Privacy policy

ARK Home installs home technology across Hampshire. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this notice.

• Registered entity: ARK Home Technologies LTD (company number 17431048)
• Registered address: 13 Palmerston Business Park, Palmerston Drive, Fareham, PO14 1DJ
• VAT number: 529 8319 55
• ICO data protection register: ZC235837
• Data protection contact: [email protected] or 01329 801011

Depending on how far you get with us, that's:

• Enquiries and bookings: your name, email address, phone number, property address and postcode, and what you tell us about the property.
• Site surveys: survey notes, room-by-room measurements, wireless signal readings, and photographs of the property taken by the engineer.
• Quotes and contracts: the quote itself, your electronic signature, and the date, time, IP address and browser used when you signed it.
• Installations: the equipment fitted, test results, completion photographs, and your sign-off.
• Payments: amounts, dates and payment references. Card details are entered directly with our payment processor and never reach our systems.
• Your portal account: your email address and sign-in session, so you can see your quotes, bookings and payments.
• WhatsApp conversations: your phone number, messages, shared photographs or attachments, and conversation and booking records. When our automated assistant is enabled, relevant messages and details are processed to answer questions, check availability and arrange bookings or a staff hand-off.
• Website use: the strictly necessary cookies described in our cookie policy, plus Google advertising cookies where you have agreed to them. Google's tag also loads without consent and may send limited cookieless measurement requests, including technical request information.

• Answering an enquiry and arranging a survey — our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us, and taking steps at your request before entering a contract.
• Quoting, installing, and supporting the work afterwards — performance of our contract with you.
• Taking payment and keeping accounting records — performance of our contract, and our legal obligations under tax law.
• Reminders about your booked appointments and payments due — performance of our contract.
• Advertising and remarketing — your consent, given through the cookie banner and withdrawable at any time.
• Limited cookieless advertising measurement — our legitimate interest in understanding advertising performance. We use Google's advanced Consent Mode with advertising storage, advertising user data and personalisation denied for UK visitors unless you accept; this does not mean all requests to Google stop. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests by contacting us.
• WhatsApp replies and assisted bookings — responding to your enquiry and taking steps at your request before a contract, performance of a contract for existing bookings, and our legitimate interest in managing customer conversations and staff hand-offs.
• Keeping records to defend a claim or handle a warranty issue — our legitimate interest in protecting the business, and our legal obligations.

We don't send marketing emails to people who haven't asked for them, and we don't sell your data.

We don't sell data or pass it to data brokers. We do use suppliers who process it on to deliver our services. Depending on the service, they act as processors on our instructions or handle information under their own privacy terms:

• Telavox — our phone system. It logs calls to and from us (numbers, time, length, who answered) so we can link them to your enquiry. Calls aren't recorded, but if you leave a voicemail we keep the recording and an automatically written transcript (made with an AI transcription service) with your enquiry.
• Twilio — if you reach our site from a Google advert and accept marketing cookies, we show you a local 01329 number that forwards to our main line, so we can tell the call came from that advert. Calls of a minute or more are reported to Google Ads against the advert click (no name or number is sent).
• Stripe — card payments and payment records.
• Microsoft 365 — our email and engineers' calendars, used to send your confirmations and book appointments.
• Ideal Postcodes — the address lookup on our booking forms.
• Our hosting and database providers — running this website and storing your quotes, jobs, photographs and documents.
• Xero — customer and supplier contact details, invoices, credit notes and payment records for bookkeeping.
• Twilio and WhatsApp (Meta) — delivering WhatsApp messages and handling phone numbers, message content and attachments. WhatsApp's involvement in messaging is separate from advertising; no Meta advertising pixel is installed.
• Lovable AI and its model provider, OpenAI — when the WhatsApp assistant is enabled, processing relevant conversation history and customer, property and booking details needed to respond and use booking tools. Avoid sending sensitive information that is not needed for your enquiry.
• Google — advertising measurement and, with consent, advertising storage and remarketing. Limited cookieless measurement requests may still be sent without consent, as explained below.
• Our accountants, and sub-contractors attending your job — for example an electrician working alongside us, who receives only what they need.

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

If you agree to advertising cookies, a record that you visited this site may be shared with Google so that we can measure whether our ads work and show later ads to people who have already visited us. This does not involve sharing your survey notes, photographs, quotes or payment records.

We measure submitted website enquiries and bookings, and clicks on telephone and WhatsApp links. A link click is not evidence of a completed phone call or WhatsApp conversation. Our website tracking does not record phone-call audio or send WhatsApp message content to Google as an advertising conversion.

Google's tag loads even before a choice is made or after rejection. Its advanced Consent Mode may send limited cookieless requests for measurement and conversion modelling, including technical request information. These requests should not be treated as wholly anonymous. Advertising storage, advertising user data and personalisation are denied by default for UK, EEA, Switzerland and Quebec visitors; your saved banner choice is applied on page load.

You can withdraw that consent at any time using Cookie settings — it takes effect straight away and denies advertising storage, advertising user data and ad personalisation. Limited cookieless requests may continue, and withdrawal does not delete information already received by Google. You can also use your browser's privacy controls to block tracking requests.

Some of these suppliers are based in, or store data in, the United States. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the UK's approved safeguards — the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards that apply.

• Enquiries that don't turn into work: six years from our last contact.
• WhatsApp conversations and assistant booking records: six years from completion or our last contact, as applicable.
• Surveys, quotes and job records including photographs: six years from completion, for warranty, tax and legal claim purposes.
• Accounting and payment records: six years.
• Other customer records: six years from completion or our last contact, as applicable.
• Portal accounts can be closed on request; associated customer records follow the six-year retention policy.
• Cookie consent records: kept on your device until you clear or change them.

Access to customer records is limited to our own staff and protected by individual accounts and access rules. Data is encrypted in transit, documents and photographs are held in private storage that isn't publicly reachable, and card details never touch our systems. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach ever put you at serious risk we would tell you and the ICO.

CCTV systems we install record to your own equipment. Once the system is handed over you are the controller of your own footage, and responsible for how it's used — including where cameras point beyond your boundary. We don't hold or access your footage afterwards unless you ask us to look at something, and we'll be happy to talk you through the ICO's guidance for domestic CCTV.

When enabled, our WhatsApp assistant provides automated replies, checks service-area fees and diary availability, and can arrange a booking after you confirm the details. It can pass the conversation to staff, and you can ask for a person. We do not use it to make solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you, or to profile you to decide what you're charged; fees follow our configured service and postcode rates.

Our services are sold to adults. We don't knowingly collect information about children beyond what a customer might mention about their household.

Under UK GDPR you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• correct anything that's wrong;
• delete it, where we're not required to keep it;
• restrict what we do with it while a query is sorted out;
• stop using it where we rely on legitimate interests, by objecting to that use;
• send it to you or another provider in a portable format, where it's data you gave us and we hold it under contract or consent;
• withdraw consent where consent is what we rely on, such as advertising cookies.

Email [email protected]. We'll respond within one month, and it's free unless a request is excessive.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office:

• Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
• 0303 123 1113
• ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

If we change how we use your information we'll update this page and change the date at the top. Where the change is significant, we'll tell you directly.