Editorial policy

If we publish a number, we show where it came from and when we last checked it. Data goes stale, and a figure without a date is a figure you cannot judge.

A link is not enough on its own. We open the source and find the figure in it before publishing, because a link plus a date looks like sourcing while proving nothing. We have been caught by exactly that.

This is the rule we are most attached to, because it is the one that makes the rest worth reading.

• There is no national car licence fee in South Africa. It depends on your province and your vehicle. Anyone showing you one number for the whole country is guessing, and we say that instead of picking one.
• No South African insurer publishes a tracker discount percentage. Every figure in circulation comes from a business that earns commission on tracker enquiries, so we publish none of them and explain why.
• There is no credible published average car insurance premium. Every number you will find is a company quoting its own book, so our product pages carry no prices at all.

A page that admits what is unknown is more useful than one that fills the gap with a confident guess.

• Regulators and official data first. The Ombud, the FSCA, SAPS, Stats SA. Published, checkable, and not selling anything.
• Company disclosures second, clearly attributed to the company making the claim.
• Anything published by a business that earns money from your decision is marketing, and we label it that way or leave it out.
• When sources disagree, we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking one or averaging them into a number nobody stated.

• Take payment to rank an insurer higher, to include one, or to leave one out.
• Present an estimate as a quote, or a calculator result as advice.
• Publish a figure we have not opened the source for.
• Pretend to have data we do not have.
• Use pressure tactics: fake scarcity, countdown timers, pre-ticked consent, or an email wall in front of a tool.

We will get things wrong. When we do, we fix the page, say what was wrong, and leave the correction visible rather than quietly editing.

Two examples already on this site. Our tracker guide once published a discount range and a recovery rate that traced back to businesses earning commission on tracker sales; both were removed and the page now explains why no such figure exists. Our fibre page once listed a gigabit package that does not exist, at a price a thousand rand below the real product; it was corrected against the provider directly.

If you think something here is wrong, tell us and we will check it. You do not need to prove it first.

Pocket Nerd content is drafted and edited in-house against our own structured data, then checked against its sources before publishing. Every page carries the date it was last checked.

How we are paid, and what that does not influence, is set out in how we make money.