Privacy Policy

The most information I hold on any given client is what you give me, i.e. your name, address, telephone number and email address (if applicable), along with any data related to your electrical installation such as certificates issued and photographs I may have taken for planning the job or as before/after comparisons. This information is available to me (obviously) and the bloody wife who does the book-keeping and administration. Other employees, subcontractors or service providers not specifically named here do not have access to this information. No payment details are collated or stored by Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd., so your credit card and bank account are quite safe from my end if you choose to appoint me to undertake your electrical work. Communications you receive from me may be written or verbal, but would only be directly related to your enquiry. I don’t send out marketing materials such as email offers, leaflets, vouchers, freebies, letters or any other unsolicited offers or materials and I only engage in passive advertising such as print advertisements in certain selected publications.
I suspect that few people would find it worthwhile to hack into my company in order to obtain basic client contact details and pictures of fuse boxes, but methods are in place to keep your information safe and to keep me (hopefully) on the right side of the EU General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act. Read on if you want to know what information I gather on you, where it’s kept and how you can get it removed if you’re perhaps one of those who wears a tinfoil hat and suspects the CIA are pulling my strings….
Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. securely holds information on external databases and company computers relating to client enquiries, purchases, planned work and work already undertaken. When I say securely, I mean I use encryption methods, security procedures and approved third-party services to transmit and store business data in a way that is secure as is reasonably practicable. While all reasonable steps will be taken to ensure the ongoing security of your information, Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd will not be responsible for any breach of security unless it is the direct result of negligence or wilful neglect. That is to say, if during a hungover state I happen to leave an unencrypted copy of my customer database on a memory stick on the urine stained seat of the number 9 bus, then yes, that’s my fault. On the other hand, if a determined miscreant exploits an I.T. loophole that the likes of Microsoft haven’t yet issued a patch for in order to steal my user data, well that’s not my fault. If said miscreant points a gun at me and demands I hand over all my user data, then you can bet I’m going to give up any information I hold on you in a flippin’ nanosecond. To put your mind at rest, in the first case, I don’t use memory sticks or public transport. In the second case, we’re all of us in that same boat. In the third case, you’d do the same, but there are few guns here in Whitnash and fewer people who want to get their hands on the low-level information I hold on you, so don’t have nightmares about it.

The information collected and processed by Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. is that which you, my beloved client, has given me verbally or via email, text message, social media, webform or in any other format. Your details may also be obtained from partner firms such as builders or other trades who may refer me to you as they project manage a larger job on your behalf that requires electrical work, although they themselves should seek your permission to be contacted before passing on your contact information to the likes of me and I take no responsibility if they neglect to do so. Similarly, contact data may be passed on by third-party organisations whom I might subcontract to, such as a facilities managament company who might ask me to undertake work on your behalf and with your presumed consent (which would be in their own terms & conditions and privacy policy).

 Since January 2016, the basic details of any enquiry or confirmed booking will be held on my job tracking database (Tracker) so that a unique reference number may be assigned to it. This applies whether or not you, the client, have booked the job yourself through my self-service portal or via email, or if you have made an enquiry via other means such as telephone or text message and I have then logged it on Tracker on your behalf. The Tracker database and back-end are hosted by an American company called SupportSystem, a division of Enhancesoft. Only two employees of Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd have access to Tracker, me as the job planner, and the bloody wife who does the admin.

SupportSystem employees can only access data stored in the database records as part of their maintenance and faultfinding procedures. Details of SupportSystem’s privacy policy can be found here. Don’t ask about GDPR, Americans can’t even spell it. Tracker will email you automatically with any updates if you have logged your own job on it or have opened a job via email. Tracker will not email you if I open the job on your behalf, nor will it ever send you any emails unrelated to your specific job.

 Since January 2017, estimates, quotations and final invoicing has been handled by a second hosted database called YourTradeBase. No client data is entered onto this database at the enquiry stage, only when a quote or estimate is authored or if an invoice is to be issued will details of name, address, contact phone number and contact email address be entered. The same two employees of Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. have access to this data with employees of YourTradeBase permitted access only if there is a technical issue with a specific customer record which requires investigation. YourTradeBase is GDPR compliant and their notice of compliance can be found here. YourTradeBase will email you with your estimate/quotation, invoice, certificates (if applicable) and a receipt once payment is made. YourTradeBase has a messaging function for you to easily contact me in relation to any of the above documents and for you to receive emailed replies. YourTradeBase will not send you any other emails.

Both of these external databases use security and privacy practices to ensure the data held within is safe, while access to them is via SSL encryption. If you do not have (or do not want) to supply me with an email address, these database records will still exist, however any paperwork relating to your enquiry will be sent to you via the traditional postal service or delivered by hand if I’m passing.

 Client records are also stored electronically at the registered office of Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd and are backed-up to an external cloud service This data is encrypted with the same two employees having access. Information pre-dating the use of Tracker and YourTradeBase was held electronically in individual file form in the client records. Data is also held in a third (internal) database which issues electrical certificates where applicable. This database only contains client names and addresses for producing the certificates and does not hold any contact details. And yes, having to use three separate databases is probably inefficient and a bit of a pain in the arse.

Any electrical work I perform which falls under Part-P of the Building Regulations is required by law to be notified to Local Authority Building Control. I do this through my membership of the NICEIC Approved Contractor Competent Persons Scheme (CPS). This requires me to fill out a secure web-form where your address, unique Tracker job reference number and unique electrical certificate number(s) are entered. No name, phone or email client contact details are provided to NICEIC, but they pass the information they do have to Local Authority Building Control and issue the certificate of compliance for the work. NICEIC are GDPR compliant, and their privacy policy can be found here.

If you have ever made an enquiry with Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd or have appointed me to perform any work, you may:

•  Request what information is specifically held about you.
• Request copies of data files stored about you.
• Request that your information is permanently deleted.

In the case of a deletion request, any entries relating to you held on Tracker, on YourTradeBase and on the internal certification database will be permanently removed within 30 days along with other non-essential data such as generic email communications. The historical record held by NICEIC for work completed at your address is required to remain as proof of compliance. Data held in your customer file will also be permanently deleted with the exception of the following documents which the business would be required to retain for legal reasons: 

•  Invoices issued: Required to be retained for accounting, VAT, auditing, and warranty purposes.
• Electrical certificates/reports issued: Required to be retained as legal proof of work performed at a given property.
• Building Regulation (Part-P) notifications: Required to be retained as legal proof of compliance for work performed at a given domestic property.
• Written correspondence, if any, which I would be required to retain for the record such as signed contracts, reports, discussions or agreements or other important/official communications.

In short, if I’ve done work for you then I can’t entirely pretend you never existed.

Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd will never:

•  Sell or release any of your information to any third parties without your explicit consent.
• Send you any unsolicited marketing requests or calls.

Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. does not hold any financial information for any clients. Invoice payments made via credit/debit card online are not processed by this website and are handled through WorldPay’s secure gateway, while those made over the phone or via a chip & pin reader are also handled by a secure third party (WorldPay/SumUp) with the card information neither recorded or stored by David Savery Electrical Services Ltd. in any form. The privacy policy for Worldpay can be found here, while the policy for SumUp can be read here. If you intend to pay an invoice by credit/debit card then please review these policies, and if you don’t agree with them then alternative means of payment such as cash, cheque or bank transfer remain as alternative options.

•  The website for Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. (this thing you’re on now) should force a https (secure) connection. It may use cookies and it should show one of those stupid and annoying cookie agreement notices the first time you open this site in a new web browser. If this site does use cookies, then I don’t know about it as I’ve certainly never gone out of my way to deliberately implement any cookie nonsense, but the whole thing is part of an externally hosted content management system with various plugins to enable enhancements such as mobile viewing, Google ads and video integration, and how it all actually works or whether any updates will ever change the status-quo is all too complicated for a mere electrician to comprehend. There is a certain amount of basic visitor tracking on this website which allows me to see the following:
• Visitor IP addresses and country of origin.
• Individual page hit counts.
• Search key phrases and keywords used on the site search tool.
• Referring websites and search terms.
• Time of day/day of week and bandwidth traffic statistics.

This statistical information is occasionally checked by one employee of Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd Ltd. (i.e. me) to see what pages are popular and whether people are finding the answers to what they may be searching for so that I can improve the content on this site. Other than the above, no other identifying information is recorded or held by this website. The privacy policy of my web host can be viewed here. This website may link to external sites whose content or operation I am not responsible for, so go read their privacy policy if you’re redirected elsewhere. I use Google Adsense to generate advertisements on some pages of this site. I don’t monitor what ads Google chooses to display, but Google says the following:

• Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on any users prior visits to this website.
• Google’s use of the DoubleClick cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this website and/or other sites on the internet
• You may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie for interest-based advertising by visiting Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for interest-based advertising by visiting aboutads.info

Honestly, the whole Adsense thing is more trouble than it’s worth; it generates about enough to buy me a cup of coffee every month so I don’t know why I bother. If you don’t care about being tracked on the internet and having ‘relevant’ adverts served up to you then ignore it. If you do care, then you’ll probably already know more about disabling cookies and maintaining anonymity than I do. What the hell do you want from me, I’m just an electrician?

 Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. has a presence on social media platforms such as linkedin. I do not engage in any paid advertising, promotion, data collection or tracking via any social media platform, and I only use them in their simplest form as a way to keep engaged with peers, clients, potential clients and the public, although not celebrities who are generally vacuous arseholes. I may post pictures of horrors I find, work I’m proud of or just things that are ‘interesting’ on these platforms or on this website as part of an article such as a blog, but I won’t give out identifying information for any given client. If you don’t want me to take any photos or author any posts for any given site, then please let me know. Retweets or reposts don’t necessarily indicate endorsement. If you post a public request on social media for an electrician or for electrical advice, then I reserve the right to respond directly and offer my services. I may also offer my opinion or comment on any public post whether electrically related or not and regardless of my sobriety at the time. You may of course block me from your timeline, and I may do the same to you, but that’s just how social media works and is nothing to do with data protection.

If you have booked my services through any third-party platform, trade or supplier, they are also responsible for your data independently of my own internal procedures, so go shout at them if they are hacked or get careless.

Orange Electrical Contractors Ltd. reserves the right to update or amend this policy at any time and without notice. If there’s something here that raises an eyebrow, then check back to ensure it hasn’t changed before booking work or ask me about it directly so that I can confirm how it may affect you.