Privacy Policy
1. What we collect
When you submit a quote for a free check, we collect:
- The document you upload — a photo or PDF of your repair quote or invoice. These documents often contain personal information printed by the shop, such as your name, address, phone number, email, and vehicle identification number (VIN).
- Your email address — so we can deliver your report.
- Anything you choose to tell us in the optional comments field (for example, what the shop said).
- Optional: your ZIP code and your vehicle's current mileage. ZIP helps us account for regional differences in labor rates; mileage lets us check whether a recommended service is actually due. Both are optional — leaving them blank just makes the check a little less precise.
- Basic technical information — our website host and form provider automatically process standard web log data (such as IP address and browser type) to deliver and secure the service. We do not use this to identify you.
We do not ask for, and you should not send, payment card numbers, Social Security numbers, or other sensitive identifiers. If a document contains information beyond what we need, we disregard and remove it as described below.
2. How we use your information
- To produce your report: we read your quote's line items, identify the repairs, and compare the prices against fair-price reference ranges for your vehicle and repair type.
- To deliver and follow up: we email your report to the address you provided, and may send a brief follow-up about your audit (for example, asking how the repair conversation went). If you choose to, you can also ask us for maintenance-schedule updates for your vehicle (what's coming up and what it should cost) — these are sent only when you request them, and you can stop at any time. We honor any request to stop contacting you.
- To improve the service: after your report is delivered, we retain only de-identified pricing information (see Section 4) to make future checks more accurate.
We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not send marketing emails without your separate consent.
3. How your document is processed
Your submission is uploaded directly to our storage over an encrypted connection and processed automatically — no person reads your quote. Your email address, if you enter it to unlock the report, is stored with your submission.
To generate price comparisons, we submit vehicle and repair information only (for example, "2016 Honda Pilot — front brake pads and rotors") to automotive pricing data providers (currently VehicleDatabases). Your personal information is never included in those requests.
4. What we keep, and what we delete
- Deleted: your original uploaded document (and any copies containing personal details) is deleted within 2 days of delivering your report — typically much sooner, as deletion is a standard step in completing each audit.
- Retained (de-identified): the extracted, anonymized repair-pricing record — date, general area (metro name or the first three digits of the ZIP code — never the full ZIP), vehicle year/make/model, approximate mileage, repair type, quoted prices, and our analysis. This record contains no name, no contact information, no VIN, no full ZIP code, and cannot reasonably be used to identify you.
- Retained (limited): your email address and our correspondence with you, so we can deliver your report, respond to questions, and honor the follow-up described above. You may request deletion at any time (Section 7).
De-identified, aggregated pricing data (for example, "the median quoted price for front brakes in metro Atlanta") may be used in published research, statistics, and commercial data products. Because this data is anonymized and aggregated, it does not identify you and is not personal information.
5. What we share — and what we never do
We share personal information only with service providers that operate the service on our behalf, and only as needed to provide it:
- Tally (form and file handling), Cloudflare (website hosting and security), Proton (encrypted email), Anthropic (automated document analysis, used only after personal details are removed, as described in Section 3), and VehicleDatabases (vehicle and repair-pricing lookups, which receive vehicle and repair information only).
- We may also disclose information if required by law, legal process, or to protect our legal rights.
We never: sell your personal information; share your identity or your quote with repair shops, dealers, or manufacturers; use your uploaded documents for advertising; or contact you for purposes unrelated to your audit without your consent. If we ever offer to connect you with a second-opinion shop, it happens only if you ask, and we share only what you approve.
6. Cookies and tracking
This site does not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking, and we do not respond differently to "Do Not Track" signals because we do not track visitors across other websites in the first place. Our hosting and form providers may use strictly necessary cookies or similar technologies to make the site and form function and to prevent abuse. If we add privacy-respecting, cookieless analytics (such as Cloudflare Web Analytics), it measures aggregate page visits only.
7. Your choices and rights
- Deletion: email us at hello@truerangeauto.com and we will delete your submission, your report correspondence, and your email address from our records. (De-identified pricing records contain nothing that identifies you and therefore cannot be linked back to you for deletion.)
- Access and correction: you may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it.
- No account, no lock-in: the service does not require an account, and choosing not to provide information simply means we can't produce your report.
We honor these requests for all users regardless of state of residence. We aim to respond within 30 days.
8. Children
This service is intended for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13; if we learn we have, we will delete it. If you believe a minor has submitted information, contact us and we will remove it.
9. Security
Your submission travels over encrypted connections (TLS), is stored by providers that encrypt data at rest, and is handled under the deletion practices described above. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but minimizing what we keep — and deleting originals promptly — is our primary safeguard: we cannot lose what we do not retain.
10. Scope and changes
This service is operated from the United States and intended for U.S. residents. If we change this policy, we will post the updated version here with a new effective date; material changes will be noted prominently on this page. Continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
11. Contact
Privacy questions and requests: hello@truerangeauto.com
TrueRangeAuto · a service of Spuyten Duyvil Consulting Group LLC