What it says. Not what to do.
A letter arrives, and the difficulty is not that you disagree with it. It is that after three readings you still cannot say what it wants, by when, or what happens if you do nothing.
Two separate refusals, and both are deliberate.
The first is guessing. Photograph a letter on a kitchen table and part of it will be in shadow, folded, cropped or lost to glare. The tempting thing — and the thing a fluent model does naturally — is to fill that in from what documents of that kind usually say. A parking notice usually says twenty-eight days. A council letter usually gives fourteen. Usually is doing an enormous amount of work in those sentences, and a date that is usually right is a date that is sometimes catastrophically wrong.
So the rule is that every date and every amount reported has to carry the exact words on the page it was read from. If it cannot be quoted, it does not appear. And anything unreadable is named as unreadable, by which part — not smoothed over. You get told "the deadline in the third paragraph is cut off at the fold" rather than a confident date nobody actually read.
The second refusal is advice. It explains what the document says; it does not tell you what to do about it. No "you should", no view on whether to pay, sign, appeal, dispute or ignore. Describing a consequence the document itself states — the notice says the charge rises after fourteen days — is explanation and it is required. Telling you to pay it is advice, and it is not something a £7 report should be doing about a document whose full context it cannot see.
Where a real decision is obviously involved, it goes into a list of questions to put to whoever sent it, or to somebody qualified. That is more useful than an opinion anyway: a good question to the issuer moves the situation, and an opinion from a tool does not.
What comes back.
Not an essay. A structured reading of the document you sent, in these parts.
- What kind of document this is, in plain words, and who sent it as printed.
- What it says — the substance, one point at a time.
- What it wants — each action you are being asked to take, who is asking, and in what form.
- Deadlines, each with the exact wording it was read from.
- Money, each figure with the exact wording it was read from.
- What the document itself says happens if nothing is done. If it states no consequence, you are told that, rather than being given one.
- Jargon — the words on the page that are doing work, in plain English.
- Questions to ask the issuer or an adviser.
- Anything unreadable, named, with why — blurred, cropped, glare, folded, cut off, covered.
The unreadable list is always present. An empty one means every part was genuinely read, and that is a claim it has to make explicitly rather than by silence.
The difference in one line.
This is a parking charge notice. You have 28 days to pay, and the amount is reduced to £30 if you pay within 14 days. If you do not pay, the operator may pass the debt to a collection agency.
Deadline "…within 14 days of the date of issue" — the date of issue is printed in the top right and is cut off at the fold in the photograph, so the deadline cannot be worked out from what was supplied.
Money £60, quoted from "the charge is £60, reduced to £[unreadable] if paid within 14 days" — the reduced figure is obscured by glare.
If ignored The notice states that the amount payable increases after 14 days. It does not state anything further about what happens after that.
Questions to ask What is the date of issue printed on this notice? What is the reduced amount if paid within 14 days?
The first version is more satisfying to read and two of its three facts were invented. The second is less comfortable and every line of it is true — including the two lines that say a photograph was not good enough, which you can fix in ten seconds by taking another one.
How it runs.
- Photograph the document. Up to four photos — front and back, or the pages that matter. Flat, in daylight, and if a fold is hiding something, unfold it. You can paste the text as well if you have it electronically.
- Say what is worrying you. There is a box for the specific thing you cannot work out, and it changes what gets explained first. There are also questions about where you are and what happened before this arrived.
- £7 buys 7,000 points; this job holds a ceiling of 2,500 and typically spends around 1,300. There are no revisions — it is a reading of a fixed document, so if the photograph was poor the answer is a better photograph rather than another pass.
A generation that fails spends nothing.
Fit.
Use it if
- A letter has arrived and you cannot tell whether it needs a reply.
- You have a tenancy agreement or a contract and want the obligations listed plainly before you sign.
- You are helping someone else with post they find frightening.
- There is a deadline somewhere in it and you cannot find it.
- English is not your first language and the document is written in officialese.
Do not use it if
- You want to be told what to do. It will not say, and that is not a gap to be argued with.
- You need legal, medical or financial advice. It explains a document; it is not a substitute for someone qualified.
- You suspect the letter is fake. Start with Check This Scam, which reads it as evidence rather than as a genuine document.
- The document is a hundred pages. It reads what fits in four photographs.
Have it read back to you.
Photograph it flat and in good light. Every figure and date you get back will carry the words it was read from.
One payment, no subscription. 7,000 points; this job's ceiling is 2,500 and it typically uses about 1,300. No revisions — it reads a fixed document.