Who we are
Choose Independent is a directory of independent vehicle bodyshops (“we”, “us”). We are the data controller for the personal data described here.
For anything on this page, including a request to see or delete your data, email sales@chooseindependent.co.uk.
If you are a driver looking for a bodyshop
Searching collects nothing. There is no account, no tracking cookie and no analytics on this site. We do not know who you are, and we are not building a profile of you. Your postcode is sent to Postcodes.io to turn it into map coordinates, and that is the whole of it.
If you send a quote request, we collect your name and phone number, and your email address, vehicle registration, make and model, description of the damage and any photos you choose to add. We pass all of it to the single shop you selected, so they can quote for the work. We rely on our legitimate interests to do this — it is the thing you asked us to do by pressing send.
Your enquiry goes to that one shop. It is not auctioned, not sold, not shared with other shops, and not passed to insurers, brokers or claims-management companies. We take no commission, so we have nothing to gain from spreading it around.
If you leave a review, the name you give and what you write are published on that shop’s profile. Use only the name you are content to have shown publicly.
If you run a bodyshop and apply for a listing
We collect your business details, a contact name, phone number and email address, and a password — which is stored only as a bcrypt hash, so nobody here can read it, and we could not tell you what it is if you asked. We process this to provide the listing you applied for, which is a contract between us.
We also collect the certificates you upload as proof of your accreditations. These often name individual technicians. They are stored in private storage — not on the public web — and are visible only to you and to us while we check them. They are never published; only the resulting badge is. Where a document is shown to an administrator, it is served through a short-lived signed link rather than a public address.
Your business name, address, postcode, phone number and verified badges appear publicly on your profile once your listing goes live. That is the point of the listing.
What is collected automatically
One cookie, and only if you log in: a session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the site to work and carries no tracking, which is why there is no cookie banner — there is nothing to consent to.
Profile view counts. We count how many times a shop’s profile is opened, so the shop can see whether the listing is working. The record is a timestamp and nothing else — no IP address, no device details, no identifier. It cannot be traced to a person, including by us.
Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, which include IP addresses, for security and to keep the service running.
Who else handles it
These are our processors. They act on our instructions and cannot use your data for their own purposes.
- Vercel — hosting. Served from London.
- Supabase — the database. Hosted in London (eu-west-2).
- Cloudflare R2 — storage for uploaded certificates and photos, in a private EU bucket.
- Resend — sends our email, using Amazon SES.
- Postcodes.io — turns a postcode into coordinates. It receives the postcode only.
There are no advertising networks, no data brokers and no analytics companies in that list, and we do not intend to add any. Some of these suppliers are US-headquartered; where data leaves the UK it is protected by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or standard contractual clauses.
We will also disclose data where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.
How long we keep it
- Quote requests: 24 months, then deleted.
- Shop accounts and listings: for as long as the listing is active, and 12 months after it ends.
- Uploaded certificates: while the badge they support is on your listing. When a shop is removed, we delete its listing, its enquiries, its login and the documents it uploaded.
- Reviews: kept while the shop is listed, since removing them would misrepresent the shop’s record.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to what we do with it, or to have it sent to someone else in a portable form. Email sales@chooseindependent.co.uk and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data 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 so we can put it right.
Emails we send to bodyshops
We contact UK bodyshop businesses to tell them about listing on the directory, relying on our legitimate interests in doing so. Every such email says who it is from and how to stop it. Reply asking us to stop and we will, permanently, without needing a reason.
Changes
If we change what we collect or who handles it, we will update this page and change the date at the top.