In this guide
The short version
Some businesses on this site are here because we have a direct interest in them. We say so, every time, on the page itself. Everything else is chosen by us on the evidence, and nobody pays to be included.
Businesses we have an interest in
Charlotte-Print and Charlotte Mailbox operate from the same counter at 3020-I Prosperity Church Road and are connected to the publisher of this guide. When we recommend them, we are recommending our own business. That is not an independent award, a customer survey result, or a ranking against their competitors, and we will not dress it up as one.
Every page where they appear carries a label saying so.
Charlotte Tech Repair is different, and the difference matters. The publisher has no ownership, no commercial arrangement and no relationship of any kind with that business. It appears here because we chose it, and a choice we made is not an award anyone gave them. That also creates an obligation on us: with no commercial tie, the recommendation has to rest on research, so where the business makes a claim about itself that we cannot check — an "award-winning" line with no named award, or a star rating that does not match its own stated average — we do not repeat it.
What we will not do
- We will not invent star ratings, review counts or customer testimonials.
- We will not describe anything as "award-winning" unless a named award exists that you can look up yourself.
- We will not make a competitor look worse than they are, or leave out a fact that would be useful to you because it happens to favour someone else.
- We will not put a link to our own businesses on pages about parks, churches, history or anything else where it has no business being.
How everything else gets chosen
We start from sources that can be checked: an organization's own published information, city and county records, the National Park Service register, the Historic Landmarks Commission's designation reports, official trail and transport data, and credible independent reporting. We read past the homepage.
Where something is the organization's own claim about itself, we say so and attribute it. Where sources disagree, we tell you they disagree rather than picking the one we like. Where we could not establish something, we say that too — "we don't know" is an honest answer and we would rather give it than a confident guess.
Things that change
Opening hours, prices, menus, service times, fares and timetables change. Use the responsible organization for current information. A guide may explain a dated offer, planning example or source disagreement when its check date and limits are stated beside it; that is not a live schedule or a promise for a future visit. We keep source-check dates separate from editorial updates and the site build.
For the same reason, this site does not run an events calendar, a "what's on" section or a deals directory. We point you at the people who do.
Telling us we are wrong
We will have got things wrong. If you find something — a business that has moved or closed, a detail about a congregation we have misdescribed, a walk that no longer connects — tell us and we will correct it and say when we did.
Read next
We opened 1,360 Charlotte business websites. 29 of them weren't the business any more.
Building this guide meant opening the website of every business we wanted to list, rather than trusting the link we found it through. That check was supposed to be housekeeping. It turned into the most interesting thing the research produced.
Where to check what's on
We don't run an events calendar, on purpose. Event listings go out of date faster than anything else on a website, and a guide that quietly tells you about a festival that stopped running two years ago has failed you worse than one that never mentioned it.