Privacy.

Who we are

Michael Doherty (a sole trader trading as SkipDeck) of 42 Knoll Drive, Coventry CV3 5BU is the data controller for everything described on this page.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration ZC244421.

Ask us anything about this at hello@skipdeck.co.uk.

What this page covers, and what it does not

This page is about this website, about people who contact us — asking for a trial, emailing us, or subscribing — and about skip firms we have emailed first.

It is not about the information inside a customer's book. When a skip firm uses SkipDeck, that firm is the controller of its own customers' details and we act as its processor on its instructions. What we may do with it is clause 12 of our terms, and the notice to its own customers is the firm's to publish, not ours.

When you ask for a trial

The form on our sign-up page records:

• Your firm's name, and your name.
• Your email address and phone number — the email is where your book's address is sent.
• Your yard's address or postcode. Every route is planned from it, so we cannot set a book up without it.
• How many lorries you run, and anything you write in the notes box.
• The IP address and browser the request came from.

That last one is worth being straight about: we keep it to rate-limit the form and to spot a flood of junk after the event. It is not shown on any screen and we do not use it to build a picture of you.

Why we are allowed to: you asked us for a service, so this is us taking steps at your request before entering a contract. For the IP address and browser it is our legitimate interest in keeping the form usable and free of abuse.

How long we keep it: until the request is dead — you become a customer, you tell us no, or enough time passes that it plainly is not happening. We delete the row then. If you would like it gone sooner, ask.

When we email you first

We write to skip hire firms that might want SkipDeck, at the business address the firm publishes — one email, perhaps one follow-up, from a person rather than a mailing system. We hold the firm's name, that address and its published phone number.

The link in the email carries a short code that tells us which firm it was sent to. When it is followed, our server records:

• The code, and when the link was followed.
• The IP address and browser it was followed from.
• Which pages of this website were then loaded from that same address and browser, from our server's own log of requests.

Nothing is stored on your device to do this — no cookie, no tracking image. We do not put tracking images in our emails at all, so we do not know whether one was opened. All of this only tells us whether writing to you was worth it, and what was worth reading.

Why we are allowed to: our legitimate interest in offering our service to businesses it is made for. Say no — reply "stop", or email hello@skipdeck.co.uk — and we will not write again. We keep your address on a do-not-contact list for that reason only, because deleting it would let it back onto a list later.

How long we keep it: our server's log of requests to this website is deleted after 90 days. The record of who we wrote to and what followed is deleted within twelve months of the last email, unless you become a customer. Ask and we will delete it sooner.

When you email us

Our email, including hello@skipdeck.co.uk, is hosted by Google Workspace. We keep the correspondence for as long as it is useful — a support thread, a question about pricing — and no longer.

Why we are allowed to: our legitimate interest in answering you, or performing our contract if you are already a customer.

When you write to us from inside SkipDeck

The ? button in a firm's own screens opens a Help panel with a message box in it. A message sent from there comes to us, not to the firm you work for. We receive what you typed, your name and email address, which screen you were on, and which firm's address you were signed in to — that last part is collected by the page rather than typed, so a message about a broken screen arrives with enough to find it.

This is the one place where we, rather than your employer, decide what happens to what you wrote. Everything else we hold about a firm's book is held on their instructions, for them. A message to us is to us.

Why we are allowed to: our legitimate interest in answering you, or performing our contract where you are already a customer.

How long we keep it: as long as the thread is useful, and no longer. Ask and we will delete it.

We do not use it for marketing, and we do not pass it to anyone.

When you subscribe

Payments are taken by Stripe. They collect your name, business name, billing address and card details directly — we never see or store your full card number. What we see is what appears on our own invoices: who you are, what you paid, whether it succeeded.

Why we are allowed to: performing our contract with you, and our legal obligation to keep proper accounting records.

How long we keep it: invoices and the records behind them for six years after the end of the tax year they fall in, because HMRC requires it. That period is not something we can shorten on request.

Measurement on this site

Our home page, our sign-up page and the guides linked from them can carry Google Analytics, Google Ads and Google Tag Manager.

Our home page and our digital waste tracking page can also carry Microsoft Clarity, which records how the page is used — clicks, scrolling and mouse movement — as heatmaps and replays of a visit, so we can see what gets read and what gets skipped. Clarity hides anything typed into a box.

Two limits hold all of this in place, and both are enforced by code rather than by intention:

• It is limited to those pages. It never runs on a firm's book, never on a firm's booking page, and never on any application screen — so no firm's staff and no firm's customers are measured.
• Nothing loads until you accept the banner. These are non-essential cookies, consent is required before they are set, declining is offered as prominently as accepting, and no answer is treated as a refusal.

Your choice is stored in your own browser and never reaches a server of ours. You can change it at any time from the Cookies link at the foot of our home page.

This page carries no measurement of its own, and neither does our terms page.

Why we are allowed to: your consent, and only your consent.

Who else sees any of this

• Hetzner Online GmbH — hosts our servers and backups, in Finland, within the EU. They do not use anything for purposes of their own.
• Stripe — takes payments and holds card details, as their own controller for that.
• Google — hosts our email (Google Workspace). Separately, and only if you accepted measurement, Google Analytics on the pages above.
• Microsoft — only if you accepted measurement, Microsoft Clarity on our home page and digital waste tracking page. Microsoft and Microsoft Advertising receive what Clarity records; how Microsoft uses it is in the Microsoft Privacy Statement at privacy.microsoft.com.

We do not sell anything to anybody, and we do not share your details with other advertisers.

Our own servers are in the EU. Stripe, Google and Microsoft are international and may process outside the UK under the safeguards in their own terms.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict what we do with it, and object to us relying on legitimate interests. Where we rely on consent you can withdraw it at any time.

Email hello@skipdeck.co.uk and we will answer within a month. We do not charge for this.

If we get it wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first and gave us the chance to fix it.

Changes

If we change how any of this works we will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change matters to you — a new recipient, a new purpose — we will tell customers directly rather than relying on you noticing.