Privacy Policy

Who We Are

BidSmarter is a vehicle appraisal and recon cost estimation tool for automotive dealers and wholesale buyers. It is operated as a software service by its developer ("we," "us," or "BidSmarter").

This Privacy Policy applies to the BidSmarter web application at the domain where this page is hosted, and governs how we handle personal information provided by registered users.

Information We Collect

We collect only what is necessary to provide the service:

• Account information: Your name, email address, dealership/lot name, city, and province, provided at registration.
• Appraisal activity: Vehicle details (VIN, year, make, model, km), damage selections, and calculated bid outputs you generate. This data is linked to your account for your own history and accuracy calibration.
• Deal outcomes (optional): If you choose to tell us, whether you bought a vehicle, what you paid, the auction hammer price, actual reconditioning cost, and sale price. You can dismiss any prompt to provide this.
• Settings: Labour rates, margin targets, auction fees, and repair path preferences you configure. These are stored privately to your account and never shared with other users.
• Usage data: Login timestamps, appraisal counts, and credit balances (used to enforce plan limits and monitor system health).
• Billing records: Which plan or pack you purchased, when, and the amount — but never card numbers.

We do not collect or store payment card numbers, banking information, or government identification. Payments are handled entirely by Stripe (see Third-Party Services below).

How We Use Your Information

Your information is used exclusively to operate and improve the BidSmarter service:

• To authenticate your account and maintain your session securely.
• To store and display your appraisal history and settings between sessions.
• To enforce plan limits and credit balances (Starter, Pro, Elite).
• To allow you to calibrate recon estimates against your actual costs over time.
• To improve estimate accuracy for all users: deal outcomes you provide (purchase price, hammer price, recon cost, sale price) are combined with other users' outcomes in aggregated, anonymized form to calibrate repair costs, regional labour rates, and bid recommendations. Aggregated data cannot identify you, your dealership, or a specific transaction.
• To contact you if there are critical service issues affecting your account (we do not send marketing emails without your consent).

We do not use your data to train AI models. Condition report text you paste into the Auto-Fill feature is sent to the Anthropic API for processing and is subject to Anthropic's Privacy Policy, but is not retained by BidSmarter beyond the response.

Third-Party Services

BidSmarter uses a small number of third-party services to operate:

• Stripe: Processes all payments and acts as the merchant of record for your purchase. Stripe collects your card details and billing address directly on its own secure pages; BidSmarter never sees them. Stripe may appear on your card statement and receipts. See Stripe's Privacy Policy.
• Anthropic Claude API: Used for AI-powered condition report parsing and photo analysis (Pro and Elite accounts only). Text and images you submit are processed by Anthropic's servers to return a result and are not used to train Anthropic's models. See Anthropic's Privacy Policy.
• Google Fonts: Used for typography. Google may log font requests. See Google's Privacy Policy.
• Google Analytics: Used to understand aggregate usage patterns (page views, session counts). Analytics data is anonymized and does not include your personal account information or appraisal data.

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with advertisers, data brokers, or any other third parties.

Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored in a SQLite database on the server running BidSmarter. Passwords are hashed with a unique salt before storage — your plain-text password is never stored or transmitted.

We take reasonable technical precautions to protect your data, including:

• Encrypted password storage (salted hash)
• Session-based authentication with signed cookies
• Rate limiting on login attempts to prevent brute-force attacks
• No exposure of database files or configuration over HTTP

No system is 100% secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately at the address below.

Data Retention

Your account data is retained for as long as your account is active. Appraisal log entries are kept indefinitely to support your historical reporting and calibration accuracy — you can request deletion at any time.

If you close your account or request deletion, we will remove your personal information (name, email, password hash) and all associated appraisal records from our database within 30 days.

Your Rights (PIPEDA & Provincial Law)

Under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy legislation (including Alberta's PIPA and British Columbia's PIPA), you have the right to:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: Ask us to correct inaccurate information.
• Deletion: Request that we delete your account and all associated personal information.
• Withdrawal of consent: You may close your account at any time, which withdraws consent for continued processing of your data.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the information below. We will respond within 30 days.

Cookies

BidSmarter uses a single session cookie to keep you logged in. This cookie is cryptographically signed and contains no personally identifiable information on its own. It expires when you log out or after 30 days of inactivity.

Google Analytics uses its own cookies to measure aggregate traffic. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking via the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or cross-site tracking of any kind.

Children's Privacy

BidSmarter is a professional tool intended for use by adults in the automotive trade. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you believe a minor has registered, contact us and we will remove the account promptly.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be communicated to registered users by email. Continued use of BidSmarter after a policy update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.