A TrustGap Field Report

Three companies. Three verdicts. What the fine print actually says.

We ran three well-known companies through TrustGap, our free tool that maps marketing claims against terms of service, privacy policies, pricing pages and public disclosures — chosen deliberately to span the full range of the Accountability Score: one that scores 80+ because its fine print backs up what it advertises, one that lands in the 60s with real but partial gaps, and one that falls into the 30s because the marketing and the terms diverge badly. For each, MAC includes concrete suggestions for how the company could close its own gap.

This is what marketing accountability looks like in practice: not vague suspicion of "corporations," but a claim-by-claim comparison against the document each company actually signed you up for — and a clear list of what it would take to score higher.

Sourced from public termsConsistent scoring frameworkEvery claim attributedManually verifiable

Special Report

Scan to win. Sign away your data.

Six sweepstakes booths at Fanatics Fest NYC — Fanatics, the NFL, NHL, Paris Saint-Germain and Amex — all ran the identical data-harvest sign-up form.

Read the report

Receipts, by the numbers

Real data, pulled live from the TrustGap database — not made up, not rounded up. We're a young project, so these numbers start small on purpose. Every analysis run adds to the count, so watch this space grow.

Companies scored on TrustGap

Reviews published

Avg. points a brand loses to its own terms

Accountability scores tracked over time

How the score works

Every company starts at a perfect 100. TrustGap reads the marketing, then hunts for fine print that contradicts it. Each gap found deducts points by severity — the score never drops below 0. When there isn't enough verifiable marketing or terms information to compare, TrustGap withholds a score entirely rather than guessing.

−30

Outright Contradiction

A claim that is flatly untrue (e.g. "Free" that requires a fee).

−20

Functional Limitation

A promise quietly capped or throttled (e.g. "Unlimited" data slowed after 15GB).

−15

Friction Barrier

A right made deliberately hard to use (e.g. "Cancel anytime" by mailed letter only).

The Spectrum

One strong scorer, one mixed signal, one clear failure.

Three real companies, three different relationships between what gets advertised and what gets signed — and MAC's take on how each could close its own accountability gap.

Scores 80+

Patagonia

Outdoor apparel and gear maker known for its environmental activism and unusually direct product marketing.

Score92

Why this matters

Patagonia leans on its brand reputation as a selling point — the kind of claim TrustGap is built to pressure-test, since "we're the ethical one" is exactly the promise brands most often oversell.

What the fine print reveals

Patagonia's Ironclad Guarantee and Worn Wear repair program are written in the same plain language used in its marketing, with few carve-outs buried in the return policy. The gap between the ad copy and the fine print is unusually small.

Source: Ironclad Guarantee page & Worn Wear terms

Protect yourself: Still confirm current repair turnaround times directly — guarantee language is honest, but service capacity varies by season.

MAC suggestions to improve accountability

01Publish repair and Worn Wear turnaround times by season directly on the guarantee page, so the one soft spot in an otherwise clear promise disappears too.
02Extend the same plain-language treatment to supply-chain and labor claims, with the same level of citation rigor already used for the environmental guarantee.
03Keep the guarantee language locked even as the product line grows — the smallest addition of a carve-out clause would be the first real crack in an otherwise clean score.

Read the full review

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Scores in the 60s

Airbnb

Online marketplace for short-term home and experience rentals, connecting hosts and guests worldwide.

Score64

Why this matters

Airbnb markets itself on flexibility and host-set control — "book with confidence" — making its cancellation and fee-disclosure fine print a natural place to check whether that confidence is actually earned.

What the fine print reveals

The total price (including cleaning and service fees) is now shown earlier in search than a few years ago, which the marketing fairly claims as a win. But cancellation terms vary by individual host policy — from fully flexible to non-refundable — and that variability is disclosed only after a listing is opened, not in the initial search or ad messaging. AirCover host/guest protections are real but carry documented exclusions (e.g. certain property types, pre-existing damage) that aren't surfaced in the marketing.

Source: Airbnb pricing display update & individual host cancellation policy pages; AirCover terms

Protect yourself: Read the specific host's cancellation policy and AirCover exclusions before booking — "book with confidence" does not mean every listing is refundable.

MAC suggestions to improve accountability

01Surface each listing's cancellation tier (Flexible / Moderate / Strict / Non-refundable) directly in search results, not just after opening the listing — the same place the price now appears.
02Attach a one-line AirCover exclusions summary to every listing page instead of leaving exclusions buried in a separate terms document.
03Stop using blanket confidence language ("book with confidence") in top-of-funnel marketing when the actual protection level is host-dependent; qualify the claim or make the protection uniform.

Read the full review

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Scores in the 30s

Ticketmaster

Dominant live-event ticketing platform for concerts, sports and theater.

Score34

Why this matters

Ticket search pages advertise a face-value price, making the checkout fine print — where fees actually get added — the natural accountability test.

What the fine print reveals

Service fees, facility fees and delivery fees are disclosed only at the final checkout step, frequently totaling 25–35% above the listed price. Refund and resale terms are also more restrictive than the "guaranteed tickets" marketing implies, and the company has faced regulatory scrutiny (including a 2024 DOJ antitrust suit against parent Live Nation) over its market dominance and fee structure.

Source: Ticketmaster purchase terms & fee breakdown at checkout; 2024 DOJ v. Live Nation antitrust complaint

Protect yourself: Use the "all-in pricing" toggle where available, and always check the final total before entering payment details.

MAC suggestions to improve accountability

01Show the full "all-in" price — face value plus every fee — at the moment a ticket is first listed, not four screens into checkout. Several competitors already do this without losing sales.
02Cap or itemize the "service fee" and "facility fee" so buyers can see what each charge is actually funding, instead of two vague line items that vary listing to listing.
03Publish resale and refund terms in the same visual weight as the advertised price, so "guaranteed tickets" carries the actual conditions attached to that guarantee.

Read the full review

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Compiled From TrustGap

The Hall of Fame and the Hall of Shame.

Running tallies drawn from TrustGap analyses — the companies whose fine print backs up their marketing, and the ones whose gap has become the business model. Run your own company to see where it lands.

Hall of Fame

92
Patagonia
Ironclad Guarantee and Worn Wear terms read the same as the ad copy — almost no carve-outs.
88
Costco
Famously generous return policy and flat membership pricing with minimal hidden-fee fine print.
81
Bank of America (Balance Assist)
Small-dollar loan product discloses its flat fee and APR up front rather than burying it.

Hall of Shame

34
Ticketmaster
Service, facility and delivery fees surface only at final checkout — often 25–35% above list.
31
Comcast / Xfinity
"No hidden fees" marketing against broadcast-TV and regional-sports surcharges added post-signup.
28
Ryanair
Headline fares that balloon with mandatory seat, bag and check-in fees disclosed deep in the funnel.

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A tangible outcome

From diagnosis to standard: the Clean Data Alliance.

Exposing the gap is only half the job. The Clean Data Alliance is what accountability looks like when it turns into infrastructure — a nonprofit standards body that certifies ethical, consent-first data practices, giving brands a concrete benchmark to be held to instead of another unread privacy policy. It's proof that the patterns TrustGap surfaces can be answered with real, verifiable standards.

See the Clean Data Alliance

Why this matters

The gap isn't binary. It's a spectrum — and every company can move up it.

All three companies above operate legally. The distance TrustGap surfaces isn't fraud — it's the gap between what gets said in a 30-second ad and what gets written into a document almost no customer reads before agreeing to it. Patagonia shows that gap can be nearly closed. Airbnb shows a company that's improved but still leaves real ambiguity for the customer. Ticketmaster shows what happens when that gap becomes the business model itself.

That's also why every case study above ends with concrete suggestions, not just a verdict — accountability is a direction a company can move in, and TrustGap is meant to show exactly which lever to pull first.

The journalism behind the tool

MAC has been reporting this gap for months. TrustGap just puts a number on it.

Before TrustGap existed, the Marketing Accountability Council Substack was already documenting the same pattern case by case — companies whose public pitch and actual fine print quietly stopped matching. Here are eight dispatches from that reporting, and how each one lines up with what TrustGap is built to measure.

What Used to Be True About Finding a Fair Apartment Is Now a RealPage Algorithm

What it said

MAC traces how RealPage’s YieldStar software quietly consolidated rent-pricing data from competing landlords into a single algorithmic brain, turning what was once a messy, negotiable rental market into coordinated, near-uniform pricing across entire cities.

How it aligns with TrustGap

This is the RealPage story at the scale of an entire market: a system marketed as a neutral efficiency tool while functioning as coordinated pricing power — the same claims-versus-mechanics gap TrustGap scores when a company’s pitch and its actual terms diverge.