Legal · Data protection
We are a booking agent, so almost everything we hold about you is a journey: a pickup, a destination, a time and a phone number. This page explains exactly what happens to it.
Binding detail sits in the numbered sections below. Read this first if you are in a hurry
01
Name, contact number, pickup and destination, date and time, passenger and luggage numbers. Flight or ship details only if you give them to us.
02
We are a dispatch partner, not an operator. The licensed operator or driver we allocate needs your name, number, pickup and drop-off to complete the job.
03
You pay by card or cash on the day of travel. Card numbers go to the operator's regulated payment provider, never into our systems.
04
No data brokers, no list rental, no selling enquiries to competing operators. Marketing only happens if you ask for it.
05
Bookings are handled by our UK dispatch team. A small number of suppliers process data abroad under approved safeguards.
06
Email us and we will confirm within 30 days. Completed journeys are kept for six years for tax and insurance, then removed.
01
AutoDispatch (“we”, “us”, “our”) is a nationwide UK transport booking and dispatch agent. We arrange pre-booked airport transfers, cruise and port transfers, rail connections, long-distance journeys, event and group travel, and corporate transport across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We are not a taxi company or a private hire operator. We do not own a fleet and we do not employ drivers. We take your journey requirements, match them to a suitable licensed transport provider, and give you one fixed quotation.
That distinction matters for your privacy, because it defines who holds your data and why.
For the enquiry, the quotation and the booking record, AutoDispatch is the data controller. Once your journey is allocated, the licensed operator or driver becomes a controller in their own right for the trip they carry out.
This policy covers autodispatch.co.uk, our WhatsApp booking line, our telephone dispatch office and our email correspondence. It does not cover what a licensed operator does with your data after we hand over the job, or what third-party sites do once you leave ours.
02
We ask for the minimum needed to price a journey accurately and get a vehicle to the right place at the right time.
What we deliberately do not collect: we do not track your live location, we do not build behavioural profiles of your travel habits, and we do not require you to create an account to get a quote.
03
Under the UK GDPR we must have a lawful reason for every use of your data. Here is the full picture in one table.
| Data | Why we use it | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Name and contact number | To quote, confirm and coordinate your journey, and so your driver can reach you at pickup.Contract | 6 years after travel |
| Pickup, destination and stops | To price the route, allocate a suitable vehicle and brief the operator.Contract | 6 years after travel |
| Flight or ship reference | To track arrival times and move your pickup if the arrival slips.Contract | 90 days after travel |
| Access and assistance needs | To allocate a vehicle that can actually carry you safely.Explicit consent | Deleted after travel unless you hold an account |
| Quotation and invoice records | To account for the booking and meet HMRC record-keeping duties.Legal obligation | 6 years from end of tax year |
| Complaints and incident notes | To investigate a journey, resolve a dispute and remove unsafe providers.Legitimate interests | 6 years from resolution |
| Website usage and analytics | To understand which routes and pages people need, and fix what is broken.Consent | Up to 14 months |
| Email address for offers | To send occasional travel offers and service news, only if you opt in.Consent | Until you unsubscribe |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interest against your rights and concluded the processing is proportionate. You can ask us for that assessment at any time.
04
This is the most important section of the policy, because sharing is the whole point of a dispatch service.
To fulfil a booking, we pass the allocated operator or driver only what they need to complete the job: your first name, your contact number, the pickup and destination addresses, the time, passenger and luggage numbers, and any access requirement relevant to the vehicle. We do not pass on your email address, your other bookings, your payment history or notes about previous journeys.
Providers are contractually required to use those details for your journey and nothing else. They may not market to you, add you to a list, or contact you after the trip for any purpose other than returning lost property. If a provider misuses your details, tell us and they are removed from our network.
We use a small number of suppliers to run the business. Each is bound by a written data processing agreement and may only act on our instructions.
05
Most of our bookings arrive as a WhatsApp message, so it deserves its own explanation.
When you submit the booking form on our site, it sends your journey details straight to our WhatsApp dispatch line. When you message us directly, that chat sits in our WhatsApp Business inbox. Either way, the conversation is visible to the dispatch team on duty, and the history remains in the thread so we can check what was agreed if a query comes up later.
Please do not send us anything sensitive that we have not asked for: no card numbers, no passport scans, no medical records. If you do, we will delete it and ask you to send the information another way.
Telephone bookings are logged as written notes by the person who takes the call. We do not record calls. If that ever changes, you will be told at the start of the call and this policy will be updated first.
06
If you give us a flight number or a ship name, we monitor the published arrival time so your pickup moves with the delay and you are not charged for time outside your control.
We use publicly available arrival data. We do not access your booking with the airline or cruise line, we do not see your passenger record, and we cannot view your itinerary beyond the reference you give us. Tracking references are deleted 90 days after travel.
07
You pay for your journey on the day, by card in the vehicle or in cash. Where a card is taken, it is processed by the allocated operator’s own PCI-DSS compliant payment provider. AutoDispatch does not request, store, process or see your full card number.
Business accounts are invoiced monthly. For those accounts we hold the billing contact, company address and payment reference, and our accounting records show which journeys were charged. Bank details you give us for a refund are used for that refund and then deleted.
08
Cookies are small files stored on your device. We use four kinds.
You can change or withdraw your choice at any time from the cookie settings link in our footer, and you can block or clear cookies in your browser settings. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may stop the booking form from submitting. Full detail is in our Cookie Policy.
09
Per-item periods are in the table in section 3. The principles behind them:
10
Your data is handled by our UK dispatch team, and our email and hosting sit on UK or EU infrastructure.
Some of our suppliers, including the messaging and analytics services named in section 4, process data outside the UK. Where that happens we rely on a UK adequacy regulation for the destination country or, if none applies, on the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, together with a transfer risk assessment. You can request a copy of the safeguards used for any specific transfer.
11
We use encrypted connections across the website and our booking channels, restrict booking records to the dispatch staff who need them, protect accounts with strong authentication, and review who has access when someone leaves.
No transmission over the internet is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a breach happens that is likely to risk your rights and freedoms, we will report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours and tell you directly without undue delay.
12
Under the UK GDPR you have the following rights. They are free to use, and we will respond within one month.
Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and what we do with it.
Have inaccurate or incomplete details corrected, such as a wrong pickup address or misspelled name.
Ask us to delete your data where we no longer have a reason to keep it. Records we must retain for tax or an open dispute are the exception.
Ask us to pause processing while a complaint or accuracy question is being resolved.
Object to processing based on legitimate interests, and object to direct marketing at any time. Marketing objections are always honoured.
Receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format, or have it sent to another provider.
Withdraw consent for marketing, cookies or assistance details at any time, without affecting what was lawful before.
We do not make automated decisions with legal or significant effects on you. A person allocates and prices every journey.
Email bookings@autodispatch.co.uk with “Data request” in the subject line. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we release records, so we do not hand your journey history to someone else.
13
Our service is intended for adults, and bookings must be made by someone aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect data directly from children.
We do arrange school trips and family travel, so a booking may include the number of children travelling and the child seats needed. That information comes from the adult making the booking, is used only to allocate the right vehicle, and is deleted after travel. If you believe a child has given us personal data directly, contact us and we will remove it.
14
Our site links to airports, ports, train operators and other useful third parties. Once you follow one of those links, this policy stops applying and theirs takes over. We have no control over their content or privacy practices, so please read the policy of any site you visit.
15
We review this policy at least once a year and whenever we change how we handle data. Updates are posted here with a new “last updated” date at the top of the page.
If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you by email or with a prominent notice on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use our service after a change means the version published at that time applies to your bookings.
If you need to make a booking, change a journey, ask a question or raise a complaint, contact the AutoDispatch team.
Phone / WhatsApp
+44 7853 311555
Available 24 hours, 7 days a week.
bookings@autodispatch.co.uk
For bookings, account queries and complaints.
Nationwide UK journey booking and dispatch.
Pre-booked airport transfer UK services, cruise terminal transfers and local taxi work across Hampshire, Dorset, Berkshire and London.