WattMatch: PRIVACY & DATA PROTECTION POLICY

1.1. Data Controller: The Electric Transport Shop Ltd is the Data Controller for all information processed through WattMatch.

1.2. Data Minimisation: We only collect the specific personal data necessary to verify the legitimacy of a transaction and prevent fraud.

1.3. Purpose Limitation: Your sensitive identification data is used exclusively for the verification of your identity and ownership of listed eBikes.

2.2. Secure Storage: All sensitive documents are stored in encrypted private storage in the United Kingdom or the European Union. Access is restricted to a limited number of authorized WattMatch administrators via timed, secure links.

2.3. Purge Policy (The Right to be Forgotten):

• ID Documents: Sensitive photo identification is deleted from our active storage at a clean-up we hold every six months, once 6 months have passed since the transaction was completed or the account was closed, unless a legal dispute is active.
• Transaction Metadata: We retain basic transaction records (names, dates, frame numbers) for 7 years to comply with UK financial and tax regulations.

3.1. Digital Title Records: Upon successful sale, we create a Digital Ownership Title. This record contains the bike’s technical specs and frame number.

3.2. Anonymisation: While the title record is permanent, we ensure it does not publicly display your private residential address or contact details. Only the current owner and the platform can view the full history.

4.1. Payment Facilitators: We share necessary details with our Payment Facilitators to ensure Secure Funds can be processed and paid out to your bank account.

4.2. Law Enforcement: We reserve the right to share all verification data, including IDs and selfies, with UK police authorities if a listed bike is reported as lost or stolen.

4.3. No Marketing Sale: We never sell your data to third-party advertisers. Your information is only shared to facilitate the specific transaction you have initiated.

4.4. Wattson Queries: Typed questions to Wattson, our automated guide, are shared with the AI service described in section 7 below.

5.1. Right of Access: You may request a copy of all data we hold about you at any time.

5.2. Right to Erasure: You may request that we delete your account and associated data once all active escrow transactions are finalised.

5.3. Right to Complain: In accordance with the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, you have a formal right to lodge a complaint regarding our data practices. We will acknowledge any complaint within 30 days.

6.1. Essential Cookies: We use only essential functional cookies to manage your secure login session and the "Verified" status of your listings. No non-essential tracking is performed without your explicit consent.

7.1. What Wattson Is: Wattson is an automated guide on the site. It is not a person.

7.2. Help That Works Locally: The buttons and step-by-step help in Wattson work inside your browser. When you use these features, nothing is sent to anyone.

7.3. Typed Questions: When you type a question, the question is sent to an AI service so that an answer can be written. It is sent through an AI routing service to an AI model run by a company in the European Union, in data centres in the European Union. That company states that it does not store questions or use them for training.

7.4. What Is Sent with Your Question: The words you typed (your last few questions) and the kind of page you are on are sent. If you are looking at a bike listing, that listing's public details such as price and bike type are also sent. If you are signed in, the stage of your own listings and reservations is sent (for example "reserved" or "waiting for payout", and the relevant deadline), so the answer fits your situation.

7.5. What Is Never Sent: Your name, email address, postal address, account or wallet identifiers, payment details, identity documents, collection PINs, messages between you and another customer, or the names of bikes are never sent.

7.6. Automatic Removal of Personal Details: Before a typed question is sent or recorded, email addresses, phone numbers, postcodes and long numbers are removed from it automatically. This cannot catch everything, so please do not type personal details into Wattson.

7.7. Recording of Questions: We keep a record of typed questions so we can improve our guides. The record holds the question (after the removal described above), the kind of page, the date and whether Wattson could answer. The record does not hold your name, account or IP address. It is deleted after 180 days.

7.8. Usage Limits: To apply daily limits we keep a scrambled counter worked out from your IP address, or from your account if you are signed in. It is used only for counting and is deleted after two days.

7.9. Your Conversation History: Your conversation with Wattson is kept in your browser for the current tab only and is cleared when you sign out. If you ask Wattson not to remind you about something, that choice is kept in your browser.

7.10. Form-Filling Assistance: Answers you give while Wattson helps you fill in a form stay in your browser.

7.11. Specification Text Tidying: If you press "Ask Wattson to tidy this" on a listing's specifications, that text is sent to the same AI service. Lines that look like a serial number, phone number or email address are removed first.

7.12. How to Contact Us: You can contact us about Wattson through the contact page on the site. You need to be signed in to use it.

8.1. What We Record: When a bike sold through our Full Service Certified Sale is collected from one of our stores, a member of our staff photographs the person collecting it, with the bike, as proof of collection. Where the buyer has named someone else to collect for them, that person is photographed. Our store staff cannot complete the handover without the photograph. With the photograph we record which sale it belongs to, the date and time, and the name of the member of staff who took it.

8.2. How We Use It: We use the photograph only to evidence the handover and to resolve disputes. It is not displayed anywhere on the site, and it is not given to the seller.

8.3. Who Can See It: It can be seen only by authorised WattMatch administrators, and only where a dispute or claim has been raised about the sale. We may pass it to the police, and to legal or financial parties involved in a dispute about the sale.

8.4. Storage and Retention: It is stored privately in the United Kingdom or the European Union. We keep it for six months and delete it at our next six-monthly clean-up after that, unless a dispute, claim or police enquiry about the sale is still open. A photograph taken for a collection that does not go ahead is not kept.

8.5. Deletion on Request: If you ask us to delete a photograph, we can do so once 90 days have passed since the collection.