UK Vehicle Exporters Privacy Notice

Who we are

UK Vehicle Exporters Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice. That means we decide why and how it is used.

• Registered in England and Wales, company number 10399100
• Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration number ZC269739
• Registered office: Penstraze Business Park, Chacewater, Penstraze, Truro, England, TR4 8PN
• Email: sales@vehicleexports.co.uk
• Telephone: +44 (0)1872 491409

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, because we are not required to. Any question about this notice or about your data should go to the address above, marked for the attention of the data protection contact.

What personal data we collect

What we hold depends on how far you get with us.

If you make an enquiry

• Your name, email address and telephone number
• The country and port you want the vehicle shipped to
• Details of the vehicle you want us to source, buy, ship or export
• Anything else you choose to tell us in the message
• If you use the contact form on this site, the IP address your enquiry was sent from and its approximate location (town, region and country)

When you send the contact form, it goes first to our website's server, run for us by our hosting provider, Vercel, in London, and from there to Zoho, which holds our enquiries. On the way, an automated check provided by Vercel looks at technical details your browser provides with the form (not what you type) to tell a person from an automated spam program. In the way we use it, the check sets no cookies.

The server also records the IP address your enquiry came from and its approximate location, which Vercel works out from the internet connection the enquiry comes through. It is not your device's own location service, and you are not asked to share your position. Both are stored with your enquiry in fields of their own. We use them to help us spot fraudulent enquiries and to see which countries and markets our enquiries come from. If the check finds something doubtful, your enquiry still reaches us with a note on it, so that we look at it with care. If a message cannot be passed on, the page tells you and gives you our email address, WhatsApp and telephone number instead.

If we go on to source, buy or ship a vehicle for you

• Your full name and both your UK and destination addresses
• Identity documents where the export, customs or anti-money-laundering rules require them — typically a passport or photographic ID, and proof of address
• Vehicle documents: V5C registration details, VIN, purchase invoice, and the export and customs paperwork raised against them
• Payment details and a record of the payments made. We do not store full card numbers
• Our correspondence with you, including emails, WhatsApp messages and notes of telephone calls

If you sign up for our newsletter

• Your email address, and when you signed up and confirmed your subscription

When you sign up, your email address goes to our website's server, which runs the same automated spam check as the contact form and then passes the address to Zoho Campaigns, which holds our newsletter list. After you sign up we email you a link to confirm, and nothing more is sent unless you click it. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link. We do not track whether our newsletters are opened or which links in them are clicked.

If you visit this website

Our hosting provider, Vercel, records standard server log information, including the IP address the request came from, the pages requested, and the date and time. This is ordinary technical logging used to keep the site running and secure.

We also use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits. For each page view it records the page address, the site or link that sent you, your rough location (country, region and city), your type of device, operating system and browser, and the date and time. To count each visitor once a day, Vercel makes a coded value from your request and discards it after 24 hours. The statistics set no cookies, do not record your IP address, and are not used to identify you or for advertising. We run no other analytics, advertising or tracking software. You can turn the statistics off on our Cookie Policy page, which also explains what is stored on your device and what third-party content the site loads.

How we collect it

Almost always directly from you — by telephone, email, WhatsApp, through a form on this site, or in person. Where you ask us to buy a vehicle on your behalf, we may also receive information about you from the seller or dealer involved in that purchase, and where we arrange shipping we receive booking confirmations from the carrier that contain your details.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for automated decision-making or profiling. The spam check on our forms only tells people from automated programs; if it ever stops a message, the page says so and gives you other ways to reach us.

Who we share it with

Exporting a vehicle is not something we can do alone, and the people below need your details to do their part of it. We share only what each of them needs.

• Shipping lines, ferry operators and airlines — to book the sailing or flight and issue the Bill of Lading or air waybill
• Port agents, terminals and freight forwarders at the load port and the destination port
• HM Revenue & Customs and the DVLA — export declarations and notification of permanent export
• Customs authorities and clearing agents in the destination country, where you ask us to arrange clearance, registration or delivery at the destination, or to work with an agent of your choice
• Transport and inspection contractors who collect, move or inspect the vehicle in the UK
• Couriers — UPS and DHL, who carry the original export documents to you
• Our bank, accountants and professional advisers
• Zoho, which receives and stores the enquiries sent through the contact form on this site (Zoho CRM) and holds our newsletter list and sends the newsletter (Zoho Campaigns), on our instructions only
• Vercel Inc., which hosts this website and provides our visitor statistics, and whose servers receive our contact form and newsletter sign-ups, check them for spam, work out the approximate location an enquiry was sent from and pass them to Zoho, on our instructions only
• Our other IT suppliers, who process data on our instructions only

We will also disclose information where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.

Sending your data outside the UK

Exporting a vehicle means sending information to the country the vehicle is going to. To land a car in, for example, Kenya or Jamaica, the carrier, the destination port agent and that country's customs authority all need the consignee's name and address. Many of those countries have no UK adequacy decision.

Where the transfer is necessary to perform the contract you have asked us to enter into, or to conclude a contract in your interest, we rely on that necessity as the basis for the transfer. Where we transfer data to a supplier for our own purposes rather than to complete your shipment, we put an International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses in place. You can ask us which applies to your shipment.

Enquiries sent through the contact form, and our newsletter list, are held by Zoho in its European Union data centres. The UK recognises the EU as giving personal data adequate protection, so no further safeguard is needed for them.

Vercel Inc. is based in the United States. The server that receives our forms runs in London, but our server logs, our visitor statistics, the spam check on our forms and the location look-up for contact-form enquiries may be processed in the United States. Vercel is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which the UK recognises as giving personal data adequate protection, and its data processing terms include the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries that do not become a booking: up to 2 years from your last contact with us, so we can pick up the conversation if you come back to us. The IP address and location recorded with an enquiry, and any spam-check note on it, are kept with it, for the same time as the enquiry itself.
• Completed exports: at least 6 years from the end of the relevant tax year, because HMRC requires us to keep customs and accounting records for that long. Export documents may be kept longer where a shipment could still be the subject of a claim.
• Identity and anti-money-laundering records: 5 years from the end of the business relationship, as the regulations require.
• Website visitor statistics: the daily visitor code is discarded after 24 hours. The page view figures, which do not identify you, are kept by Vercel for at least 12 months so we can compare trends. Vercel may keep them longer.
• Newsletter sign-ups: until you unsubscribe. After that we keep only your email address, marked as unsubscribed, so that we do not email you again by mistake.

Keeping it secure

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data, including restricting access to the people who need it, using reputable suppliers, and serving this website over an encrypted connection. No transfer over the internet can be guaranteed completely secure, so please do not send us identity or payment documents by unencrypted email unless you are content to do so.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Be told what we hold about you, and get a copy of it
• Have inaccurate data corrected
• Have data erased, where we have no continuing reason to keep it
• Restrict how we use it while a question about it is resolved
• Object to processing we carry out on the basis of our legitimate interests
• Receive data you gave us in a portable format, where we hold it by consent or under a contract
• Withdraw consent at any time, where consent is what we relied on

Some of these rights are qualified — we cannot, for instance, delete a customs record we are legally required to keep. To exercise any of them, contact us at sales@vehicleexports.co.uk. We will respond within one month.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this notice

We update this notice when what we do with personal data changes. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. Where a change is significant, we will say so on this page.