Rule one
Checked on the business's own page
Every special is read where the business publishes it — the restaurant's own website, menu or specials page, the retailer's own online listing, the organizer's own rules page. The source and the date we checked it are printed with the price, so you can see exactly what a number rests on.
Prices get the same treatment. A Price Check anchor is read from the retailer's own listing on the day of the check — the store, the exact product and the check date travel with it wherever it appears on the site.
Rule two
Roundups and aggregators are leads, never sources
Other people's lists point us where to look — they never supply the number. A deal spotted on a roundup site, a forum post or another guide becomes a candidate to verify at the source. Until it checks out there, it stays off the site.
And when the source won't settle it, the item sits out. In our first eggs check, Sobeys' online store showed two regional prices for the same carton and neither could be pinned to Halifax — so Sobeys has no row in that spread, and the page says why. A missing row is the method working, not a gap in it.
Rule three
Thirty days, then it's checked again
Specials go stale, so ours expire. A listing that hasn't been re-verified on the business's own page within 30 days drops off the board until it's checked again. Prices and contest deadlines are checked on the day they're posted, and contests are re-checked as their closing dates get close.
Contests are read against their own rules — who can enter, what's actually being given away, and the exact closing date and time come from the organizer's rules, not from a share post or a headline.
Rule four
Reader prices wear a label
Reader-reported prices are published exactly as that: reader-reported — with the town and store as given. A reader figure is a snapshot from someone's receipt, and it's never promoted to a checked price or blended into a verified spread.
Corrections are part of the deal. If a price, special or deadline on this site is wrong, tell us at paul.gray@agentmail.to — we re-check it at the source, fix the page, and the correction is noted rather than silently swapped in.
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