Editorial standards

These standards apply to every article published on Automotive repair shop financing. They exist because we cover money and lending (readers act on what we write), and we owe them a clear line on how we get there.

Sourcing

  • Specific statistics are attributed to a named source: typically the SBA, the Federal Reserve / FRED, the U.S. Census Bureau, the CFPB, the FDIC, or a recognized industry association (e.g. Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation, NIADA, IBISWorld).
  • Rate ranges are presented as ranges, not point estimates, and labeled as illustrative when the article isn't tied to a specific live rate sheet from a partner.
  • Qualification thresholds (credit score, time in business, revenue) reflect typical lender practice and are noted as such.

How articles are produced and checked

Articles are written with AI assistance and checked by automated systems. No person reads every article before it goes live. The steps are:

  1. AI-assisted drafting from cited sources. Articles are drafted by an AI writing system working from a brief. For research articles (reviews, comparisons, ranked lists, Q&As, how-to guides, cost breakdowns, data studies that compile published figures and methodology pages), the writer is given a set of sources found for the topic and confirmed to be reachable, and it must link to them in the text. If too few usable sources are found, the article is not written.
  2. Claim check against sources. Before our system first publishes a research article on its own, a second AI model checks whether its specific factual claims, such as rates, amounts and statistics, trace to a credible source. If too few claims do, the article is rejected and rewritten using the checker's notes. Later automated rewrites of a published article are not claim-checked again.
  3. Quality checks for each format. Every page our system publishes on its own must first pass automated quality rules for its format, such as a minimum length and required structure, and, for research articles, inline links to live sources on several different websites. Pages that fail are not published and are tried again later. When a team member publishes or regenerates a page by hand, it goes live on that person's judgement without these automated checks.
  4. Source and freshness checks after publishing. Published research articles are re-checked automatically. If a cited source no longer exists or can't be reached, or a cost breakdown, ranked list, comparison or data study has passed a set age, or a data study's yearly edition is due, the article is queued for a rewrite. The new version must pass the same format quality checks before it replaces the live one, but it is not claim-checked again; if it fails, the current version stays up.
  5. Figure checks for data studies. In our data studies, our system automatically checks each figure that links to a source: it opens the source page and confirms the figure's numbers appear there. This confirms the number is on the page, not how the source uses it. Figures from our own analysis are checked against the records they were computed from. Only confirmed figures are listed as quotable findings, and the study's Methods section shows when its figures were last checked. Studies are checked again after their content changes; if a source can't be reached, the figure keeps its previous status.
  6. Our own AI-answer studies. Some data studies are our own analysis: each month we count which websites AI assistants cite in their answers to the questions we track for a topic. Every figure is computed by our system from those captured answers; a figure based on fewer than 50 answers is never published, and our own websites are never counted. The AI writer only explains the figures and is not claim-checked by the second model: any number in its text that is not one of the computed figures, the sample size or a sample date is rejected. A team member reviews and publishes each study's first edition; later monthly updates go live after the same automated checks.
  7. Spot checks by our team. Our team spot-checks published pages and can correct, rewrite or unpublish any page. Some page types are never published automatically and wait for a person to publish them.

Updates and corrections

The "Updated" date on each article shows the last time our systems or team worked on the page, including the automated re-checks and rewrites described above, so it can move even when the text did not change.

If you find an inaccuracy, email editor@tryoption.ai with the URL and the specific claim. When a claim is wrong, we correct, rewrite or unpublish the article.

What we do not do

  • We do not give personalized financial, legal, or tax advice. Our articles are educational.
  • We do not accept payment for favorable coverage of a specific lender. Compensation arrangements are disclosed on our disclosures page.
  • We do not fabricate quotes, case studies, or named experts.