Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was updated on and its effective date is: 21 March, 2022

Table of Contents

1. General
2. Assent
3. Purpose of this Privacy Policy
4. Types of Personal Data Collected
5. How is Your Personal Data Collected?
6. Why We Use Your Data
7. Marketing Buy Us and Third Parties
8. Retention of Personal Data 
9. Disclosure of Personal Data
10.  Security of Personal Data
11.  Individual Rights for Users and Consumers Who Reside in California 
12.  Children
13.  Assignment
14.  Email Communications 
15.  Data Security
16.  Choice/Opt-Out
17.  Changes to Privacy Policy
18.  Getting in Touch

1. General

This Privacy Policy describes how Texas Certified Home Inspections (hereinafter referred to as TCHI) collects, uses or discloses your personal information, and what rights you have with respect to the use of your information. It informs you about on how TCHI and its affiliates (referred to in this privacy policy as “TCHI”, “we”, “us” or “our”) use your personally identifiable and non-personally identifiable information that we may collect through our website https://tchi.com (the “Site”). This Privacy Policy is only applicable to the Site. Because TCHI does not control how information is collected or used by third-party websites, this Privacy Policy does not apply to the websites of other individuals or entities that contain links to this Site.

2. Assent

By using the Site, you assent to this Privacy Policy. If you do not assent to this Privacy Policy, do not use the Site and do not submit any personally identifiable information through the Site.

3. Purpose of this Privacy Policy

In line with our obligations under data protection laws and other applicable privacy laws, this privacy policy sets out how we will collect, hold and use your personal information where we are a data controller with respect to your personal information. In particular, the table in the section “How we collect and use your personal information” below specifies the purposes for which we may use your personal information as a data controller. Where we refer to “you” and “your” in this privacy policy, we are talking to the individual whose personal information we use as a data controller.

4. Types of Personal Data Collected

Personal data, or personal information, means any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous, deidentified or aggregate data). It also does not include publicly available information.

For the purpose of carrying on our business and providing our products and services, including registration and administration of our website and related products and services (including relevant online services), we may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from or provided to us.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Profile Data includes your username and password, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses, education and profession; hobbies and leisure activities; Other related products and services subscribed to; and Family and household demographics.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

5. How is Your Personal Data Collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Marketing and Communication Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, chat, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
  • subscribe to our services or publications;
  • request marketing to be sent to you;
  • enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
  • give us some feedback.
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.
• Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties as set out below:
• Technical Data from the following parties:
  • analytics providers such as Google Analytics based outside the EU;
  • advertising networks such as Google AdWords based outside the EU; and
  • search information providers such as Google, Bing, Yahoo based outside the EU.
• Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators.
• Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources.
• Where we are a data controller with respect to your personal information, we are required by European data protection laws to be clear about the purposes for which we are processing that personal information and our lawful basis for doing so.

6. Why We Use Your Data

TCHI may use the personally identifiable information you choose to submit through the Site to communicate with you about our products and services. When we collect this information, we may store it in our computer systems. Do not submit any information via this Site that you do not want us to store or use. If you do not want to submit information through this Site, contact us instead.

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new customer/user	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Performance of a contract with you.
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communication	(a) Performance of a contract with you; (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation; (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services).
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communication	(a) Performance of a contract with you; (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business).
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical	(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganization or group restructuring exercise); (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation.
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communication (f) Technical	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy).
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences	(a) Technical (b) Usage	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy.)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business).

 

7. Marketing By Us and Third Parties

We may use your personal information to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you.

You may receive marketing communications from us where you have utilized services from us as an individual customer or if you have requested information from us and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us and requesting that you be removed from emails related to a specific marketing campaign.

TCHI may use the aggregate and non-personally identifiable information collected through the use of cookies or IP address collection to improve users’ experience on the Site. This Site may not support your browser software’s Do Not Track setting or feature. Some Internet browsers include the ability to transmit Do Not Track signals that give you control over the collection and use of web browsing information. Since there are no uniform standards for such signals, TCHI does not process or respond to such signals.

8. Retention of Personal Data

We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. Disclosure of Personal Data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below to enable us to carry out the activities specified in the table above:

• Any subsidiaries, holding companies, associated companies, or affiliates of, or companies controlled by, or under common control of TCHI;
• Any person or company who is acting for or on behalf of TCHI, or jointly with TCHI, such as our service providers including hosting providers, advertising and email service provider;
• Any party as ordered by a court of competent authority. For example, if we were served with a court order demanding certain customer information then we would need to disclose the information to the duly appointed officer of the court or such other persons as the court orders.

In addition, if we choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets or if we seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them, we may need to share your personal information with those other businesses. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to safeguard your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

10. Security of Personal Data

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to TCHI employees, agents, contractors and other third parties working with or on behalf of TCHI who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

11. Children

TCHI does not target, market to, or offer its products or services to children under the age 13 who are living anywhere in the world. TCHI does not target, market to, or offer its products or services to anyone living outside the United States, which includes children under age 16. If TCHI learns a child under age 13 living in the United States or a child under age 16 living outside the United States submitted through the Site the child’s personally identifiable information without parental consent or TCHI learns it collected information about the child through the Site, TCHI will take reasonable and appropriate steps to delete it.

12. Assignment

If TCHI sells its assets to or is acquired by another company, or if TCHI merges with another company, you, by using this Site, authorize TCHI to assign the personally identifiable information you provided to TCHI or that TCHI collected while you used this Site.

13. Email Communications

If you submit your personally identifiable information through this Site, TCHI may send you emails. If you receive an email from TCHI that you did not want to receive or if you want TCHI to stop sending you emails after you receive one from TCHI, notify the email’s sender or follow the unsubscribe instructions in the email. TCHI will use reasonable and appropriate measures to honor your request.

14. Data Security

TCHI uses reasonable and appropriate measures to safeguard the information you submitted to us through the Site or that TCHI received about you through the Site. You agree by using this Site that you understand that no transmission of information over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. If you do not want to transmit information to TCHI because TCHI cannot and does not guarantee it will be 100% secure during its transmission, do not submit personally identifiable information through the Site, contact us instead.

15. Choice/Opt-out

Utilizing the Site is voluntary. You may view most of the Site without registering or submitting your personally identifiable information through the Site. Some portions of the Site may only be available to users who have registered. If you want to stop receiving the information you requested when you registered, to update the registration information you submitted, or to correct any personally identifiable information in or remove any personally identifiable information from TCHI’s computer systems, send an email to [email protected] indicating your request. TCHI will use reasonable and appropriate measures to honor your request.

16. Changes to Privacy Policy

TCHI may change this Privacy Policy. When TCHI changes it, TCHI will revise the Privacy Policy’s effective date. If TCHI changes the Privacy Policy in a way that will decrease limitations on how TCHI may use the information it collected about you, TCHI will either send a notice email to you at the email address you provided or the email address has on file for you, or TCHI will publish a notice on the Site, or TCHI will use other reasonable and appropriate measures to notify you of the change.

This Policy was written in English. To the extent a translated version conflicts with this Policy, the English version will take priority.

17. Getting in touch

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us at [email protected].