Privacy policy

1. Who we are

GoScale Ltd ("GoScale", "we", "us" or "our") is a marketing and lead-generation agency for car stylers, detailers and other automotive businesses. We are a private limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 16310006, with our registered office at 180 Downs Barn Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK14 7QQ, United Kingdom.

We are the data controller for personal information collected through our website at https://go-scale.co.uk, our booking and enquiry forms, our advertising, and our phone, email and text-message communications, unless this policy says otherwise (see section 7 for the situations where we act on behalf of a client).

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Contact details such as your name, business name, email address, postal address and mobile or landline phone number.
• Enquiry and application details you provide when you fill in a form, complete a survey, book a call or apply to work with us, such as the type of business you run, your location, your current marketing and your goals.
• Communication content including emails, text messages, chat messages and the content of phone or video calls with our team.
• Consent records such as the date, time, source and wording of any opt-in you give us to contact you by phone, email or text message.
• Payment information where you pay us for services. Card details are processed by our payment provider and are never stored on our systems.

Information we collect automatically

• Technical data such as your IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, referring website and the pages you visit on our site.
• Advertising and analytics data collected through cookies and similar technologies (see section 8).
• Message delivery data such as whether a text message or email was delivered, opened or replied to.

Information from other sources

• Details you submit through advertising platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram) lead forms, Google or TikTok when you respond to one of our adverts.
• Publicly available business information, for example from your website, Google Business Profile or social media, used to understand and serve your business.

3. How we use your information

We use personal information to:

• Respond to your enquiry, qualify your application and arrange and confirm strategy calls or appointments.
• Provide, manage and improve our services, including running advertising campaigns, building websites and funnels, and reporting on results.
• Send service messages such as booking confirmations, reminders, follow-ups to your enquiry and updates about work we are doing for you.
• Send marketing communications about our services where you have agreed to receive them or where we are otherwise permitted to do so. You can opt out at any time.
• Take and process payments, keep accounting records and enforce our agreements.
• Train our team and improve the quality of our calls and messaging.
• Keep our website and systems secure, prevent fraud and comply with our legal obligations.

Our legal bases (UK and EU GDPR)

• Consent, for marketing text messages and emails, non-essential cookies and, where required, call recording. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Performance of a contract or taking steps at your request before entering one, for example responding to your enquiry and delivering services.
• Legitimate interests, for running and growing our business, following up business enquiries, improving our services, and keeping our systems secure, provided your interests and rights do not override these.
• Legal obligation, for keeping tax and accounting records and responding to lawful requests.

4. SMS and text messaging

We use text messaging (SMS and MMS) to communicate with people who have given us their mobile number and agreed to receive texts. This section explains how that programme works. The full programme terms are in our SMS terms of service.

How you opt in

You opt in to receive text messages from GoScale when you provide your mobile number and agree to be contacted by text, for example by ticking the consent box on a form on our website, on our online booking calendar, on an advert lead form, by replying to a message from us, or by asking a member of our team to text you. We keep a record of each opt-in, including the date, time, source and the consent wording you were shown.

What we send

• Replies to your enquiry and conversational messages with our team.
• Appointment and strategy-call confirmations, reminders and rescheduling messages.
• Follow-ups about an application, booking or service you have requested.
• Occasional marketing messages about our services, only where you have consented to marketing texts.

Message frequency varies depending on your enquiry and the conversation. Message and data rates may apply according to your mobile carrier's plan. Consent to receive texts is not a condition of purchasing any goods or services from us.

How to opt out or get help

Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts from that number. You will receive one final message confirming you have been unsubscribed, after which no further messages will be sent unless you opt in again. Reply HELP for help, or contact us using the details in section 16. You can also ask any member of our team to remove your number.

5. Calls and call recording

Calls with our team may be recorded and transcribed for quality, training, dispute resolution and to help us keep an accurate record of what was agreed. Where the law requires it, you will be told at the start of the call that it is being recorded and given the chance to object. Recordings and transcripts are stored securely, accessible only to authorised staff, and kept in line with section 10.

6. Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information. We share it only as described below:

• Service providers who process information on our behalf and only on our instructions, including our customer relationship management and booking platform, telephony and text-messaging providers, email providers, website hosting, analytics, payment processing, cloud storage, automation tools and internal communication tools. These providers may only use your information to provide services to us.
• Advertising platforms such as Meta and Google, to measure the performance of our advertising and, where you have consented to cookies, to show relevant adverts. We do not share your phone number or SMS consent with advertising platforms for their own marketing.
• Professional advisers such as accountants, lawyers and insurers where necessary.
• Authorities where required by law, regulation, court order or to protect our rights or the safety of others.
• A buyer or successor if our business or assets are sold or merged, in which case this policy will continue to apply to your information.

Text messaging opt-in data and consent are never shared with third parties except the messaging providers who deliver our texts on our behalf, and only for that purpose.

7. If you enquired with one of our clients

GoScale provides marketing, enquiry-handling and appointment booking services to automotive businesses such as car stylers and detailers. If you enquired with, booked with or paid a deposit to one of those businesses, and a member of our team contacted you by phone, email or text on that business's behalf, then that business is the data controller for your information and GoScale processes it as their service provider under a written agreement. That business's own privacy policy applies in addition to this one.

In that situation we only use your information to respond to your enquiry, arrange or confirm your appointment, take any deposit you agree to pay, and keep a record of the communication. We never use it to market GoScale's own services to you, and we never share it with anyone other than the business you enquired with and the service providers we use to deliver the communication. Opt-out requests (including STOP replies) are honoured immediately and passed to the business concerned.

8. Cookies and analytics

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to make the site work, understand how it is used and measure our advertising. These may include strictly necessary cookies, analytics cookies (for example Google Analytics) and advertising cookies and pixels (for example the Meta Pixel and Google Ads conversion tags). Non-essential cookies are only set where you have given consent, and you can change your choice at any time through your browser settings or the cookie controls on our site. Blocking cookies may affect how parts of the site work.

9. International transfers

We are based in the United Kingdom. Some of our service providers store or process information in other countries, including the United States. Where personal information leaves the UK or the European Economic Area we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or an adequacy decision, so that your information receives an equivalent level of protection.

10. How long we keep information

• Enquiry and lead records: for as long as needed to respond to and follow up your enquiry, and normally no longer than 24 months after our last contact unless you become a client.
• Client records: for the length of our engagement and for up to 6 years afterwards to meet accounting, tax and legal obligations.
• SMS consent and opt-out records: for at least 4 years after the last message so that we can evidence consent and honour opt-outs.
• Call recordings and transcripts: normally no longer than 12 months unless needed for a dispute or legal claim.
• Website analytics data: according to the retention settings of the analytics provider, normally between 2 and 26 months.

11. Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encrypted connections, access controls, role-based permissions and reputable cloud providers. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we will notify you and any relevant regulator of a breach where the law requires us to.

12. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected.
• Have your information deleted in certain circumstances.
• Restrict or object to how we process your information.
• Receive a copy of the information you gave us in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent, including consent to marketing texts and emails.
• Complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 16. We will respond within one month, or as required by the law that applies to you, and may ask you to verify your identity first. We will not treat you differently for exercising your rights.

13. Notice to US residents

If you are located in the United States, the following also applies. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising as defined under US state privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Residents of California and other states with comprehensive privacy laws may have the right to know what personal information we collect, to access or delete it, to correct it, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights. You can make a request using the details in section 16. Our text-messaging programme complies with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and CTIA messaging principles: we only text numbers that have opted in, we honour STOP requests immediately, and we do not share mobile numbers or opt-in consent with third parties for marketing purposes.

14. Children

Our services are for businesses and adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. Where a change is significant we will tell you by email, text message or a notice on our website.

16. Contact us

Questions, requests or complaints about this policy or your personal information can be sent to:

• Email: admin@go-scale.co.uk
• Post: Data Protection, GoScale Ltd, 180 Downs Barn Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK14 7QQ, United Kingdom
• Web: go-scale.co.uk/contact