Who is responsible for your information?
247 Emergency Plumbers Edinburgh is the trading name of AJ HEATING PLUMBING AND HOME SERVICES LTD, a private limited company registered in Scotland, company number SC741593. Registered office: 94 Gracemount Drive, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, EH16 6QZ. Contact: info@247emergencyplumberedinburgh.co.uk or 0131 210 0505.
We are not VAT-registered and do not charge VAT. This is a service-area business; the registered office is provided for company correspondence and is not advertised as a walk-in customer shop.
The company is the controller for the enquiry and booking information it collects. Use the contact details above for privacy requests; please quote your booking reference where available.
What we collect and where it comes from
You provide your name, email address, telephone number, service choice, property address, postcode, preferred visit, work description and access instructions. We also receive information you send by email, telephone or WhatsApp, and information an authorised landlord, agent or occupier supplies to arrange work. Please tell those people when you give us their details. Avoid sending bank-card details, passwords, identity documents or unnecessary health information through the booking form.
The booking system also handles a random request identifier, booking reference, security session, hashed email-verification code and rate-limit identifiers derived from the connection IP address. Our hosting and email providers may process connection, device and delivery logs to operate and protect their services.
Why we use information and our lawful bases
- Enquiries, quotes, appointments and customer communication: to take steps you request before a contract and perform agreed services. If a landlord, agent or another customer arranges work for you, our legitimate interest is coordinating authorised access and completing that job.
- Security, verification and abuse prevention: our legitimate interests in protecting customers, mailboxes and appointment availability. Email verification and rate limits help stop unauthorised requests.
- Invoices, tax, legal obligations and rights: legal obligation where applicable, and legitimate interests in keeping proportionate records and dealing with complaints, insurance matters or legal claims.
- Optional website measurement: on the main business domain, Google Analytics and Google Ads measurement load only after you choose Allow measurement. We rely on consent for this optional tracking. You can reject it or withdraw using Cookie settings without affecting calls, enquiries or bookings. We do not add booking contacts to a marketing list or enable personalised advertising through this website setting.
The acknowledgement checkbox is not permission for unrelated marketing. Essential booking information is needed to deal with your request; you can telephone us if you prefer not to use the online form.
How the website booking works
Booking details are submitted over HTTPS to a private database on our hosting server. Contact and quote enquiries require a name, telephone number, email address, postcode, message and privacy acknowledgement. A six-digit code must be verified before the enquiry is saved and queued for delivery to the business mailbox; an enquiry does not reserve an appointment. Separate enquiry and appointment codes cannot be used interchangeably. A six-digit code is also emailed to verify the address before a booking request can hold an appointment. Requesting a code alone does not create a booking. A booking reference and acknowledgement show a provisional request, not confirmed attendance. The plumber will contact you to confirm the job; scope and price must be agreed before work starts. Availability and security checks are automated, but the plumber confirms attendance. These checks do not make a solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects about you.
Who receives information
- Hostinger: website hosting, private booking storage, service logs and hosting backups.
- Google Analytics and Google Ads: after optional measurement consent on the main business domain, Google receives page and device/browser information and permitted interaction events to measure website use and advertising results. Our phone-click event records a click on the business number, not an answered call. We do not add booking names, email addresses, property addresses, photos or message contents to our measurement events. The existing Google tag has multiple linked destinations managed in our Google accounts.
- Google/Gmail: the configured sending mailbox sends verification codes and booking acknowledgements. The sender is displayed as 247 Emergency Plumbers Edinburgh.
- The business mailbox: booking details are delivered to info@247emergencyplumberedinburgh.co.uk. Its current email service uses Tuta.
- YCloud: provides the WhatsApp Business API connection for messages and photos you send to our business number, and carries automated replies. The assistant can collect booking details, verify your email and show available dates and times. Bookings are provisional until the plumber confirms. Photo checks require a separate agreement before we download and send your next photo and caption to Anthropic. We do not save downloaded photos. Type HUMAN to pause the assistant for the team, STOP to pause automated replies, or START to resume. Unfinished booking details and processed inbound message payloads are cleared from the assistant’s working storage after 24 hours when the worker next runs. Event identifiers are retained for seven days to prevent duplicate processing; paused-chat preferences for up to 30 days. Operational reply queues may be retained for up to seven days. Submitted booking records and email copies follow the retention criteria below. YCloud and Meta may retain messages and media under their own terms. See YCloud privacy information.
- WhatsApp/Meta: only when you choose to open a WhatsApp link, scan the QR code or send a message. The website does not automatically send your booking to WhatsApp. Complete your details and press Send in WhatsApp yourself.
- Personnel and relevant service providers: the people arranging or carrying out your job, and accountants, insurers, professional advisers or authorities when needed for that purpose or required by law. Only relevant information should be shared.
We do not sell booking contact details. Website source code is managed separately from the private customer database.
Photo check
If you use the optional photo check, the photo, any note and the area you type are sent over HTTPS to our server and then to our AI provider, Anthropic, which analyses them on our behalf to produce the assessment shown to you. We use them only to give you that assessment, on the basis of your request and consent. We do not store the photo or note on our server, and the photo check does not ask for your name or contact details. A hashed form of your IP address is kept briefly to limit misuse. Please avoid photographing people, documents or anything else personal. An engineer, not the automated check, decides on any repair.
Maps, reviews and external links
The optional area map loads OpenStreetMap tiles when the map becomes visible. Your browser then contacts that provider and may share its IP address and normal request information. Google reviews are displayed as locally stored excerpts; viewing them does not load a Google review widget. QR codes are generated locally and do not contact a QR-code service. The Preferred Source button is an ordinary link to Google’s source-preferences tool for our main website. It does not load a Google script or set a preference automatically. Google handles any sign-in and your selection on its own service. Following an external Google, WhatsApp or other link takes you to a separate service with its own privacy terms.
Providers and international processing
Cloud, email and messaging providers may process information outside the UK. Their locations and transfer arrangements depend on the service and account in use. See Hostinger privacy information, Google privacy information, Tuta privacy information, WhatsApp privacy information and OpenStreetMap privacy information, and Anthropic privacy information for the photo check. Contact us for information about the arrangements relevant to your data or to request details of applicable transfer safeguards.
How long information is kept
We use the following criteria, rather than keeping every record indefinitely. Contact us about the retention of a particular record.
- Enquiries and website booking records: for arranging the request, carrying out agreed work and reasonably necessary follow-up, complaints or disputes. At closure, records should be reviewed and information no longer needed deleted or anonymised. We review ongoing retention at least annually.
- Work, invoice and accounting records: while needed for contract, tax, accounting and legal responsibilities. The applicable accounting period and any open dispute or legal hold determine the period; this does not justify keeping every booking note for the same length of time.
- Email codes: valid for 10 minutes, with up to five incorrect attempts; the hash and verification state remain only within the server session until that session is cleared.
- Rate-limit identifiers: use 15-minute, hourly or daily windows; expired entries are cleared when further booking requests are processed.
- Service logs, emails, messages and backups: subject to the purpose, provider retention settings and any relevant legal requirement. Copies already in a backup may persist until that backup is replaced or expires and should not be reused for unrelated purposes.
A relevant record may be retained longer where needed for an unresolved complaint, insurance matter or legal claim. The website does not currently promise automatic deletion after a fixed number of days.
Your rights and how to contact us
Depending on the circumstances, you can request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or object to processing based on legitimate interests. Where processing relies on consent, you can withdraw it without affecting earlier lawful processing. Rights have legal limits, including some accounting or legal-claim records. Contact info@247emergencyplumberedinburgh.co.uk or 0131 210 0505; we may ask for proportionate information to verify your identity. We normally respond within one month, subject to lawful extensions and any applicable rules.
You may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. You do not have to complain to us first, although we welcome the opportunity to resolve the issue.
Security and changes
We use HTTPS, private server storage, restricted file permissions, verification and request limits. No online service can promise complete protection against every threat. We will update this notice when the service or its purposes change and provide any further notice or consent process required by law.
Optional enquiry and booking measurement
After measurement consent on the main domain, we record categories of enquiry and booking steps, technical problems and successfully received verified requests. A received request remains provisional; these events do not mean a confirmed appointment or completed job. We also measure WhatsApp option clicks and when the on-page QR code becomes visible. These do not prove a message was sent or a code was scanned. Only fixed categories and the current or last-viewed service/area-guide context are sent in our custom events. We do not send form text, personal contact details, full postcodes, appointment dates, verification codes, request references, photos or raw error messages. A short session-storage record of viewed service/area categories is used only after consent and removed on withdrawal.