Where to get Barcodes from? (and not be scammed)

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Has anyone heard of this place? Barcodes - Indie Artists Alliance it leads to this place Quick UPC

i'm releasing a couple 2 and 3 track digital singles which need a barcode for ppl (uk charts), but have been told to stay away from cheap barcode places as a lot are fake

i've been getting them on CDBaby up until now, just putting out single tracks (9 dollars), but now i'm releasing some 2/3 track "digital" singles, so i'm not going pay their 49 dollars for that, madness! lol

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just in case peeps were wondering, i've found these places to be the most reputable after some research.

Quick UPC
Single UPC

I've also looked up about the gs1 and the court case (getting a prefix before 2002 means no renewal fees basically)

God knows why gs1 charges so much, and to why some of the 'bigger' retailers will only take "GS1 registered clients", as it seems like independent retailers will take any code.

Things will be easier when I release on CD/Vinyl as the barcode you get from the manufacturer, but for digital releases I dont know if many people know about this stuff? that is.......... if your not using cdbaby, or if you dont use any other mass digital distributor/aggregator (tunecore/cdbaby/ioda etc etc)

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The proper way to do it used to be go directly to the UCC and get your own lifetime prefix. Pay the fee. (used to be about $400) Then you have up to 10,000 codes you can use. There is no danger of being scammed or getting a fake one if you do it this way.

I didn't realize the UCC had opened up to the idea of individuals operating a business based upon reselling the numbers. Used to be, only CD replicators offered that service so that they could provide a one-off number to a replication customer, and the UCC was OK with this.

EDIT: didn't know the UCC was now GS1

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Well, unfortunately, 400 dollars for 10,000 barcodes is now a thing of the past. unless GS1 has a US office with different prices for US customers? which would be unfair to little me in the extremely expensive UK lol

It's a few hundred pounds to actually join the UCC/GS1 (if your not a member of AIM, which i'm not, as AIM membership costs 100 pounds to join, 'plus' 100 pounds membership renewal every year, 'plus' a percentage of PPL income), and then ontop of that, you have to pay an annual renewal fee "for those barcodes".

Apparently, companies in the US (rightfully) took the GS1 to court, because a decade ago GS1 'suddenly' changed their policy, hiked up their prices, and also introduced renewal fee's, for which hundreds of US based clients were obviously pissed about, they won the court case, and GS1 agreed (or got told) that anyone who got a prefix before august 2002, doesnt have to pay any renewal fee's (for that prefix)

So, some of those companies have seen a gap in the market, and so are selling barcodes with their prefix, and the customers dont have to pay a renewal fee for those. I think thats fair enough^^

The only problem for some who buy these, is that the bigger retailers, wont take those barcodes, because they say that the individual has to have his/her "own prefix" . But it looks like those retailers are relatively few, e.g. walmart in the US, i'm not sure which retailers in the UK wont take these barcodes, but I doubt it's that many................although I dont know how a store would be able to tell the difference between, some company selling their prefix barcode numbers, and a cd manufacturer? (whom labels uses for physical products).

But for those selling 2 - 3 track 'digital only' singles, who (a)want to go direct, and dont use an aggregator/distributor who might supply the codes and (b) are requested to have a barcode for Milward Brown chart registration, I think the places that I listed selling barcodes are fine to use (unless anyone can advise differently?)

Link to GS1 for Music

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just an update, got some codes from quickupc, everything's fine, they give you both upc and ean in the order