Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal information North Wave collects through this website, why we collect it, who it is shared with, and the choices you have. We have kept it in plain language. If anything here is unclear, call or email us and we will explain it.
Last updated
Who we are
This website is operated by North Wave Plumbing, trading as North Wave, a plumbing, gas fitting and hydronic heating business based in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We serve North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Squamish and Lions Bay.
We are responsible for the personal information handled through this site. In Canadian terms, we are the organisation collecting it, and this policy is our statement of how we handle it under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).
For anything about this policy, or about information we hold on you, contact us at contact@northwaveplumbing.ca or (778) 558-5355.
Information we collect
We collect only what we need to answer an enquiry and quote or carry out work. We do not buy personal information from third parties, and we do not build advertising profiles.
When you send us an enquiry through the contact form, or call or email us, we collect what you choose to give us:
- Your name, and the phone number or email address you want us to reply to.
- The property or area the work relates to, and details of the system involved: its make, model, rough age, and what it is doing.
- Anything else you write in the message field.
- Basic technical information your browser sends with any web request, such as your IP address, browser type and the page you were on. Our hosting provider records this in standard server logs for security and troubleshooting.
Why we use it, and on what basis
Consent is the backbone of Canadian privacy law, and it is the basis we rely on. By sending us an enquiry you are consenting to us using your details to respond to it. You can withdraw that consent at any time, and we explain how below.
We use the information you give us to:
- Reply to your enquiry, ask any follow-up questions, and prepare a quote.
- Arrange and carry out work you ask us to do, including scheduling a visit.
- Keep a record of work done on a system, so a later call-out has the history behind it.
- Meet our own legal, insurance, permit and tax obligations as a licensed trade.
- Keep this website secure and working properly.
Other times we may disclose information
Beyond those providers, we may disclose personal information where we are required or permitted to by law: to comply with a court order, a subpoena, a lawful request from a regulator or authority, or where disclosure is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, or to protect someone's safety.
If the business is ever sold or reorganised, customer records may transfer to the new owner as part of it. We would give notice on this website before that happened.
Where your information is processed
Some of the providers above operate outside Canada, principally in the United States. That means your personal information may be stored or processed outside Canada and, while it is there, may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of that country under its laws.
We tell you this because Canadian privacy law expects it, not because we send anything unusual abroad. It is the ordinary consequence of using a hosted form service and a hosted website. If you would rather not have your details go through the form for that reason, call us on (778) 558-5355 instead and nothing goes through this website at all.
How long we keep it
Enquiries that do not turn into work are kept for 24 months from our last contact with you, unless you ask us to delete them sooner. That window exists because heating enquiries often come back a season or two later, and it is genuinely useful to have the earlier conversation to hand.
Where we have carried out work, we keep the job record, quote and invoice for as long as our tax, warranty, permit and insurance obligations require, generally seven years, and then delete it.
Your rights and choices
Under PIPEDA and BC PIPA you have real, enforceable rights over the information we hold about you. To exercise any of them, email contact@northwaveplumbing.ca. We will respond within 30 days, as Canadian law requires, and we will not charge you or treat you differently for asking.
You can:
- Ask what personal information we hold about you, and get a copy of it.
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong or out of date.
- Withdraw your consent and ask us to delete your information, subject to any records we are legally required to keep.
- Ask how your information has been used and who it has been disclosed to.
- Complain to us and, if we do not resolve it, to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.
Children
This website is intended for adults arranging work on a property. It is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has sent us something through this site, contact us and we will delete it.
How we protect it
This website is served over HTTPS, so what you send through the contact form is encrypted in transit. Access to enquiries is limited to the people at North Wave who need it to quote or carry out the work.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we will not claim otherwise. What we can say is that we hold no payment card details on this website, we keep the amount of information we collect deliberately small, and we delete it on the schedule above.
Links to other sites
This site links out to places like our Google Business Profile and our Instagram page. Once you follow a link you are on someone else's site, under their privacy policy, and this one no longer applies. We are not responsible for how they handle your information.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle personal information, say a new form provider or analytics being added, we will update this policy and change the date at the top of the page. Material changes will be flagged on the site. It is worth re-reading this page if you have not looked at it in a while.
Contact us
Questions about this policy, or about the information we hold on you, reach us at the contacts below. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can take it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.
- Email: contact@northwaveplumbing.ca
- Phone: (778) 558-5355
- Post: North Wave Plumbing, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada