What I do with your details

What I ask you for

There is no form running on this website today, so every detail I hold about you is something you typed into a message or said to me on the phone. If you sent it in writing, your own sent messages are the whole list of it.

This is what I actually need to answer you. Anything past this list does not help me fix a chip.

• Your name
• Your mobile number, so I can tell you when I am on my way
• Your email address, only if you would rather have it in writing. You do not have to give one
• Where the car is during the day, which is the address I drive to
• Which car it is, so I find the right one in a car park or a driveway
• Whether the damage is in front of the driver, because that one never gets repaired
• How long the chip has been there
• The photos you send me of the damage

What I never ask for

Some of this matters more than the list above, because it is the stuff that hurts you if it leaks. A chip repair does not need any of it, so I do not ask.

• Card numbers or bank details
• Your date of birth, your licence or any other ID
• Your insurance policy number, your claim number or your insurer login
• Your registration papers or anything about who owns the car
• Anything about your health, your money or your household
• Your address if the car is not going to be there. I only need the one place I am driving to

The photos you send me

A photo of the chip with a coin next to it answers most of the question before I drive anywhere. So the photos are the useful part of what you send, and they are also the part worth being careful with.

They stay between us. I would like to use before and after shots to show the work on this site one day, and that only happens if you say yes first, in writing, for those photos. Silence is not a yes, and you can say no without it changing anything about the repair or the price.

• No photo of your car goes on this site or on social media without your written yes
• No number plate and nothing else that identifies the car in anything I publish
• No photo of the inside of your car. The work happens on the outside of the glass
• Nothing sent on to a glass supplier, an insurer or a lead broker

What I use it for

One job, one visit, one reason for each thing you told me. If a use is not on this list, it is not happening.

• Telling you whether the damage can be repaired or whether it needs replacing
• Turning up at the right car, and messaging you if I am running late
• The invoice for the work, once there is one
• Telling you what the repair left behind, because a repaired chip always leaves a faint mark

• No marketing list. Asking me about a chip does not subscribe you to anything
• No selling or swapping your details with glass shops, insurers, dealers or lead brokers
• No profiling, no advertising audiences and no uploading your number to a platform
• No ringing you about something you never asked about

What this website does not do

Plenty of small business websites carry trackers the owner has never looked at. This one carries none, and that is something you can check yourself with the inspector in your browser. Here is the honest state of it.

Where your details actually sit

When you book or ask for a price on this site, what you enter is kept on the website's server: your name, mobile and email, the suburb, the car details, any photos you add, and the booking with its price. Only I can see it.

If you type your name and mobile in the price steps and do not finish, those two are kept so I can text or call you back once. The site also counts how many people reach each step of the calculator, without any name, number or address attached.

Who can see it

Me. There is nobody else in this business, so there is nobody to hand it to. No receptionist, no call centre, nobody subcontracted. If that ever changes, whoever else can see your message gets named on this page before they see one.

Which companies are involved

Contabo Asia Private Limited rents me the server this website runs on. It is in Sydney, so your booking details are stored in Australia.

Cloudflare, Inc., a company in the United States, sits in front of the website to keep it fast and protected. Everything you send passes through it on the way to the server, and it can be handled outside Australia.

When a booking or a price request comes in, I get a notice by email with your details, to a Gmail account. Gmail is run by Google LLC, which can store that email outside Australia.

Whichever they end up being, the phone network and the email provider you use to reach me can see that message too. That is true of every business you message, and it is worth knowing rather than pretending otherwise.

Where the website is running

On a server in Sydney, Australia, rented from Contabo Asia Private Limited. The two things that can take your details outside Australia are Cloudflare, which the traffic passes through, and the Gmail account where booking notices arrive. Both are named above.

Insurance, and why I stay out of it

If you are thinking of claiming, that conversation is between you and your insurer. I am not an agent for anyone and I do not lodge claims, so I have no reason to hold your policy details and I do not want them.

There are two things worth asking them, and you ask them, not me. Whether the policy limits how many glass claims you can make, and whether a glass claim affects your no claim discount. What the answers mean for your money is a decision only you can make, and I am not qualified to make it for you.

How long I keep it

A job that happened leaves a paper trail a business is expected to be able to produce later. A question that never became a job does not need keeping at all, and my instinct is to clear those out.

Getting a copy, fixing it or having it deleted

You can ask what I hold about you, ask me to correct it if I wrote your address down wrong, or ask me to delete it. You do not have to give a reason, and asking costs nothing.

Include the mobile you contacted me from so I can find the right messages, and so I am not handing your details to somebody else who asked for them.

• Ask for a copy of what I hold and you get what I hold, not a summary of it
• Ask me to correct something wrong and the corrected version is the one that stays
• Ask me to delete it and I delete what I am not required to keep
• Ask me to stop contacting you and I stop

The law this sits under

In Australia the rules for personal information are the Privacy Act 1988 and the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles inside it. The Act generally applies to businesses turning over more than 3 million dollars a year, so it probably does not cover one person with a van. I am not going to pretend a regulator is watching this closely.

I work to the Australian Privacy Principles anyway, because you are telling me where your car sits during the day and that deserves the same care either way. In plain terms that means the following.

• I collect only what the job needs, and this page says what that is
• I tell you why I want something at the point I ask for it
• I use it for the job you asked about and not for something else
• I do not sell it and I do not pass it on
• You can see it, correct it and ask for it to be deleted
• If what I do changes, this page changes and it gets a new date

If something leaks

A phone gets lost. An email account gets broken into. If I work out that your details have been seen by somebody who should not have seen them, I tell you what happened, what was in it and what I have done about it. As soon as I know, not once it is tidy.

If you are not happy with how I handled it, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner takes privacy complaints in Australia. They may well tell you the Act does not cover a business this small, which is the same honest position set out above, but you should hear that from them and not only from me.

Common questions

One last honest note

This page describes what actually happens today, in plain words, and it is not legal advice. No lawyer has read it. One would probably tighten the wording and add the parts a small business forgets, and getting that done is on the list before this site goes public.

So read it as a straight answer rather than as a document that has been through anybody's compliance review. Where something is not decided yet it says so instead of guessing. If you ever spot something on this page that does not match what I actually did with your details, tell me and I will fix the page or fix the practice, whichever one is wrong.

Where to go next