Methodology
How a provider record is built, what is included, and what is deliberately left out.
How a provider record is built, what is included, and what is deliberately left out.
Sources
Every provider record is built from primary public sources: IRS Form 990 filings where applicable, state corporate and licensing registries, published fee schedules, and public complaint databases.
Blank fields
Fields without a public source are left blank rather than estimated. A blank field means the figure was not compiled. It does not mean the figure is zero. Those are different claims and this site does not render them the same way.
Comparisons
Comparisons apply one published methodology identically across every provider and category, and are generated from the underlying records rather than authored separately.
Regulatory and legal history
Regulatory and legal history is limited to actions with a confirmed, adjudicated outcome, meaning a settlement, judgment, or consent order. Pending or unresolved litigation is not summarized here, for any provider, regardless of subject. An allegation in an active case is not a finding, and treating the two as equivalent would be inaccurate in both directions.
Verification and staleness
Records carry the date they were compiled. A record that has never been re-checked against its sources is labelled as compiled and not yet re-verified, rather than being given a verification date it has not earned.
Corrections
If a field on any record is wrong, tell us which field and point us at the document showing the correct figure. That’s the whole process.
What qualifies: any factual field on a provider record, a comparison, or a cited figure in an explainer, supported by a primary source. Disagreement with a characterization or a position is welcome through the contact page too, but it is handled as feedback, not a correction.
What happens next: we review the document, and if it supports the change, we publish the correction.
How changes are published: the field is updated, the record’s compile date is updated, and a dated note states what changed and why. We do not quietly edit a field and leave the compile date untouched.
Where this site takes a position
Provider records are compiled from public records. The same fields are pulled from the same source types for every company, and no record contains an opinion.
The explainers are different. Where the public evidence supports a conclusion, we state it. We have concluded, from published completion figures, agency revenue disclosures, and the arithmetic of repaying full principal plus interest plus fees, that debt management plans cost most consumers more in total than the alternatives they are rarely shown. That is a position. It is sourced, and we will change it if the evidence does.
We publish both standards so you can hold each part of the site to the right one: records to the compilation standard, explainers to the evidence.