ChatGPT names who offers financing for heating, never for a dentist

Short answer: ask ChatGPT for a good dentist and it may tell you to check payment options. It will not tell you who has them. In 32 of its 178 dentist answers, collected in 89 cities across eight countries, it raised payment plans, 30 times under the same heading, "Insurance and Payment Options". It credited no named practice with offering one. For heating and air conditioning it does the opposite: in 6 answers out of 7, it names the company that offers financing.

So the same assistant treats two large bills in two ways. For a boiler or a heat pump, financing is a selling point it attaches to a name. For dental work, it is a box the patient has to tick alone. Gemini names the practice in 8 of 17 dentist answers. And in France, neither engine mentioned paying in instalments at all, for any trade.

The patient learns that they should ask. The homeowner learns who to ask.

What was measured

Eight Waseit studies asked two buyer questions - the best providers of a trade in a city, then the most recommended ones and why - for 18 to 20 trades in 89 cities: 13 each in France (30 July 2026), the United Kingdom (31 July), Brazil (6 August) and the United States (13 September), then 11 in Canada, 10 in Australia, 6 in New Zealand and 10 in Singapore (16 October), each time in the local language. ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and Gemini answered through their programming interfaces, without web search: 3,059 and 3,058 answers, 178 each about dentists. Perplexity, which searches the web, answered 1,364 times in France, the UK and Brazil. We pulled every sentence about flexible payment - payment plans, financing, interest-free, monthly membership plans, Afterpay or Klarna - and read all 78 passages. Three were not about spreading a payment and were set aside. Each remaining answer was then classed: does it credit a company it names with this option, or give general advice?

Which assistant says who lets you pay in instalments?

For a dentist, ChatGPT never does. All 32 of its mentions are advice: make sure the practice accepts your insurance or offers flexible payment plans. None names a practice. Across all trades it raises payment in 43 of 3,059 answers and stays at general advice 37 times. For heating and air conditioning, it names. Its 6 credits to a named company are all in those trades, in Canada, the US, Australia and Brazil. One name keeps coming back: Reliance Home Comfort, cited for its financing by ChatGPT in Toronto and Mississauga and by Gemini in Hamilton, which calls it "a large national corporation". Gemini names more often. It raises payment in 29 answers and ties it to a named company 19 times: 11 of 12 for heating and air conditioning, 8 of 17 for dentists, often a monthly membership plan in the UK or Afterpay and Zip in Australia. Perplexity, which searches the web, raises it 3 times, always about a named business. In France, neither ChatGPT nor Gemini mentions it in 462 answers each. The pattern echoes digital X-rays, which ChatGPT recommends without saying who has them.

What it means if you are the business

If you offer a payment plan, ChatGPT tells your patients to ask for one, but not that you have it. The companies it names for financing are well-known heating brands whose offer it has absorbed. So write the offer down in text, on your site, in your customers' language: how many instalments, from what amount, with or without fees, through which provider, and for which treatments or jobs. A clear sentence beats a partner logo. Do not claim what you do not offer. When an assistant searches the web, as Gemini does in our audit, a precise page is what it can read. These are reasonable steps, not levers with a known effect: we have not measured whether such a page makes a business named more often. And if the assistant tells your customers to check payment options, does it put your name next to that advice? The audit shows you, question by question.

And your business, what do the assistants say?

The free Waseit audit asks ChatGPT and Gemini the questions your customers type, in their language and for your city. In about 60 seconds you get a score out of 100, the competitors named instead of you, the questions where you do not appear, the tone of the sentences that mention you and, when Gemini searched Google, the pages it actually read. It is free, with no account and no card; an email address only unlocks competitor names and the action plan. It is a dated snapshot, not a ranking: answers change from one day to the next, and we promise no position.

What this does not prove

• These are the models' answers through their programming interfaces, with no user location; ChatGPT and Gemini answered without web search, Perplexity searched and was asked in three countries only.
• Each question was asked once, between 30 July and 16 October 2026; ChatGPT here is gpt-4o-mini, not necessarily the model in the app, and the models may have changed since.
• The bases are small: 43 ChatGPT answers and 29 Gemini answers. The gaps between trades are clear, but they are orders of magnitude.
• We did not check whether the named companies really offer financing: we measure what the assistants say, not whether it is true.
• The count rests on a list of words, read sentence by sentence. A wider list (monthly payments, spread the cost, finance) adds 5 Gemini answers, 4 of which name a company, and no ChatGPT answer.