Editorial Policy: How We Source, Date and Correct Every Figure

Every figure on this site is built on primary sources only, carries a date checked on every number, and links to the government card it came from. When ICP and GDRFA state different things, we print both, dated, and name who said what. We do not average them into one comfortable number. This page sets out our sourcing standards, and it is the public log of every time we got it wrong.

Our source hierarchy, and what we do when sources disagree

A government service card outranks any agency page, every time. For a federal rule we read ICP first, then GDRFA, then an Amer centre. For a Dubai-specific rule, GDRFA outranks ICP. When two official sources contradict each other, we publish both with their dates and name each one. We never average.

The order is not arbitrary. ICP is the federal authority for every emirate except Dubai. GDRFA runs Dubai. So a Dubai visit-visa rule is GDRFA’s to state, and ICP’s version yields to it inside Dubai; a federal rule works the other way. Amer centres sit below both. They are GDRFA-partner service counters, not rule-makers. An Amer price is a market fact, real and dated. It is never a government rule.

This rule exists because the audience lives inside the contradiction. One reader wrote: “I called ICP and 2 agents said I can, and other 2 agents said I cannot. This is very confusing.” Another: “I called GDRFA and they said the fines got updated on May 13 for everyone but they are not sure what the reason was.” We do not settle that by guessing. We show both answers, dated, so you see the disagreement we see. Absence counts as a finding too: “we found no security deposit on any ICP or GDRFA card as of 20 July 2026” is a full answer, not a gap.

How often we re-check each page type

Fee pages are re-checked every 30 days, and the same day a reader sends a receipt that contradicts us. Appointment and slot pages move fastest, so we re-date them at least monthly. Refusal-ground and process pages get a quarterly re-check plus an immediate one on any published rule change. Nothing here is treated as evergreen.

This update cadence follows how fast each number rots. UAE fees move in weeks — u.ae updated its own “Visa fees and fines” page on 13 July 2026, and overstay fines were recalculated on 13 May 2026 with no published reason. A fee older than a month gets re-opened at source. Slot availability is never printed as a live figure; we state what applicants reported and the date they reported it.

The methodology block on every page — what it means

Every guide carries a methodology block: the source, the exact date we checked it, and government source links you can open yourself. It states two verification tiers: figures from a page we opened and linked, and figures taken from a source’s published fee text without opening the URL ourselves. We tell you which tier each number sits in.

That block is a claim about us, so it has to survive audit like any figure does. We do not write “every figure was verified” unless every one was. On the fees page, three prices are cited from published fee text rather than a URL we opened — the block names them instead of hiding the difference. It also holds the compare-like-with-like rule: before two prices sit side by side, we confirm they describe the same government product. Two “90-day visa” quotes that differ 2.8-fold are usually two different products, not one being overcharged, and the block says so.

Corrections changelog — public, dated, permanent

Our correction policy is one line: we never silently edit a figure. Every change is logged here with the date, the source that triggered it, and what moved. This log opens on 20 July 2026, the day the site went live. Its first entries are corrections we made to our own draft figures during pre-publish verification — the same standard we hold after launch.

A correction is not something we bury; it is the product working. Send a receipt that contradicts us and the fix, with its date, lands in this log — and we credit you if you allow it. Nothing is ever quietly overwritten.

Our anti-template policy — how this content is produced, and a warning about your documents

This is our AI use disclosure. We assemble drafts with software tools, then a review before publish puts every figure in front of a person who checks it against a named primary source with a date. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so, and we do not ship templated filler. What we will not publish is fixed too: no approval guarantee, no refund promise, no success rate, and no price of our own. One warning we owe you directly: consulates now flag recognizably AI-generated itineraries and cover letters, and reject them.

The disclosure runs both ways. On our side, a tool may draft a sentence, but no number reaches a page until a human has opened the source and dated it — the changelog above is what that check looks like when it catches something. On your side, the risk is concrete. A Schengen applicant in Dubai was told their itinerary “looked template like.” Consulates read thousands of packs a week; a generated cover letter and a generated day-by-day plan are easy to spot and easy to refuse. Write your own, in your own words. A page that reads like an AI mill loses exactly the reader who was already burned by one.

Attribution today, and the named-reviewer debt we carry

Cycle 1 is attributed to the editorial desk, not to a named individual. In our structured data the author is an Organization, never a Person. We will not invent a human byline with credentials we cannot verify, because the audience scans for precisely that fake. Named reviewers are an open commitment, not a finished one.

One conflict of interest disclosure belongs here. We earn no commission on any government fee and quote no price of our own. No figure on this site is chosen to sell you anything. This market runs on stock-photo authors with invented CVs, and readers here have learned to distrust them on sight. A desk byline we can stand behind beats an “immigration expert” we made up. What the desk does have is first-hand: the same passports, the same Emirates ID, the same VFS queues the reader stands in. When a reviewer with real, checkable credentials is attached, they are named on the editorial-team page and in the byline — and this paragraph moves to the changelog with a date. Until then, we carry the debt in the open.

How to report an error: found a figure out of date, or a source that says otherwise? That is the message we most want. Write to us at contact and we re-check the source and log a dated correction. How we source prices in AED is shown on the fees page; who writes here is on the editorial-team page; definitions sit in the glossary.