Evening, Tampa Pasta House. Curtis, our AI, stands at the host stand. He's the voice that answers a customer who asks "how much, and when?" Somewhere in Tampa, someone is asking an assistant right now: "How much is the lasagna at Tampa Pasta House?" The assistant will answer. The question is with what number, and where it got it.
Tampa Pasta House is our sample restaurant. Its page, its catalog and its Telegram channel are ours.
In part 4 we checked ourselves: the prices matched everywhere, and one word didn't. On October 16, a post about the lunch lasagna said "weekdays," but lunch is served Thursday through Saturday only. Now: what does an assistant do with that?
📬 What we actually tested
On October 23, we asked Gemini 3.8 Flash eight customer questions, one at a time, twice. How much is the lasagna. Can I get the lunch lasagna on a Tuesday. What does lunch cost. Are you open for lunch on Monday. How much is the osso buco, and can I get it on a Wednesday night. The lasagna question again, in Spanish. What's the cheapest thing to eat. How much is the tiramisu, and where did you get that price.
The first time, it got the question only: nothing to read. The second time, the same question plus three "search results" we handed it ourselves: our demo page for the restaurant and two channel posts from October 16. That second round is a stand-in for search, not live search: we didn't measure which pages a real assistant would find.
With nothing to read: 4 of 8 answers had a number, and all 4 numbers were made up. With our pages: 8 of 8 had a number, every one of them ours, 0 made up, and the source named in 8 of 8.
With nothing to read, half the time it said plainly, "I don't know, check their site." The other half, it made up something that sounds right. "Tampa Pasta House is closed on Tuesdays… lunch… Wednesday through Sunday." Wrong: Tuesday is dinner, and lunch is Thursday to Saturday. Asked about lunch: "There is no established restaurant named Tampa Pasta House," and in the same answer, "around $12 to $25." In Spanish: "entre $15 y $25," for the area. For the cheapest thing: a menu the restaurant doesn't have, with free bread, garlic knots at $3–$6 and soup at $4–$7.
With our pages, every number became ours: lasagna $24, the lunch portion $15, tiramisu $10, osso buco $38 "a few orders only," each with where it came from. Asked straight out, "on a Tuesday?", it got it right: no lunch, dinner from five.
And our mistake came along with our number. In 4 of 8 answers, right next to the correct $15, sits our own word: "available on weekdays until the tray runs out," in Spanish "entre semana." In three of them, the same model writes "lunch Thursday through Saturday" a line away, and doesn't notice the clash.
An assistant repeats the number you wrote. And the word you wrote next to it.
🛠 How to repeat without code
- Write down the prices of your three to five main items, and every word that sits next to them: "today only," "weekdays," "until 2 p.m."
- Ask your ChatGPT: "How much is <item> at <your business> in <your city>?" Then ask in the next message: "Where did you get that price?"
- Paste the text of your page and your latest post about that price into the chat, and ask the same thing again.
- Ask about a price with a time attached: "Can I get <item> on a Tuesday?"
- Mark every number in both answers: ours, someone else's, made up, or ours but out of date.
🧾 The bill and the limits
16 requests in 3 minutes 40 seconds, 7 to 29 seconds per answer. The tool doesn't print token counts. One model, eight questions, one run. We handed it the pages in the second round ourselves; a real search might not have found them. The restaurant is our sample, not a real business. We didn't look at prices from delivery apps here.
✅ Before you trust an assistant with your prices
- ☐ Ask about your prices yourself, the way a customer would, and ask where the number came from.
- ☐ Keep each price in one place, and copy it from there, not from memory.
- ☐ Reread the words next to a price: "weekdays," "today only," "until two."
- ☐ Check that the hours in every post match the hours on your site.
- ☐ Take down or update a post when its price or condition goes out of date.
- ☐ Ask in your customers' second language too.
Want to know what AI already says about your business? Check: smashone.us/check/
Have you asked an assistant about your prices, and where it got them?
