Privacy Policy

• Search and booking data — postcode, appliance and brand details you enter when searching or requesting a booking, which are shared with the engineer you choose.
• Engineer application data — business and contact details submitted by engineers applying to join the marketplace.
• Review data — the display name and review text you submit.
• Technical data — basic usage events and logs used to run and secure the service.

We use this data to operate the marketplace, pass booking requests to your chosen engineer, verify and publish engineer listings, moderate reviews, and protect the service against abuse. Our lawful bases are performance of a contract, legitimate interests, and consent where required.

To understand how the marketplace is used and to improve it, we record the searches people run (the postcode, appliance and brand entered, and which listings were shown in response) and a small number of interactions on engineer listings: how often a profile is viewed, how often a phone number is revealed, and how often a visitor clicks through to an engineer’s website. We use this to see what people are looking for, where we need more engineers, and whether a search led to contact. We do not build a profile of you and we do not track you across other websites.

So that the same visit is not counted more than once, and so a search can be related to that visitor’s own later clicks on the same day, we derive a temporary, pseudonymous identifier from technical data (your IP address and browser details) combined with a secret value that changes every day. We store that identifier, not your IP address, and we do not use a cookie for this purpose. It cannot be reversed to recover your IP address, and because the daily secret changes it cannot be linked from one day to the next, so it cannot be used to recognise you over time.

Our lawful basis for this measurement is our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the service. Individual measurement records are retained for up to 14 months and are then deleted automatically.

We advertise this service, including through ChatGPT. When you arrive from one of our adverts, the advert includes a click reference that we store in a first-party cookie so we can measure whether the advert led you to find and contact an engineer. We use this only to understand which advertising works; it does not identify you by name.

To measure that outcome we use Google Analytics and OpenAI’s advertising measurement. These set cookies or similar identifiers in your browser. When you contact an engineer (by clicking a listing’s Website or Call button), we send a conversion signal to OpenAI so the advert can be credited, and the same event to Google Analytics. What is shared is limited to the click reference and the fact that a contact took place, together with technical data such as device and page; we do not send your name or the engineer’s contact details to these providers, and we do not sell your data.

The cookies used for this purpose include a click reference (wgh_oppref), a session identifier (wgh_session_id) and a traffic-source marker (wgh_traffic_source), alongside the cookies set by Google Analytics and OpenAI. You can refuse or delete cookies through your browser settings; doing so does not affect your ability to search the directory or contact an engineer.

Booking details are shared with the engineer you select. Limited advertising-conversion data is shared with Google Analytics and OpenAI as described above. We do not sell personal data. Service providers who host or support the website process data under contract with us.

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purposes above, and for as long as legal or accounting obligations require.

You have the right to access, correct, erase and restrict processing of your personal data, and to object to processing based on legitimate interests. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

To exercise your rights or ask questions about this policy, contact Whitegoods Help Ltd using the contact details published in the site footer.