Privacy Policy
Effective October 5, 2026. The Fair Rate Index is published by Peaking Waters LLC, Cornelius, North Carolina.
Reading the index needs no account and collects nothing about you. When you buy something, ask for help, or send us a document, this policy explains what we collect, why, and what happens to it. The short version: we use it to serve you and to make the index more accurate, we never sell it, and no contractor ever pays us for it.
1. What we collect
When you read the site
Basic, aggregate usage data such as pages visited, general region and browser type, so we can keep the site running and understand how it is used. No account, no name.
When you use Ask on the help page
The question you type, whether it is about a home or a car, and the state if you enter one. To prevent abuse we also keep a one-way hash of your IP address for up to a day to count how many questions have been asked; we never store the raw address.
When you buy a report, plan or consult
Payments are handled by Stripe. We receive your name, email address, what you bought, and the details you enter at checkout, such as a property’s city and state or a vehicle’s make and model. We never see or store your card number.
When you send us documents
Inspection reports, photos, invoices, and details about your home’s systems or your vehicle, along with your email address.
When you submit an invoice or flag a rate
The job, your state, the amount, and anything you add about the scope. Email is optional for invoice submissions and required for rate flags, since flags are reviewed by hand.
2. How we use it
- To deliver what you asked for: an answer, a report, a plan or a consult.
- To process payments, send receipts and manage subscriptions.
- To improve the index. Prices from invoices and documents you send are de-identified first: no names, no addresses, no contractor names. Only their effect on a published range is ever shown.
- To reply to you. We do not send marketing you didn’t ask for.
3. AI processing
Questions you type into Ask are sent to Anthropic, our AI provider, to generate the answer, under Anthropic’s commercial terms. We also use AI tools to help prepare reports, plans and consult answers; a person reviews each one before it is sent. Please don’t include names, addresses or other personal details in an Ask question.
4. Who we share it with
Only the services that run the site and the work: Stripe for payments, Anthropic for AI processing, Vercel for hosting, our email provider, and basic analytics. We do not sell or rent your information, and we never share it with contractors, advertisers or data brokers.
5. How long we keep it
- Documents you send (inspection reports, photos, invoices) are deleted within 12 months of delivering your report, plan or consult, or sooner if you ask.
- De-identified prices drawn from them stay in the index.
- We do not keep a stored copy of Ask questions beyond short-lived service logs. The rate-limit hash expires within a day.
- Purchase records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require.
6. Your choices
You can use the index without giving us anything. You can ask us to see, correct or delete what we hold about you, or to delete a document you sent, by emailing hello@fairrateindex.com.
7. Security
We use established providers and limit access to what is needed to do the work. No system is perfectly secure, so please don’t send anything you don’t need to, such as Social Security or account numbers.
8. Children
The site is not directed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
9. Changes
We will update this page when our practices change and show the new effective date at the top.
10. Contact
hello@fairrateindex.com, or Peaking Waters LLC, 9938 Caldwell Depot Road, Cornelius, NC 28031.