PRIVACY AND PANIC MECHANIC

I(We), Panic Mechanic, carry on business as a mobile mechanic service with sole proprietorship. We are committed to protecting any data that we collect concerning you. By using our services you agree to the use of the data that we collect in accordance with this privacy policy. We hope that you will be satisfied that this policy is transparent in how we collect, store, protect and maintain your data.

COMMITTED TO PROTECTING YOUR PRIVACY

We collect the minimum amount of information about you that is commensurate with providing you with a satisfactory service. This policy indicates the type of processes that may result in data being collected about you. Your use of this website and our service gives us the right to collect that information.

The Panic Mechanic website is certified with SSL. SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and is a form of security for websites that handle sensitive information such as visitor’s personal information. It creates a secure connection between a visitor’s web browser and the server of the company they’re interacting with. The SSL certificate ensures that personal information you share with us is encrypted and secure from interception and is identified in our website address as “HTTPS” – https://thepanicmechanic.com, you will also see a padlock in your browser next to our website address.

INFORMATION COLLECTED

We may collect any or all of the information that you give us depending on the type of transaction you enter into, specifically: name, address, telephone number, email address, vehicle M.O.T status and vehicle make and model and registration number, (usually a photograph is taken when work on the vehicle is being conducted, to help record vehicle identification and parts needing repair). We will also record how you heard about us e.g. Google or Word of Mouth etc. If you found us via a Search Engine such as Google, we would want to record what keywords you used. We will also record the date that you first contacted us, whether it was a phone call, email or website form and therefore marking the date your information first entered into our database. Other information such as data about your use of the website or information that may be needed from time to time to process a specific request, may also be collected as indicated on the website.

GOOGLE ADSENSE

Google Ads are being served on panicmechanic.com via Google Adsense. In August 2017, Google announced its commitment to comply with the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK. The Panic Mechanic website supports user consent to serve personalised ads and therefore has enabled the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin tool to collect user consent.
When you visit our website you will see a message pop up giving you the option to consent or decline the processing of your personal data and information from your device (cookies, unique identifiers, and other device data), which may be stored by, accessed by and shared with third party vendors, or used specifically by this site or app.

Some vendors may process your personal data on the basis of legitimate interest, which you can object to by declining consent. Please see below for more information on cookies or visit our dedicated cookie page here for a list of cookies on this site. For more information on Google Adsense visit: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7670013. To change your cookie consent at anytime, click on the “Manage Cookie Consent” link in the footer.

SQUARE

When collecting data specifically for making a payment, transactions are easy, safe and secure with “Square”, our trusted partner for processing all types payments such as, cash or card payment as well as Apple and Google Pay. From the time a customer uses a credit/debit card or enters their information into Square’s payment system, such as the card reader or via electronic invoicing, payment data is encrypted until it reaches Square’s processing environment. Square’s proprietary tokenization scheme ensures that unencrypted payment data never touches our devices or applications. see Square’s security notice here.

INFORMATION USE

We use the information collected primarily to process the task for which you visited the website e.g. submit a comment on our blog, request a quote (via phone, email or website form) for the service, maintenance or repair of your vehicle. Data collected in the UK is held in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). All reasonable precautions are taken to prevent unauthorised access to this information, which is stored within a software that is password protected and secure with SSL encryption. This safeguard may require you to provide additional forms of identity should you wish to obtain information about your account details.

INFORMATION STORAGE AND SECURITY

We use Google Office Suite as our software choice to run our business operations. Otherwise known as “G Suite”, it includes “Contacts” where our customer data is stored and “Photos” where pictures of our customer vehicles are stored as referenced in the ‘Information Collected’ section above. Please note that photos of customer vehicles are only for the use of Panic Mechanic to e.g. log a customer’s vehicle registration number, so that we are able to look up job times for that vehicle, or to provide evidence of any damage to parts that we are able to share with the customer. We can not guarantee that at the time the photo is taken that it might identify a member of public in the background or even the customer e.g. standing next to their car, but we can guarantee that the photo is private and not shared with any third party and stored securely within our G Suite software.

Encryption is an important piece of the G Suite security strategy, helping to protect all our customer data. It is also important to note that the laptop or mobile phone device used to capture any customer information e.g. contact details or vehicle photograph, is protected with either a password and/or fingerprint security and anti-virus software, and stored in the G Suite’s apps. G Suite enables additional administrative security on a mobile phone, whereby data can be remotely deleted if the phone was lost or stolen. A remote device wipe will remove all work and personal apps and data is removed. The device is reset to its factory settings.

When you use our website to submit a comment on our blog or a web form, the data in the form is processed through our website software called “WordPress”. WordPress is a tool to create or manage your website otherwise know as content management system (CMS). In order to enrich the user experience through various features or development tools, WordPress has a plugin library where you can download and install these extra features.

When your information is processed through our website via WordPress and any associated plugin, it is captured in our WordPress form library and then automatically published to the administrator via email, which is delivered to the administrator’s G Suite “Gmail” inbox. The form data is then processed into the G Suite Contacts database. The path from website to administrator to contact database is safe and secure with WordPress password protection and the software and associated plugins are kept regularly updated. The website forms are protected with anti-spam software to prevent malicious use of the website forms. WordPress is also encrypted with an SSL certificate. Similarly, the data when delivered to the administrator’s inbox; the email provider being “Gmail”, is an application that is part of the G Suite license and protected by the G Suite security policy.

DISCLOSING INFORMATION

We do not disclose any personal information obtained about you from this website to third parties except when we need to do so in order to complete the transaction – e.g. when arranging for a courier company to deliver goods that you have ordered. We may also use the information to keep in contact with you and inform you of your due M.O.T or Service or educational and promotional information associated with our business. You will be given the opportunity to remove yourself from any mailing list or similar device. If at any time in the future we should wish to disclose information collected on this website to any third party, it would only be with your knowledge and consent.

Data shall be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is being processed. For example, customer and prospect data; we will keep our customer data until such time the customer requests to be removed from our database or no longer wishes to use our services. Prospects who communicate with us and have opted in to receiving marketing communications, their data will be kept until such time as that individual opts out of receiving communications from Panic Mechanic. A prospect who does not opt-in to receive marketing communications from us, having been offered this option either by ticking a website opt-in box on a web form, a phone dialogue or email communication, their data will not be kept in our database and we will not send communications.

Any customer or prospect data stored in our databases that does not have an on-going purpose e.g. customer relations, or opt-in to marketing communications, shall be removed from our databases permanently; data is deleted from the application(s) where data is stored. You have the right at any time to be removed from our marketing communications by opting-out, and you also have the right to be removed from our databases – please use the contact details at the bottom of this page to make any data requests.

We may from time to time provide information of a general nature to third parties – for example, the number of individuals visiting our website or completing a registration form, but we will not use any information that could identify those individuals.

COOKIE POLICY

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality. For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies. To change your cookie consent at anytime, click on the “Manage Cookie Consent” link in the footer.

The Cookies We Set

When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site. Please refer to the earlier section on Google Adsense for cookies on advertising.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

If we sell products on our website it’s important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. Please visit our dedicated cookie page for a list of cookies on this site.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be placed here and will supersede this version of our policy. We will take reasonable steps to draw your attention to any changes in our policy. However, to be on the safe side, please read this page each time you use the website. This policy was last updated on, 17th January 2022, (adding the Google Adsense paragraph).

Our website might contain links to other websites. This Privacy Policy only applies to our website. If you click a link to another website, you should read their Privacy Policy.

CONTACTING US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or information we have collected about you, please contact us. You can contact Maria Martin, Marketing and Operations at Panic Mechanic via email: info@thepanicmechanic.com, or phone: 01730 300190. You can correct any factual errors or request us to remove your details from any list under our control.