
Instead of scrolling and hoping, we sat down with AI and asked it to help us actually research the options. Not just find a name, but look into it. And the very first supplier that came out of that process was a different world entirely. Responsive from the first message. An invoice in our hands almost immediately. Easy to reach on the phone. Kind. They gave better advice than anyone we had spoken to. They showed up two days later and installed exactly what she needed, at close to a quarter of the price we had been quoted on our own.
Same business owner. Same need. Completely different experience. The only thing that changed was the method.
But here is where I have to be honest with you, because I would be doing you a disservice otherwise.
The lesson is not “AI will never lead you to a fraud, so just trust whatever it tells you.” That is not true, and I need you to hear that clearly. Right now, in 2026, scammers have learned to trick AI too. There are documented cases this very year of tools like ChatGPT recommending cloned, fake websites in its results, complete with fake discount prices, because criminals deliberately flood the internet with convincing fake pages so the AI picks them up. AI can also simply invent a business that does not exist and describe it with total confidence.
So if you walk away from this thinking AI is a magic shield against fraud, you could get burned the exact same way, just with a new tool.
The real lesson, the one that will still be true years from now, is this. The problem was never Facebook. The problem was trusting without verifying. And what AI actually gives you is not a guarantee. It gives you the ability to finally do the homework a careful person would do if they had the hours, done in minutes instead of days.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
When you find a potential supplier, do not stop at the name. Put AI to work as your research assistant. Ask it to search for reviews across more than one source, not just the testimonials on the company’s own page. Ask how long the business has been operating. Ask it to look for complaints or red flags. Have it check for a real, verifiable address and a website that actually holds up. Cross reference what you find. And then, with all of that in front of you, you make the decision.
The power is not that the AI decides for you. The power is that verifying used to be too slow and too much work for a busy business owner to actually do, so most people skipped it entirely and just hoped. AI removes that excuse. It makes checking fast enough to actually happen.
This is one of the most powerful and most underused ways a small business owner can put AI to work. Everyone talks about using AI to write captions and make images. Almost nobody is talking about using it to protect your money before you spend it.
Stop trusting the first page that looks good. Start verifying before you pay.
Let AI carry the weight of the research, and let wisdom make the final call.
If you want to learn how to use AI this way, the careful way, the way that actually protects your business, come and learn with us.