METHODOLOGY
Two price lanes. Never one blended number.
A salon menu and a completed customer bill answer different questions. WhatShePaid keeps their evidence separate on purpose.
Customer evidence
Currently, ACTUAL PAID means a first-party anonymous self-report. The comparable number is the service total before tip. The NYC Gel-X benchmark uses visits from the trailing 12 months and does not show a median until at least five distinct contributor keys are present.
Provider/source evidence
A listed price is a factual menu price from a salon-owned public page, a provider-authorized feed or another documented reusable source. It may be fixed, “from” or a range. Every published listed record needs a direct source and checked date. It never increases the ACTUAL PAID sample size.
What we never infer silently
Tip stays separate. We do not silently invent tax, add-ons or a base price when the contributor does not know them. A menu price is not converted into a customer-paid observation, and a self-report is not called receipt verified.
Freshness and sparse data
Actual-paid benchmark eligibility uses a trailing 12-month window. Listed prices carry a checked date. When a cohort is too small or offers are not truly comparable, we show individual evidence and coverage instead of manufacturing a “typical” number or confidence badge.
Corrections
For public salon menu facts we store only the structured service, price and business-location facts needed for comparison, plus the source and checked date—not salon photos, reviews or marketing copy. Automated checks are limited to explicitly configured first-party pages and respect published crawler rules. Providers can ask us to correct or stop refreshing a listing. During the pilot, no provider can pay to change ACTUAL PAID evidence.