Privacy Policy

Overview

Ecoflow Plumbing & Heating Inc. ("Ecoflow", "we", "us" or "our") is a plumbing, heating, cooling and gas fitting contractor based just outside Salmon Arm, British Columbia, serving the Shuswap and North Okanagan.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of anyone who visits our website or contacts us through it. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and what rights you have over it.

It is written to comply with British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), which governs how private sector organisations in BC collect, use and disclose personal information.

Our website does not sell anything, take payments, run a newsletter or have user accounts. The only personal information we collect is what you choose to tell us when you ask us to quote or attend a job.

1. What personal information we collect

a) The enquiry form

Our enquiry form is provided by Housecall Pro, the job management system we run the business on (see section 5). When you submit it we collect:

• Your first and last name
• Your phone number
• Your email address
• The service address for the work: street, unit, city, postal code, province and country
• What the job is about, and any details you give us about it
• How you heard about us
• Any photos or files you choose to upload
• Whether you ticked the optional box agreeing to receive promotional text messages

Photos. Uploading pictures is optional. They help us see the problem before we arrive, and we use them only for that. Please avoid photos that show people, documents or anything personal that has nothing to do with the job.

b) Information collected automatically with your submission

Because the form is loaded from Housecall Pro's servers, your browser connects to Housecall Pro when you open a page that shows it, and Housecall Pro receives your IP address and basic browser and device information. The form is also protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which checks that a person rather than an automated program is using it. To do that, reCAPTCHA sends information about your browser, device and how you interact with the page to Google.

c) Where your submission goes

Your submission goes straight to our account in Housecall Pro, where it becomes a lead that our office staff respond to. It is not saved on our website's server, and our website does not email it to anyone. Section 6 explains how long we keep it.

If you contacted us through the earlier version of this form, which saved enquiries to our own website database, that enquiry stays in our own records and has not been moved into Housecall Pro.

d) Website analytics

We do not run any. There is no Google Analytics on this site, no tag manager, no advertising pixel and no third-party tracking script of any kind. Nothing here is watching which pages you read.

2. What we do not collect

To be clear about the limits of this policy, Ecoflow does not collect:

• Payment or financial information of any kind. We do not take payments through this website
• Newsletter or email marketing subscriptions. The only marketing we send is by text message, and only to people who tick the box for it on the enquiry form
• Account credentials. This site has no user accounts to log in to
• Sensitive personal information such as health data, government identification numbers or financial records
• Information from children. Our services are for adult property owners, tenants and contractors

3. Why we collect it

We collect personal information only for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate for a trades business:

• To answer your enquiry and quote your job
• To reach you and arrange a visit, or follow up on a conversation we have already had
• To reach the property owner for permission where you are not the owner
• To keep a record of work we have quoted or carried out for you, so the next call does not start from nothing
• To keep the enquiry form working and free of automated abuse

We do not use your contact details for marketing unless you ask us to. The enquiry form has a separate, optional box for promotional text messages. It is not ticked for you, and leaving it empty makes no difference to your enquiry. If you tick it, we may send you occasional promotional texts at the number you gave us. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any of them, or contact us, and they stop.

4. Consent

Under PIPA we need your consent before collecting your personal information. By submitting the enquiry form you are giving us express consent to collect the information listed in section 1 and to use it for the purposes in section 3.

Consent to promotional text messages is separate. We only have it if you tick the optional box on the form, and you can withdraw it on its own, by replying STOP or contacting us, without affecting your enquiry.

You can withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us, subject to any records we are required to keep. Withdrawing it means we stop contacting you and delete what we hold, which also means we can no longer quote or schedule the job.

5. Who else sees it

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information. It reaches the following third parties only because the website and the business cannot run otherwise:

Housecall Pro

Our enquiry form is hosted by Housecall Pro, and everything you submit through it, including photos, goes directly to them. We use Housecall Pro to quote, schedule and track your job and to keep a record of what was done at your property. Housecall Pro is a US company. It stores and processes information in the United States and uses service providers in the United States and Mexico, so your information is held outside Canada.

Housecall Pro also handles the information it receives under its own privacy policy, which covers the cookies and similar technologies it uses on the pages and forms it hosts.

Google reCAPTCHA

The enquiry form uses Google reCAPTCHA to screen out automated submissions. Google receives the information described in section 1(b) for that purpose, under the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Our web host

The website runs on servers operated by our hosting provider, who has technical access to what is stored there in the course of running the service. Enquiries sent through the current form are not stored there.

Google Maps

Our contact page embeds a Google map showing where we are. When that page loads, your browser requests the map directly from Google, and Google therefore receives your IP address and basic browser information. That happens whether or not you interact with the map. Google's privacy practices are set out at policies.google.com/privacy.

Nobody outside this list receives your personal information. We do not use email marketing platforms, advertising networks or social media tracking tools on this site. Promotional text messages, for those who ask for them, are sent through Housecall Pro.

We may disclose information where the law requires it, such as under a court order or a lawful request from a government or regulatory authority.

6. How long we keep it

Enquiries are kept in Housecall Pro for as long as they are relevant to an active or potential working relationship. Once we have quoted or carried out a job, the record of it becomes part of your customer and service history there, and it stays for as long as we run the business on that system. That is what lets us tell you what was installed at your property and when, years after the fact. Photos you upload are kept with that record.

We should be straightforward about what that means in practice: nothing is deleted automatically on a timer. The honest answer to how long we keep it is indefinitely, unless you ask us not to, and we act on that request.

A deletion request covers your record in Housecall Pro and anything we hold from the earlier version of our form. The exception is anything we are separately required to keep, such as invoices and records of work performed, which are subject to tax and business record-keeping rules rather than to this policy. Housecall Pro's own handling of information, described in its privacy policy, is a matter for Housecall Pro.

If you would rather we did not hold your details, section 10 tells you how to say so.

7. How we protect it

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information in our care from unauthorised access, disclosure, loss or misuse:

• The whole site, and the Housecall Pro form within it, is served over HTTPS, so what you type into the form is encrypted in transit
• The enquiry form is screened for automated submissions by Google reCAPTCHA
• Access to our Housecall Pro account is limited to the owners and staff of Ecoflow, and is password protected

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If a breach ever occurred that created a real risk of significant harm to anyone affected, we would tell those people and report it to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia without unreasonable delay. BC law does not currently compel either step, so this is a commitment we are making rather than an obligation we are reciting.

8. Your rights under BC PIPA

You have the right to:

• Know why we are collecting your information, at or before the time we collect it
• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct it if it is wrong or incomplete
• Withdraw your consent to our use of it, subject to legal or contractual limits
• Ask us to delete it, where no legal requirement obliges us to keep it

To exercise any of these, contact us using the details in section 10. We will acknowledge your request promptly and respond within 30 days, which is the period PIPA allows.

9. Cookies

This site sets only strictly necessary cookies: a session cookie and a security token that the framework our site is built on sets on every page, to keep the site working and protect it against cross-site request forgery. Neither is used to track you, and neither is shared with anyone.

We set no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies and no social media trackers. You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings at any time.

The enquiry form is loaded from Housecall Pro, and it includes Google reCAPTCHA. Both may set their own cookies or use similar technologies when the form loads, under their own policies linked in section 5. We do not control those, and we do not receive the information they collect.

Your browser may also store a setting recording whether you prefer the site in light or dark mode. That stays on your device and is never sent to us.

10. Contact us

If you have a question, a concern or a request about this policy or about your personal information, contact us directly:

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can take it to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia:

• Website: oipc.bc.ca
• Email: info@oipc.bc.ca
• Phone: 250-387-5629
• From elsewhere in BC, call Service BC toll-free on 1-800-663-7867 (604-660-2421 in Vancouver) and ask to be transferred to 250-387-5629
• Mail: PO Box 9038 Stn. Prov. Govt., Victoria, BC  V8W 9A4

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes in what the website does or in the law that applies to it. When we do, the "last updated" date at the top of this page changes with it. If a change materially affects how we handle information we have already collected, we will take steps to tell the people affected.

This policy applies to https://ecoflowbc.ca/ and is governed by the Personal Information Protection Act of British Columbia.