How we check sources

Nothing goes live on a guess

A refund, rebate, concession or settlement only appears on this site if it passes every one of these checks. Sample or invented items never go live, and we would rather publish nothing this week than publish something wrong.

1. An official source URL, with the eligibility wording quoted word for word from it — never paraphrased from memory.
2. A second, independent source, confirming the item exists and its deadline. Fetched pages can come back wrong, so one source alone is never enough.
3. A deadline taken from the source, or marked “no deadline” if the source says so. We never guess a closing date.
4. A dollar value only when the scheme itself publishes one, quoted with its source. If the scheme doesn’t state a figure, we don’t either.
5. A “last checked” date, set when it’s verified, re-checked weekly while it’s live, and the item is retired automatically at its deadline.
6. Careful wording: “you may be eligible”, never “you’re owed” or “you will get”. We don’t promise an outcome.

Who does the checking

A Scout drafts candidate items from official sources — government registers, regulator releases, court and settlement notices. A Verifier applies the six checks above to every draft, and re-checks every live item on a weekly cycle. An Editor, never the agent that drafted the item, has to pass it before it can go live. Both the Verifier and Editor are tested against a fixed set of known-good and known-bad examples before they’re allowed to publish anything for real, and that test is re-run whenever their process changes.

No legal right, response window or ombudsman rule on this site is written from memory. Every one is sourced to a primary document, the same standard that applies to the letter generator and the free rights checkers.