A shop for testing
Shelf is an invented online shop for people who learn software testing. It looks and works like a real shop: a catalog, a cart, coupons, checkout, payments with test cards, orders, an API, logs and metrics. Nothing is ever shipped and no money is ever taken.
The products, brands, books, authors, people and addresses are made up. Use made-up names and addresses yourself, and never a real card: the shop refuses real card numbers.
What you can rely on
The rules on these help pages are the shop's rules: shipping, coupons, orders, payments and accounts work exactly as described. When the shop shows something else, that is a finding: write down what you did, what you expected, what you saw, and the trace id if there is one.
The footer shows the build number, for example "Shelf web 1.4.2". Quote it in a bug report: the shop changes from build to build.
Privacy
Shelf keeps a username, a password hash and what you do in the shop: your cart, orders, payment attempts, your own products and your Ask Shelf conversation. It keeps no e-mail address, no real name and no real card. The logs carry the last four digits of a test card at most, never the whole number.
Your Ask Shelf conversation is kept in your account so that it stays open from page to page. "New chat" deletes it, and so do "Reset my data" and "Delete account".