Privacy policy

Information we collect

Mechanics Directory collects information you give us when you use the site. If you’re looking for a business, this can include your name, email address, phone number, suburb or postcode, the kind of work you need, and any job details (such as your vehicle’s make and model) or message you write when you request quotes or send an enquiry. If you write a review, we collect your name, email address, rating and review; if the review is published, your name, rating and review appear on the business’s page, but your email address does not.

For businesses, we collect the business name, ABN, contact details, services, service areas, licence details and details of paid plans. When anyone signs in, we record their email address and, for security, the IP address and browser used.

Please don’t include sensitive information, such as health details, in a quote request, message or review. If you do, it is stored with that request, message or review and shared only as described in this policy.

We also collect information about how the site is used, such as the pages that are viewed, through our own page-view counter, described below.

Where business listings come from

Listings are built from publicly available business information. A business owner can claim their listing to correct it, or ask us to remove it through our contact page.

How we use your information

We use the information we collect to run and improve the directory, pass on quote requests and enquiries, respond to messages, process business claims and paid plans, and send account notifications and service updates. We may use aggregated, de-identified data to understand how the site is used and to improve search results.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only in the ways described in this policy: with the business you contact or the businesses we match your quote request with, and with the service providers that help us run the site. Our servers send nothing about drivers, business owners or other visitors to Meta or any other advertising platform.

Quote requests and enquiries

When you request quotes or send an enquiry, your details and message are saved on our system and our team can see them.

An enquiry or quote request sent from a business’s profile is meant for that business. A quote request that doesn’t name a business is matched with up to 3 businesses listed for the trade you chose that service your area.

A business that has claimed its listing on Mechanics Directory gets your request in its account, and we may email the business to let it know. What it sees depends on its plan: on a paid plan (Upgraded or Featured) it sees your name, contact details and message, so it can contact you; on the free plan it sees only the job and your suburb, and sees your name, contact details and message only if it moves to a paid plan later.

We don’t send requests to businesses that haven’t claimed their listing: we keep your request on our system, and the business can see it in its account only if it claims the listing later, on the same terms. When you send a request we tell you on screen which businesses got your contact details, which have your request without them, and which only have it saved. If no listed business matches, only our team sees your request.

Analytics and advertising

Our own page-view counter

When you open a page, your browser tells our own server which page it was, the address of the page you came from, the page of our site you were on before, and any advertising campaign tags in the link you followed. We add this to daily totals, such as how many times a business’s page was viewed and how many times its contact buttons were used. The totals do not include your name or your IP address, and a business sees only the totals for its own listing. Your IP address is used briefly to limit misuse and is not stored with the totals. This information stays on our server.

Advertising pixels

We don’t use the Meta Pixel or any other advertising pixel.

Cookies

Our site sets its own cookies: one to complete a sign-in, one to keep you signed in (for 30 days), one that remembers the businesses you save before you sign in, and a short-lived one that carries a message back to you while you upgrade a listing.

Service providers we use

• Payments: Stripe handles card payments for paid plans; card details are entered on Stripe’s page and held by Stripe, not by us.
• Email: the emails we send, such as sign-in links and quote requests, go through an email delivery service. Provider to be confirmed
• Hosting: the website and its database run on rented servers. Location to be confirmed
• Fonts: our pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address and browser details when your browser fetches them.

Information held outside Australia

Stripe stores and processes information outside Australia, including in the United States. Some of the other service providers above may also store and process information outside Australia. Once they are chosen, this section must list the countries involved. To be confirmed

Your rights and choices

You have the right to access, correct or ask us to delete your personal information at any time. To do so, or to ask a question about this policy, use our contact page. We respond to privacy requests within 30 days. You can opt out of marketing emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email we send.

Your browser settings let you block or delete cookies.

This policy is governed by the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. If you have a complaint about how we handle your personal information, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.