Privacy Policy
How Cerrax handles personal data, in plain terms.
1. Who we are
Cerrax Ltd ("Cerrax", "we") provides software for removals firms: a pricing engine, and the enquiries, customer records, quotes and jobs around it. This policy explains what personal data we handle, why, and your rights. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer; questions go to hello@cerrax.io.
2. Two different roles
Our role under UK data protection law depends on whose data it is:
- Your data (the removal firm using Cerrax). For account holders' own details, we are the controller.
- Your customers' data. When a firm uses Cerrax, personal data about the people it deals with — its customers, the people who enquire with it, its other contacts, and its own staff and crew in their working role — is handled by us as a processor, on the firm's instructions. The firm is the controller; our processing is governed by our Data Processing Agreement with the firm. If you are a firm's customer, the firm's own privacy notice applies to you, and questions about your data are best sent to the firm first.
- A customer's video kept to train software. If a customer agrees to Cerrax keeping their video or photographs for that purpose, we are the controller for that use alone (see §3).
- Website visitors, and firms we may contact. We are the controller for the limited data you give us directly (e.g. a demo enquiry), for keeping the service secure, and for our own research into removals firms we may contact (see §3).
3. What we collect
From firms using Cerrax: account and contact details (name, company, email, phone), and the job inputs you enter to produce a price. Within job data: addresses/postcodes and job details, which may be personal data of your customers — processed only to produce and explain a price and record the outcome you tell us. From the job itself: where your crew use Cerrax on the day, photographs they take of the property, its access and any damage found; if you ask your customer to sign the inventory, the name they give and the signature they draw; and, if you invite it and your customer chooses to, a video of their home, or photographs of it, that they send you to be quoted from. These are held as the record of the job, on your instructions, and are used for nothing else: they never affect a price and are never shared with another firm, unless the firm chooses to send a link to its crew or its insurer (see below). The one exception is your customer's own choice, described next. From website visitors: what you submit in a waitlist, demo or contact form. We do not record your browsing sessions or track behaviour for advertising. Firms we may contact: we research removals firms from public sources (Companies House and the firm's own website, found with the help of Perplexity) — the business name, address, website and published contact details. Where the firm is a sole trader, that is personal data. We use it only to decide whether to contact the firm about Cerrax, and you can ask us to stop at any time.
Contacts and enquiries (for firms that switch them on). A firm can keep a contact record for each of its customers and enquirers — their name, email addresses, phone numbers, company, preferred language, the addresses they have moved from or to, where the enquiry came from, the firm's notes, and any choice the person made about the firm's messages. The firm decides what is kept and is the controller; we hold it as the firm's processor, only within that firm's account, and never share it with another firm. To recognise the same person arriving twice, we keep a scrambled key made from their email address or phone number that cannot be read back without a secret held only by us.
Enquiry emails and AI. A firm can give lead websites a Cerrax address to send enquiries to. We receive those emails (through Amazon Web Services, London) and read them to fill in the enquiry. If an email isn't laid out in labelled lines, we send its text — without the forwarding headers or earlier quoted messages — to Anthropic, an AI provider in the United States, which suggests the name, contact details, addresses, date and size of the move. A suggestion is only used if the words appear in the email, and a person at the firm checks it before anything is priced or sent. Anthropic does not use it to train its models and deletes it within 30 days (longer only if it is flagged for misuse). We do not keep the email's text for any purpose of our own. When a firm describes a job's items and rooms to Cerrax, we keep that description — with any email address, phone number or postcode removed — for 30 days to improve how Cerrax recognises items, and then delete the text.
Messages a firm sends through Cerrax. A firm can switch on emails in its own name: reminders to someone who asked it for a quote (up to three, stopping as soon as they reply, accept or decline), a thank-you after a move, and — only if the customer ticked a box agreeing to it — one email after the move asking whether they know anyone else who is moving. Some of these are only available in some countries, and where the law requires it the person is asked when they enquire. Every one has a one-tap link to stop them; stopping covers all of these emails from that firm to that person. We keep a record of each choice and when it was made so the firm can show it later, and we keep a scrambled note of a stop so it is honoured even after other records are deleted. The firm is responsible for these messages; we send them on its instructions.
If your customer lets us keep their video to train software. When a customer sends a video or photographs, they may tick a separate box allowing Cerrax to keep them to train software that recognises furniture and rooms. It is never ticked for them and it is not a condition of being quoted. For that use, and only that use, Cerrax is the controller and the lawful basis is the customer's consent. Before any footage is used to train software, faces, documents and anything else that identifies a person or the home are blurred. Where Cerrax blurs faces as soon as a video arrives, the firm sees it with faces already blurred. Nothing uses it today: it is kept, not yet used. The customer can withdraw their consent at any time, by asking the firm or by writing to us at hello@cerrax.io; the video and photographs are then deleted under the 90-day rule in §10.
Links a firm chooses to share. A firm can send its crew a link to a job sheet, and can give its insurer, broker or claims handler a link to a job's evidence — the customer's name, the photographs, video and signatures, never their email address or phone number. Evidence links expire after a period the firm chooses, at most 90 days; they can be revoked at any time and record each time they are opened. Who receives a link is the firm's decision.
Calendar feeds. If a firm subscribes its own calendar (for example Google, Apple or Microsoft) to its Cerrax calendar link, that calendar provider fetches the firm's booked jobs — including the customer's name, addresses and phone number unless the firm chooses the private version — and holds that copy under the firm's own agreement with it.
Messages about a job. As part of a job, a firm can send its customer booking confirmations, move-day reminders, requests for a video or a payment, a note before a quote expires and, after the move, a request for a review — by WhatsApp where the firm has connected it and the customer uses it, otherwise by email. The customer can instead answer the review request privately, with a rating from 1 to 5 and a comment that only the firm sees. A firm can also keep follow-up tasks about a customer, with notes.
When a customer accepts a quote, we record the time, the version of the firm's terms and the cancellation statement shown, and any box the customer ticked. We do not record their IP address or device. We also count how many times the page for a quote is opened, and note when it was last opened, so the firm can see whether its quote has been read.
A firm's team. The logins of the people a firm invites — their name, email address and sign-in details, including two-step sign-in if they turn it on (the secret that links their authenticator app, and one-time recovery codes kept in scrambled form) — are account data that we are responsible for. What a firm records about its crew for its jobs — the mobile numbers used to send them job sheets, who is assigned to which job, and the times they mark arrival or completion — is the firm's data, which we hold on its behalf. No location is ever captured.
Faces in photographs and video. Nothing in Cerrax recognises a face or keeps any measurement of one. Where faces are blurred, software finds them only to blur them, and the unblurred original is then deleted.
Feedback and problem reports. If someone at a firm reports a problem or sends us feedback from inside Cerrax, we keep it with their name and account so we can look into it and tell them when it is fixed. We may use Anthropic to sort feedback into categories.
Dictation. If you dictate into Cerrax, your browser's own speech-recognition service (Google in Chrome, Apple in Safari) turns your speech into text before it reaches us, under your browser's terms. We receive only the text; you can type instead.
Email delivery records and the audit trail. For each email sent through Cerrax we keep the recipient's address, the subject and whether it was delivered, to investigate delivery problems. We also keep a record of consequential actions in an account and who took them, to keep the service secure and accountable.
4. Cookies
We use only the cookies needed to make the site and service work (for example, keeping you signed in). We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, so no cookie consent banner is needed. If we ever add analytics or other non-essential cookies, we'll add a consent banner first, as PECR requires.
We measure how many people visit these pages using Vercel Web Analytics, which is privacy-preserving by design: it sets no cookie, stores no identifier, and cannot follow you between sites or sessions. It tells us page counts, referring sites and countries — never who you are.
We also keep a few things in your browser so the service works — for example a draft you have not saved yet, or your language. These are strictly necessary and are never used for tracking.
5. Why we use it, and our lawful bases
- To provide the service — performance of our contract with you. We need your name and email address to open an account; without them we cannot provide Cerrax.
- To keep the service secure and prevent abuse (for example, rate limits, blocking attacks, and checking that a visitor to the public price check is a person) — our legitimate interest in keeping Cerrax and the firms on it safe.
- To research and contact removals firms about Cerrax — our legitimate interest in growing the business. Where a firm is a sole trader we only email them where the law allows it, and they can object at any time.
- To improve the pricing engine — our legitimate interest in calibrating prices, using de-identified data (see §7); and, to improve how Cerrax recognises items, keeping a firm's descriptions of a job's items and rooms for 30 days with email addresses, phone numbers and postcodes removed (see §3).
- To keep a customer's video or photographs to train software — the customer's consent, which they can withdraw at any time (see §3).
- To meet legal obligations — e.g. accounting, responding to lawful requests.
6. Automated pricing
Cerrax produces a price automatically from the inputs and settings provided. This is a tool for the firm: the firm decides what to charge its customer (see our Terms). Cerrax can price an enquiry as soon as it arrives, but that price is a proposal to the firm: the firm reviews it and chooses to send it, change it, or not to quote, and a customer is always free to decline a quote. AI in Cerrax only suggests details for a person to confirm; it never sets a price. Cerrax does not take a significant decision about anyone based solely on automated processing (UK GDPR Articles 22A to 22D).
7. The learning corpus (important)
Cerrax gets more accurate as it sees real outcomes. When a job is completed, we make a separate de-identified record of it, on the firm's instruction: the volume, a distance band, access features, crew, vans, hours, the price and cost, the month of the move, and an area no finer than a postcode area (for example "BS", never "BS8"). It never holds a name, contact detail, full postcode, address, map position, free text, photograph, video, signature, the firm's identity, or any reference that links it back to the job. While we still hold the original job it is treated as personal data like the job itself; once the original is deleted, or the customer erased, no one could identify a living person from it using means reasonably likely to be used — it is then anonymous, and we keep it indefinitely. We never try to re-identify anyone. Aggregated insight may inform regional benchmarks; we never expose an individual firm's prices or any customer's identity.
8. Who we share it with
We don't sell personal data. We use a small set of service providers (sub-processors) under contract. Today they are:
- Google Cloud and Firebase — hosting, database and file storage (London region), and account sign-in.
- Google Maps — geocoding and distances between addresses.
- Anthropic (an AI provider, United States) — only when a firm uses a feature that reads what it is given: the capture bar and narrative capture (turning a description of a job into a list of items), photographs of a written or printed list, spreadsheet import, and enquiry emails with no labelled layout (§3). It proposes items or details for a person to confirm; it never sets a price. It does not train on this data and deletes it within 30 days.
- Amazon Web Services (SES and SNS, London region) — delivers email: to you (account notices, password resets and anything you ask us for) and, on your behalf, to your customers (the quotes and messages you send them through Cerrax); and receives the enquiry emails sent to your Cerrax lead address.
- Stripe — takes payment for your Cerrax subscription; and, if you connect your own Stripe account to take deposits or balances, handles your customer's payment on your account.
- Meta (WhatsApp Business) — only if you connect your own WhatsApp Business number, in which case the messages you send your customers through it are delivered by Meta.
- Xero — only if you connect your own Xero account, in which case the invoice details of the jobs you send to it (your customer's name and address and the amounts) are written into it as draft invoices by Xero.
- Sage — only if you connect your own Sage account instead, in which case the same invoice details are written into it as invoices by Sage.
- QuickBooks (Intuit) — only if you connect your own QuickBooks company instead, in which case the same invoice details are written into it as invoices by Intuit.
- Vercel — runs our website, the Cerrax app and the pages your customers open (London servers, US company), and provides the cookieless visitor analytics described in section 4.
- Cloudflare Turnstile — checks that a visitor to our public price check is a person, not a bot.
- Ideal Postcodes — looks up UK addresses as they are typed.
- Companies House and Perplexity (United States) — for our own business only: finding public information about removals firms we may contact (§3). No firm's customer data goes to them.
Stripe (for your customers' payments), Meta, Xero, Sage and QuickBooks act under your own account and agreement with them when you connect them. We keep this list current and reflect only services actually in use; we email account owners at least 30 days before a new provider starts handling their customers' data.
Anthropic is also used to suggest adjustments from the notes on a quote, to write a move-preparation checklist for a customer from the job's postcodes, date and notes, and to sort feedback sent to us, and to sort replies to our own emails to removals firms. It does not train on this data and deletes it within 30 days.
9. Where your data is stored
Your data is held in the region your account belongs to, and we don't move personal data out of it without a valid transfer mechanism in place — the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, UK adequacy regulations (including the UK–US data bridge for providers certified to it), or the equivalent for the region concerned. Some providers process data elsewhere (for example, AI processing in the United States); the same safeguards apply there. Anthropic, for example, is covered by its data processing agreement with the Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK's approval of them.
As things stand today: every Cerrax account is in a country Cerrax is open in (the United Kingdom, Ireland and France at the date above), and the data behind every one of them is held in the UK. That is a statement of fact on the date above rather than a promise about the future — if you need it in writing for a particular account, or want to know where a specific service processes data, ask us at hello@cerrax.io and we will tell you.
10. How long we keep it
Your account data (where we are the controller): for as long as your account is active and for up to six years after it closes, to meet our legal, accounting, and tax obligations — unless the law requires us to keep it longer.
Your customers' data (where we are your processor): for as long as you keep it with us, and deleted or returned when you ask, as the Data Processing Agreement sets out. Unless you tell us otherwise, job records — a quote, its booking and outcome, the crew's sheets, and any survey or damage photographs attached to them — are kept for six years after the move (or after the quote, if the job did not go ahead), unless a claim or dispute about that job is still open, and then deleted. Photographs have no separate clock: they are kept for as long as the job record they belong to and are deleted with it. A customer's video, and any photographs the customer sends with it, are deleted 90 days after the job's last date — unless the customer has agreed to Cerrax keeping them to train software (§3) and has not withdrawn that consent.
Unless a firm sets different periods: an enquiry that was never priced or sent is deleted 12 months after its last activity; a quote that was sent but never accepted, 24 months after it was sent; a contact record is kept while any job record linked to it is kept, and deleted 12 months after the last one goes (or 12 months after it was made, if it was never linked to a job). A record of a person's consent is kept for as long as their contact record and six years after, so the firm can show it; a scrambled record of a request to stop messages is kept indefinitely, so it keeps being honoured.
Our own records: demo and contact enquiries, 24 months after our last contact with you (or sooner if you ask); security logs, 90 days. De-identified records (§7) are not personal data and are kept indefinitely. You can ask us to erase personal data (§12); committed pricing records are never silently altered, but personal identifiers within them are removed.
Also: email delivery records, 90 days; security logs, 90 days (a block on an address is kept while it lasts, then 90 days); the audit trail, up to six years after the account closes, with a customer's details removed when that customer is erased; feedback and problem reports, while the account is open and up to six years after it closes; two-step sign-in details, until they are switched off or the login is removed.
Removals firms we research are deleted 180 days after we last checked them. If a firm asks us not to contact it, we keep its email address, domain or company number on a do-not-contact list indefinitely, so that we honour it.
11. Marketing and communications
We'll send you service messages needed to run your account. If you ask for a demo or sign up, we may contact you about Cerrax; you can opt out of marketing at any time via the unsubscribe link or by emailing us. We follow PECR for any electronic marketing.
12. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can request access, correction, erasure, restriction and portability, and object to processing based on our legitimate interests. You can object to direct marketing at any time, and we will stop. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what was done before. For a firm's customers' data (where we are processor), direct requests to the firm as controller; we help the firm answer them. To exercise a right, contact hello@cerrax.io.
13. Children
Cerrax is a tool for businesses and is not directed at children. We don't knowingly collect data from children.
14. Complaints
If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, tell us at hello@cerrax.io — we will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it without undue delay, and tell you the outcome. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
15. Security
We protect data with access controls, encryption in transit and at rest via our cloud provider, and audited administrative actions. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures appropriate to the data.
If a personal data breach occurs, we act promptly: where we are the controller we notify the ICO, and affected individuals where required; where we are a processor we notify the affected firm without undue delay, and within 48 hours, so it can meet its own obligations.
16. Changes
We may update this policy; we'll post the new version here with a revised effective date, and email account owners about any change that affects them.
17. Contact
Cerrax Ltd, 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ. hello@cerrax.io.