Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

1st Choice Removals Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described below.

Trading address: Unit 11, Canford Business Park, Magna Road, Wimborne, BH21 3BT
Email: admin@1stchoiceremovals.net
Phone: 01202 570970
Company registration number: 13050801 (registered in England and Wales)
ICO registration number: ZA141039
Registered office: C/O Newton Magnus Ltd, Unit 1 Arrowsmith Court, 10 Station Approach, Broadstone, Dorset, BH18 8AT

If you have any question about how we handle your data, or want to use any of the rights below, please contact us using these details.

2. What we collect

When you enquire, get a quote, or book with us, we collect:

Your name, phone number and email address
Your collection and delivery addresses (and postcodes)
Details of the move: access, parking, the items being moved, special requirements and dates
Photos, videos and voice commentary you send us for a video survey, and notes and photos our surveyor takes at a home visit
The inventory of your goods, and the value you declare for them for insurance purposes
Photos our crew take on the day of your goods, their condition and the van, and any damage or waiver forms you sign
Your signatures: accepting a quote, signing your inventory, confirming your goods were collected and delivered, and any forms on the day. With each signature we record the time, and for signatures on our crew's phones the approximate location. When you sign online we also record the internet (IP) address it was signed from
Records of the quotes, bookings, payments and invoices we create for you
Emails, messages and letters between us, and notes of phone calls
If our AI phone assistant answers your call: your phone number, a recording and transcript of the call, a short summary, and anything you ask it to do (such as booking a home visit, sending you a link or passing on a message)
Your feedback and ratings after your move, if you choose to give them
Which of our web pages or adverts you came from when you first enquired

When you use this website, we also collect:

What you type into our feedback form: your rating, name, email address, phone number and message, and whether you would like us to contact you
Information about how you use the site, such as the pages you visit and the device and browser you use, through statistics cookies (see section 7)

If your move is arranged through a relocation company (for example an Armed Forces move), we also receive details from that company, such as your reference number and the paperwork your move needs.

If you pay us by card, your card details go straight to our payment provider. We never see or store your full card number.

We don't ask for special category data (such as health information). If you tell us something like this yourself, for example about access needs, we only use it to plan your move.

3. Why we use it, and our legal basis

To give you a quote and, if you go ahead, to plan, staff and carry out your move or storage (legal basis: performance of a contract with you, or steps you asked us to take before entering one, such as giving you a quote).
To contact you about your enquiry or move: confirmations, reminders, chasing a quote you haven't replied to, sending documents to sign and asking you to confirm your goods were collected and delivered (legal basis: performance of our contract with you, or our legitimate interest in running the business efficiently where you haven't booked yet).
To answer your call when our office can't, and to keep a record of what was said and done on the call (legal basis: steps you asked us to take, or performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in not missing calls and being able to show what was agreed).
To keep a record of what was agreed, signed, collected and delivered, and to handle any claim or complaint (legal basis: performance of our contract, and our legitimate interest in being able to show what happened and to defend or settle claims).
To take payments and keep financial records (legal basis: performance of our contract, and our legal obligation to keep tax and accounting records).
To meet our insurance obligations, using the value you declare for your goods (legal basis: performance of our contract with you).
To publish your review on our website, with your name as you give it, if you tick the box to say we may (legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by asking us to take it down).
To ask for your feedback and a review after your move, and to use feedback to train and improve our team (legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving our service). You can tell us at any time not to send these.
To work out which of our website pages and adverts bring enquiries, and to see how our website is used so we can improve it (legal basis: our legitimate interest in running our business; for advertising cookies, your consent).

We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help us: to estimate the volume of your goods from the photos and videos you send, to transcribe your spoken video commentary, to help us read and draft replies to emails, and to answer our phone when the office can't get to it. Our AI phone assistant tells you at the start of the call that it is an AI assistant and that the call is recorded, and you can ask to leave a message for a member of our team instead. It can tell you your booked dates, book a free home visit, email you a link (for example to send us survey photos, or to view, accept and pay for your quote) and take a message. It never takes card details, and it only shares amounts owed or addresses once you have given the postcode you're moving from. Our team reviews the calls it answers. A member of our team checks your quote before we send it. We do not make any decisions about you by automated means alone that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

We don't use your data for marketing, and we never sell it.

4. Who we share it with

We only share what each organisation needs for its part of the job. The organisations we use are:

Render (hosting of our systems, in Germany) and Supabase (our database, in the UK)
Cloudflare (hosting of this website)
Microsoft 365 (our office email)
Postmark (sending our automated emails, including messages from our website feedback form)
Blink Payment (card payments)
DocuSeal (online signing of quotes and inventories)
Ideal Postcodes and postcodes.io (address lookup)
Google Maps (journey planning between addresses)
Google (Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics for website statistics; advertising measurement only if you accept advertising cookies; and Google Fonts, which provides the typefaces on this website)
Anthropic and OpenAI (the AI tools described above)
Retell AI (our AI phone assistant, including call recordings and transcripts) and Twilio (the phone line it answers on)
Xero (our accounting system, for invoices and payments)
Our accountant and HMRC, where the law requires it
Subcontracted crews or hired-in vehicles, if we bring in help for your move: only the details they need (contact details, addresses, what's being moved), never your declared value or payment information
The relocation company that arranged your move, if one did (for example for Armed Forces moves), and its appointed supplier: your move details, survey, inventory and paperwork
Our insurers, loss adjusters and legal advisers, if there is a claim
The police or other authorities, if the law requires us to

Some of these organisations (Cloudflare, Postmark, DocuSeal, Anthropic, OpenAI, Retell AI, Twilio, Google and Xero) may process data in the United States or other countries outside the UK. Where they do, the transfer is protected by the safeguards UK law requires, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for more detail.

5. How long we keep it

Quotes, bookings, payments and invoices: 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, to meet HMRC's record-keeping rules.
Signed documents, inventories, photos and records of what was collected and delivered: 6 years after your move, so we can deal with any claim.
Survey videos: the video itself is deleted 30 days after your move, or 90 days after you sent it if you don't book with us. The estimate we made from it, still frames and the transcript are kept with your quote.
Recordings and transcripts of calls answered by our AI phone assistant: 12 months, or longer if we need them for a claim or complaint.
Emails and messages, including feedback sent through our website: for as long as we keep the booking they relate to, or 2 years for enquiries that didn't become a booking.
Your contact details: while we have an ongoing or potential business relationship with you, or until you ask us to delete them.

If you ask us to delete your personal data and you have no quote, booking or invoice history with us, we delete it. If you do, we remove what we can and keep only what we are legally required to keep, or need to deal with a claim, for the periods above.

6. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you
Ask us to correct anything that's inaccurate or incomplete
Ask us to delete your personal data (see section 5)
Ask us to restrict how we use your data, or object to us using it, including for feedback requests
Ask for your data in a portable format, where technically possible
Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 1. We'll respond within one month.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your personal data, please complain to us first using the details in section 1. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

7. Cookies

Our online quote, booking, signing and payment pages use only essential cookies, which are needed for them to work (for example to keep a page secure while you use it).

This website uses:

Essential: your cookie choice, saved in your browser so we don't ask you again. This is always on.
Statistics: Google Analytics cookies (named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID), which tell us which pages are visited and how people find the site. They are on unless you turn them off.
Advertising: cookies that show us whether our adverts lead to enquiries, such as Google's _gcl_au. We only use these if you choose "Accept all".

We ask for your consent before using advertising or tracking cookies, and you can turn off statistics cookies at any time. You can change your choices whenever you like using the "Cookie settings" link at the bottom of every page.

8. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our business or the services we use change. The date at the top shows when it was last changed.