How We Verify
Verification here means something specific and checkable, not a badge we hand out for free. Here's exactly what we check, how, and how often — including where we come up short.
Source tiers for everything we publish
Every factual claim on this site — in an article or a directory listing — is weighed against where it came from. We treat these as a hierarchy, not interchangeable:
- Government / primary regulator — the CFPB, FTC, Florida Attorney General, Florida courts and statutes, Miami-Dade County government.
- Established nonprofits — the NFCC, legal aid organizations, recognized counseling bodies.
- Primary organization sources — a provider's own official page or published documentation.
- Secondary reporting — local newspapers and reputable publications.
- Community observations — forums and social discussion. We use these only to notice what people are asking about, never as a cited fact.
What gets checked on a directory listing
Before an organization appears in the directory, and on every re-check afterward, we look at:
- Whether it's currently operating and reachable at the listed contact information.
- Regulatory or licensing status where one actually applies — Florida OFR registration for collection agencies, Florida Bar standing for attorneys, NCUA status for credit unions, HUD approval for housing counselors — checked against the official public source for each, not the organization's own claim alone.
- Published fee structure, eligibility criteria, languages offered, and service area, using the organization's own official page wherever possible.
- Public complaint and enforcement records where an accessible public index exists (CFPB, BBB) — recorded as what that specific index shows, not treated as a final verdict either way.
Every listing shows a last-verified date and gets re-checked on a set schedule rather than published once and forgotten.
What "Unverified / Requires Direct Call" means
Some things — a specific fee, an income cutoff, whether a language is actually offered by phone versus only in person — aren't published anywhere official, and no amount of searching will surface a fact that isn't public. When that happens, we label the field exactly that way instead of guessing, estimating, or leaving the impression that it was confirmed. An absence of a public record is also not treated as proof of a clean record — a provider with no public complaints on file gets recorded as exactly that, not as "verified clean."
What gets checked on an article
Every guide cites its sources by name, states when it was last reviewed, and — for the highest-stakes topics — carries a "what's changed since our last review" section instead of a silently bumped date. We never publish a Miami-Dade-specific statistic that isn't publicly available; if only a national figure exists, we say so and label it national rather than implying a local number we don't actually have.
When we get it wrong
We will. Regulations change, organizations close, phone numbers stop working. If you find something outdated or incorrect, report it — see alsoEditorial Independence for how that's handled when the listing in question is a paid one.