Privacy Policy

This policy is in three parts, because three different groups of people give us details: visitors to this website, coach operators who subscribe, and their passengers. The retention schedule and your rights apply to everyone.

Who we are. The Conductor is a trading name of Paul Carr, a sole trader, of 19 Lavery Avenue, Larbert, Stirlingshire FK5 4GF. Email team@theconductor.uk.

1. Visitors to this website

What we collect

This website has one form for visitors, the trip preview, covered below. Starting a free trial asks for your email and trading name first; that is covered in section 2. (Until 8 October 2026 the pricing page also had the founding-operator offer, which is covered in section 2; the page asking operators whose free trial has ended what stopped them is covered there too.) If you email us a question, we have whatever you choose to put in the email — usually your name, your email address and your business. We collect nothing else, and this site sets no tracking or advertising cookies. (Until 22 September 2026 the site had a form for requesting a walkthrough, which asked for your name, email, phone number, company name, where your enquiries come from and roughly how many bookings you take a month. Anything sent through it is treated exactly as below.)

Why

Solely to answer your question about The Conductor. We rely on our legitimate interest in replying to somebody who has written to us (and, for the old walkthrough form, on the consent you gave by ticking its box). We won't add you to a marketing list without asking.

How long

If we don't end up working together, your enquiry details are deleted within 12 months.

Where it goes

Your email is kept in our mailbox, which is hosted by our website provider. Old walkthrough-form submissions were delivered to our inbox through an automation service (Make).

The trip preview

On theconductor.uk/try/ you can paste in a trip post, upload a picture of one, or type a trip in, and see it laid out as a booking page. If you paste or upload, the text or picture is sent to Anthropic (a US company), whose AI, Claude, reads it to fill in the trip: where and when it goes, the prices, the pick-up stops, and the coach firm’s name and phone number if the post shows them. We keep only those trip details, not the text or picture itself, for 30 days, so the preview’s link keeps working and so we can count how many previews lead to a signup. Anthropic handles it for us under its commercial terms: it does not use it to train its models, and deletes it within 30 days. If you type the trip in instead, nothing is sent to Anthropic. To check that a person, not a script, is using the page, it uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which sees your browser’s details for that check only; and to limit how many previews one visitor can make, we keep a scrambled form of your network address for up to two days. We rely on our legitimate interest in showing you the service you asked to see. Please don’t paste in anything about your passengers — the page only needs the trip.

2. Coach operators who subscribe

When you buy a subscription we are the controller of the details we hold about you and your business. We need them to provide the service, which is our lawful basis (performance of a contract), and to keep the records the law requires of us (legal obligation).

What we hold

• Your name, the trading name and public details you enter during setup (address, phone number, logo, the reply-to address for passengers, your terms), and the email address you sign in with.
• The identifiers Stripe gives us for your billing account, your subscription and your connected Stripe account. We never see or store your card number — you enter it on Stripe's own page, and Stripe holds it.
• Your subscription's status and dates, including the dates in section 8 of the terms if you cancel, and a record of the notices we have sent you about them.
• Operational logs of what the tools did on your behalf, kept for fault-finding. They record actions and reference numbers, not passengers' details.
• If you took the founding-operator offer on the pricing page (offered until 8 October 2026): your answers to its six questions about how you take bookings now (enquiries a week, how many come in evenings or at weekends, how long a reply usually takes, hours a week on admin, seats sold against seats on the coach, and trips called off or run at a loss last season), the wording you agreed to and when. These are figures about your business. We use them, with the check-ins you agreed to, to show what changed after you started; your business is not named unless you say so. To check that a person, not a script, filled in the form, the page uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which sees your browser's details for that check only.
• If your free trial ends without a card: your answer to our “what stopped you?” question, if you give one, and anything you add in the box on that page, with the date. We use it only to understand why people don't carry on and to improve the service; it is never shown to anyone else, and the link in the email works only for your business.
• Support tickets you raise from the Help page of your operator site: what you wrote, what it was about, the email address of the person who sent it, and — so we can find the problem without asking — the page you came from, your browser and your screen size. If you mention a passenger in a ticket, that is in it too, so only include what we need.

How we use it

To run your booking site and the tools; to bill you; to email you about your account — receipts, a failed payment, changes to the service or these terms, and the notices about your paid period ending; and to help you when you ask. We do not send you marketing without asking first.

Keeping the free trial to one per business

The free trial is once per business. So when you start one, the email address and trading name you give on the pricing page (and again on Stripe’s page) are checked against the businesses that have had a Conductor trial or subscription before: their sign-in and contact email addresses, and their trading names. That check uses only records we already hold for the reasons above, and keeps nothing new; if it matches, the trial isn’t started and you’re offered the paid plan instead, and we’re told so that we can help if you’re in fact a different business. To stop the check being used to look people up, we limit how many one visitor can make, keeping a scrambled form of your network address for up to two days. We rely on our legitimate interest in offering the trial fairly.

How long

For as long as you are a customer, and for six years after your last subscription ends, for accounting and tax purposes. If you subscribe again within that time, your business details and trips are still there.

3. Passengers who book with an operator

If you booked a seat, joined a waiting list or a trips list, or sent an enquiry on a coach operator's booking site (an address ending .bookaseat.uk), you gave your details to that operator. If an operator invited you to join their trips list, they got your details from their own customer records. Under UK data-protection law the operator is the controller of your details, and The Conductor is their processor: we hold and use your details only on the operator's behalf, to run your booking, and on the operator's instructions.

What is held

Your name, email address and mobile number; the trip, seats and pick-up point you booked; any access needs you told the operator about; the amount you paid, the date, and Stripe's reference for the payment. If you enquired about a private hire: what you told the operator in the enquiry. If you joined the operator's trips list (“Get our new trips first”), or were invited to: your first name and email address, how you came to be on it, the wording you agreed to and when. Whether an email to you could be delivered: if one bounces or is marked as spam, that address is recorded so the operator does not email it again (delivered emails are counted, not recorded against your address). Your card number is entered on Stripe's payment form and held by Stripe, never by us or the operator.

What it is used for

• Your booking confirmation, reminder before the trip, boarding details, and any message the operator sends about your trip — a change of time, a cancellation, a refund.
• The boarding list the operator's driver uses on the day.
• Refunds the operator makes to you, through Stripe.
• If the operator chooses to, an email when they put a new trip on sale. This goes only to people who agreed to hear from that operator: past passengers who ticked the box when they booked, people who confirmed they wanted to join the trips list, and people who asked about a trip like it. Every one has a one-click unsubscribe link, and once you unsubscribe you will not get another from that operator through us.
• If the operator brings in their own list of existing customers: one email in the operator's name asking whether you want to join their trips list, and at most one reminder. Nobody is added unless they say yes; if you don't, your details are deleted (section 4).

We never contact you on our own account, never use your details for anything of ours, and never pass them to anyone except the operator and the providers (hosting, email and card payments) that run the service for us, each under a contract that meets UK GDPR. Every email you receive is from the operator, in their name, and replies go to them.

Exercising your rights

Because the operator is the controller, ask them first: their contact details are on their booking site and on every email you were sent. If you cannot reach them, write to us at team@theconductor.uk and we will help.

If the operator stops using The Conductor

Their booking site stops taking bookings on the day their subscription's paid period ends, and the links in your emails to manage your booking stop working the same day. Your contract to travel is with the operator and is unaffected; contact them directly. Thirty days after that we delete your personal details from our systems (section 4). The operator can download their passenger lists before then, and is responsible for anything they hold afterwards.

4. How long we keep things

These periods are enforced automatically by a nightly job, not by hand.

What	Kept until	Then
Passenger's name, email, mobile and pick-up on a booking	24 months after the date of travel	Removed from the booking. The seat count, amount, refund and payment reference stay, with no name on them.
Access needs on a booking	30 days after the date of travel	Deleted
Private-hire enquiries (name, contact details, what was asked)	24 months after the enquiry was made	Personal details removed; the fact and outcome of the enquiry stay
Waiting-list entries	24 months after the trip date	Deleted
Record of a "new trip on sale" email sent to a past passenger	24 months after it was sent	Deleted
Trips-list sign-ups not yet confirmed	7 days after signing up	Deleted
Trips-list members	24 months after joining or after their last trip with that operator, whichever is later	Deleted
An invitation to join from an operator's own customer list, not accepted	7 days after the reminder (about 11 days after the first email)	Deleted
Record of an accepted invitation	30 days after accepting	Deleted (you stay on the list as a member, above)
Email delivery records (whether an email arrived, bounced or was marked as spam)	90 days	Deleted
Everything above, when an operator leaves	30 days after the operator's paid period ends	All passengers' personal details for that operator deleted, whatever their age
Unsubscribe requests, and addresses that bounced or were marked as spam	Kept	So that an address that opted out, or cannot receive email, is never emailed again by that operator
Operator's business and billing details	Six years after the last subscription ends	Deleted
Founding-offer answers where the payment was not completed	30 days after the answers were given	Deleted
Founding-offer answers from a subscriber	Kept as figures about the business	No longer linked to you once your business details are deleted (above)
Support tickets raised from an operator's Help page	24 months after the ticket was answered (or raised, if it never was)	Deleted
Questions emailed to us, and old walkthrough-form enquiries	12 months, if we do not work together	Deleted
Trip previews (the trip details read from a post, or typed in)	30 days after the preview was made	Deleted
Answers to “what stopped you?” after a free trial, and any note added	24 months after the answer	Deleted
Scrambled network addresses used to limit repeat use of our forms	2 days	Deleted
Fault-finding logs	30 days	Deleted

5. Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Operators sign in with a password to see their own passengers and nobody else's; each operator's site can only reach that operator's data. Passengers manage a booking through a link that only they were sent. Card numbers are never stored by us. Access to the systems is limited to the people who run the service. If we become aware of a breach affecting your data we will tell the operator without undue delay, and the ICO where the law requires.

6. Cookies and similar

This website sets no cookies. An operator's booking site sets none either, with two exceptions: the operator tools keep you signed in using your browser's own storage, and Stripe's payment form sets its own cookies for fraud prevention when a passenger pays. Neither is used for tracking or advertising.

7. Your rights

You can ask to see the details held about you, have them corrected or deleted, object to or restrict how they are used, and have them given to you in a portable form. Passengers should ask the operator they booked with (section 3); operators and website visitors should write to us at team@theconductor.uk. We answer within one month. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that affects you, we will email operators at least 30 days beforehand. The version in force is the one at theconductor.uk/privacy/, dated at the top.