privacy policy.

Parchel Ltd (“Parchel”, “we”, “us”) is the data controller for personal data collected through this website and our booking service.

If you have any questions about how we handle your data, please contact us at info@parchel.com.

When you use our Service we collect the following personal data:

We do not collect payment card details directly — payments are processed by our third-party payment provider and are subject to their privacy policy.

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

• Fulfilling your booking — processing your collection slot, coordinating with our carrier partners, and ensuring correct delivery to your recipient.
• Customer communications — sending booking confirmations, collection reminders, and tracking updates by email.
• AI parcel analysis — if you upload photos, they are sent to our AI provider to extract visible product, weight, sizing, safety and customs-classification facts. Suggestions remain subject to customer and staff review. Photos are not used for marketing.
• Legal compliance — retaining booking records as required by UK tax and financial regulations.
• Service improvement — aggregated and anonymised usage data to improve the booking flow. We never sell individual personal data.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), we rely on the following lawful bases:

• Contract performance (Article 6(1)(b)) — processing your name, contact details, and parcel details is necessary to fulfil your booking.
• Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) — retaining financial records for HMRC compliance.
• Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) — fraud prevention, service security, and aggregated analytics.
• Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) — where you have opted in to marketing communications (you may withdraw consent at any time).

We share your data only where necessary:

• Carrier partners — your name, recipient name and address, and parcel details are shared with the carrier to arrange shipment. The carrier is an independent data controller for customs and tracking purposes.
• Supabase Inc. — our database and file storage provider. Data is stored on servers within the European Economic Area and is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• AI analysis providers — photos you optionally upload are sent to our AI vision provider (Google Gemini or OpenAI) for parcel analysis. They are not retained by Parchel's application beyond the storage behaviour described below.
• Email service — we use a transactional email provider to send booking confirmations.

We do not sell, rent, or otherwise share your personal data with third parties for marketing purposes.

We retain your data for the following periods:

• Booking records (name, email, address, parcel details, price) — 7 years from the booking date, as required by UK tax law.
• Photos — only the first/overview photo is retained in private Supabase storage with a time-limited access link for up to 90 days. Additional front/back label views are analysed for that request and are not stored by Parchel. Stored photos are scheduled for deletion after 90 days.
• Server logs — 30 days.
• Marketing consents — until you withdraw consent or 3 years of inactivity.

Under UK GDPR you have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Right of access — request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate data.
• Right to erasure — request deletion of your data where there is no legal obligation to retain it.
• Right to data portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Right to object — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Right to restrict processing — ask us to pause processing in certain circumstances.

To exercise any of these rights, email info@parchel.com with the subject line “Data Request”. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

This website uses only essential functional cookies required for the booking flow to operate (for example, to maintain your session state between steps). We do not use advertising cookies, third-party tracking pixels, or analytics cookies without your explicit consent.

You can disable cookies in your browser settings, but doing so may prevent the booking flow from working correctly.

All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Data stored in our database is encrypted at rest. Access to production data is restricted to authorised personnel only and is protected by multi-factor authentication.

Despite these measures, no internet transmission is 100% secure. If you believe your data has been compromised, please contact us immediately at support@parchel.com.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email if you have a booking on record. The “last updated” date at the top of this page will always reflect the current version.