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    Privacy Policy

    Last updated: 4 August 2026

    1. Who We Are

    K9Wash ("we", "our", "us") operates k9wash.com, an independent, community-powered directory of self-service dog wash locations. Coverage is established across the United Kingdom, Ireland and Europe, with emerging coverage in Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, together with a small number of K9Wash-branded self-service dog wash hubs in Northern Ireland. We are the data controller responsible for your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) where applicable, and the Data Protection Act 2018.

    Contact: hello@k9wash.com

    2. What Data We Collect

    Depending on how you use K9Wash, we may collect and process the following personal data:

    • Account data: name, email address and password when you create a dog owner, vendor or admin account. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address and profile image from Google. We never receive your Google password.
    • Vendor and listing data: business name, address, contact details, opening hours, photos, amenities, ownership-proof photos, custom microsite content and (for Pro) custom domain settings when you list or claim a location.
    • Booking data: service type, date, time slot and any notes when you book a slot at a K9Wash Hub.
    • Contact and messaging data: name, email, phone and message content when you contact us, message a vendor, or a customer messages your claimed listing.
    • Community submission data: the location details and email you provide when you submit a dog wash via /submit-wash.
    • Community contribution data: check-ins, wash status and availability reports, hazard alerts, price and amenity corrections, review text and ratings, uploaded photos, report confirmations, feature votes, and the XP, contribution level and badges earned from them.
    • Owner dashboard data: the community reports, suggested edits, photos and messages relating to a listing you have claimed, and the decisions you take on them.
    • Dog and care data: dog name, breed, coat type, size, age, photo, wash history and coat care events you add to a dog profile, plus the reminder frequency you choose.
    • Saved places and trip data: favourite washes, saved places, trips (stop lists and routes) and Road Trip routes, including the start and destination points you enter.
    • Payment and subscription data: K9Bud+ membership, vendor Premium and gift card purchase records, including plan, trial start and end dates, renewal dates and subscription status. Full card details are never stored by us; payments are processed by Stripe.
    • Notification data: your browser or device push subscription (endpoint and encryption keys) if you allow notifications, and your alert preferences.
    • Email engagement data: which lifecycle, reminder and transactional emails we have sent you, and unsubscribe or suppression status.
    • Location data: approximate geolocation from your device (only if you grant permission in your browser) or from a postcode you enter, used to sort nearby washes and to place check-ins.
    • Country signal: a coarse country code derived from your IP address by our hosting network, used to show washes in your country first.
    • Usage data: pages visited, referrers, browser type, device information, coarse IP-derived location and interaction events, collected automatically for analytics and abuse prevention.
    • Technical diagnostics: error messages, stack traces, request paths and device details when something on the site fails, so we can fix it.

    3. Lawful Basis for Processing

    We process your personal data on the following legal bases under Article 6 of the UK GDPR / EU GDPR:

    • Contract: to provide the directory, deliver bookings, run vendor microsites and manage your account and subscriptions.
    • Legitimate interests: to keep the directory accurate, improve the product, prevent fraud and abuse, and send transactional service messages.
    • Consent: for optional cookies, browser geolocation and marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
    • Legal obligation: to comply with tax, accounting and other applicable laws.

    4. How We Use Your Data

    • To create and manage owner, vendor and admin accounts.
    • To run the K9Wash directory, search, map and location pages.
    • To operate vendor microsites, custom domain forwarding and vendor inboxes.
    • To process bookings at K9Wash Hubs and manage K9Bud+ / vendor Premium subscriptions, free trials and gift cards.
    • To build coat care calendars, wash reminders and nearby-wash suggestions from your dog profiles and saved places.
    • To run the K9Bud+ trip planner, Road Trip Mode and offline maps, and to remember your favourites across devices.
    • To publish community reports, check-ins, reviews and photos on listings, and to calculate live status, popular times, availability predictions, XP and contribution levels.
    • To show claimed-listing owners the community activity, suggested edits and messages relating to their location.
    • To send push notifications you have opted into, such as a new wash added near a saved place.
    • To monitor errors and performance so we can fix faults quickly.
    • To send account, trial, reminder and lifecycle emails, and marketing emails only where you have opted in.
    • To review, verify and publish community-submitted and vendor-claimed listings.
    • To respond to enquiries, contact-form submissions and vendor-to-customer messages.
    • To measure site usage, understand which content and features are useful, and improve K9Wash.
    • To detect, prevent and address security incidents, spam and misuse.

    5. Data Sharing

    We do not sell your personal data. We share personal data only with the following categories of recipients:

    • Hosting and backend: our managed cloud backend (Supabase, hosted in the EU) which stores accounts, listings, bookings and messages.
    • Payments: Stripe, which processes K9Bud+, vendor Premium and gift card transactions and handles card data directly.
    • Maps and postcode lookup: Google Maps Platform and public postcode APIs, when you use the map, search by postcode or request directions.
    • Email: transactional email providers used to deliver booking confirmations, reminders, lifecycle emails, vendor notifications and password resets.
    • Push delivery: your browser or device vendor's push service (for example Apple, Google or Mozilla) relays notifications to your device if you have allowed them.
    • Vendors: if you contact a claimed vendor through K9Wash, your message and the details you provide are shared with that vendor to reply to you.
    • Analytics: privacy-friendly, aggregated usage analytics we run in-house on our own database.
    • Legal authorities: where required by law or to protect our legal rights.

    All third-party processors are contractually required to protect your data in line with UK/EU GDPR.

    6. Partners and Referral Links

    K9Wash promotes partner brands we like, such as Home of Blu pet toys. Clicking a partner link, using a partner discount code (for example K9W20) or scanning a QR sticker may pass a referral parameter to that partner so the partner can attribute the visit. We do not share your name, email or account with partners.

    7. Data Retention

    We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected:

    • Account data: retained while your account is active, plus 12 months after deletion.
    • Booking data: retained for 24 months after the booking date.
    • Vendor listing data: retained while the listing is published; unpublished listings are retained for 12 months.
    • Contact and vendor messages: retained for 12 months.
    • Community submissions: retained for 12 months whether or not published.
    • Dog profiles and care history: retained while your account is active; deleted with your account or when you delete the dog profile.
    • Saved places, trips and favourites: retained while your account is active.
    • Email engagement records: retained for 12 months; unsubscribe records are kept longer so we do not email you again.
    • Community contributions: check-ins and status reports are used for live signals for up to 30 days and then kept in anonymised aggregate form; reviews, photos and accepted listing corrections remain published until you or we remove them.
    • Push subscriptions: retained until you revoke notification permission or the push service reports the subscription as expired.
    • Technical diagnostics and error logs: retained for up to 90 days.
    • Payment records: retained for 6 years to comply with tax and accounting obligations.

    8. Your Rights

    Under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR you have the right to:

    • Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
    • Rectification: request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
    • Erasure: request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten").
    • Restriction: request restriction of processing in certain circumstances.
    • Portability: request your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
    • Objection: object to processing based on legitimate interests or direct marketing.
    • Withdraw consent: where processing is based on consent, withdraw at any time.

    To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hello@k9wash.com. We will respond within one month.

    9. Data Security

    We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data, including TLS encryption in transit, hashed passwords, database-level row-level security policies, and least-privilege access for staff. No system is 100% secure and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

    10. International Transfers

    K9Wash serves users across the UK, Ireland and Europe, and increasingly in Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Data is primarily processed within the EU/EEA. Where a processor or hosting edge location is outside the UK/EEA, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the UK IDTA / UK Addendum, EU Standard Contractual Clauses and adequacy decisions.

    11. Data Stored On Your Device

    For speed and offline use, K9Wash stores some data locally on your device using local storage and IndexedDB. This includes cached listing and map tile data for the K9Bud+ trip planner and offline maps, your cookie-consent choice, recent searches and app install preferences. This data stays on your device and is not a profile we sell or share. Clearing your browser or app storage removes it.

    12. Automated Reminders and Care Guidance

    Wash reminders and coat care schedules are generated automatically from the dog details, wash history and reminder frequency you provide. These are convenience suggestions, not veterinary advice, and no decision with legal effect is made about you automatically. You can turn reminders off in your profile or unsubscribe from any reminder email.

    13. Community Contributions and What Is Public

    K9Wash is community powered. When you check in at a wash, report its status, flag a hazard, correct a price or amenity, add a photo or leave a review, that contribution becomes part of the public listing. Publicly visible information is limited to your display name, avatar, contribution level or badge, the content of the contribution and its date. Your email address, exact device location, dog profiles, saved places and trips are never shown publicly. XP totals and leaderboard positions are shown under your display name only. Feature votes are counted anonymously. You can ask us to remove a contribution by contacting us, though we may retain an anonymised record where the listing data has since been corrected by others.

    14. Notifications and Push Data

    If you allow notifications, your browser or device gives us a push subscription token (an endpoint and encryption keys). We store this to send alerts such as a new wash added near a place you have saved. It is not an identifier we can use to track you across other websites. Revoking notification permission in your browser or device settings, or signing out, ends this processing, and we delete subscriptions that the push service reports as expired. Service emails are sent on the contract and legitimate-interest bases; marketing emails only with your explicit opt-in.

    15. Error and Performance Monitoring

    To keep K9Wash fast and reliable we log technical diagnostics when something breaks: the page or request that failed, the error message and stack trace, browser and device type, coarse IP-derived location and, where you were signed in, your user ID so we can reproduce the fault. This is processed on the basis of our legitimate interest in a secure, working service, is visible only to our administrators, and is retained for up to 90 days. We do not use it for advertising or profiling.

    16. Cookies

    We use cookies and similar technologies. For full details, see our Cookie Policy.

    17. Children

    K9Wash is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

    18. Changes to This Policy

    We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated "last updated" date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

    19. Complaints

    If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO): ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. In Ireland this is the Data Protection Commission: dataprotection.ie. EU users may complain to their national data protection authority. Users outside the UK and EU may contact us directly at hello@k9wash.com.