Privacy policy
What RepairBy and the repair shop you booked with hold about you, why they hold it, and how to get it removed.
Last updated
In short
- Your name, phone number and pickup address go to the repair shop you booked with, so they can collect your phone and bring it back.
- Photographs of your device are taken at pickup and delivery. Anyone who has your tracking link can see them, so treat that link as private.
- Photographs are deleted automatically once the repair is over — 90 days later by default, or when the warranty ends, whichever is later. You can ask for them to go sooner.
- Invoices and payment records are kept for about 6 years even if you ask for everything else to be deleted, because Indian tax law requires a business to keep them.
- There are no advertising trackers and no analytics scripts anywhere in this product.
This summary is here to be read. The sections below are what actually applies.
Who holds your data
Two organisations are involved in every repair, and it is worth being clear about which is which.
- The repair shop. The business whose name is on the site you booked from. They decide what to collect and why, they hold your device, and they issue your invoice. Your repair is a contract with them.
- RepairBy. We make the software the shop runs its bookings on. We store the shop’s data on their behalf and only use it to run the service for them.
A question about your repair goes to the shop. A question about the data itself can go to either — write to us at the address at the end of this page and we will act on it or pass it on.
What is collected
Only what a pickup-and-return repair actually needs. In full:
- Your name and mobile number. The number is how you sign in — there is no password — and it is where booking, quote and delivery messages are sent.
- Your pickup address, including the landmark you type. If you let the browser locate you or pick a suggestion from the map, the exact latitude and longitude of that address are stored too.
- Your device: make and model, the problems you selected, anything you typed in the description box, and the IMEI once the shop has the phone in hand.
- Whether the phone is locked, and whether you gave the shop a way in. The PIN or pattern itself is never stored — the record is only that it was shared or that the phone is locked.
- Photographs of the device, taken at pickup, sometimes during diagnosis, and at delivery.
- Quotes, the amount you approved, how you paid, and the invoice.
- The rating and comment you leave after delivery, if you leave one.
- A log of the WhatsApp and SMS messages sent to you: the number, which message, and whether it was delivered.
- Notes the shop’s staff write about the job. These are the shop’s own notes and you cannot see them, but you can ask for a copy.
On the shop’s side we also record who on their team did what, and when, so a change to a job can be traced. That record includes the IP address the change came from.
We do not collect your date of birth, your email address, any government identifier, or your card details. Payment for the repair is settled between you and the shop — in cash or by UPI directly to them — and never passes through us.
Why it is collected
- To decide whether the shop can reach you. Your coordinates are compared against the shop’s pickup radius, and nothing else is done with them.
- To collect and return your phone. The rider needs the address and a number to call from the doorstep.
- To tell you what is happening: booking confirmed, quote ready, repair done, on the way back.
- To settle disputes about the condition of the device. This is what the photographs are for, and it is the whole reason they exist.
- To bill you and to keep the shop’s accounts.
- To keep the service running and secure — the audit trail, error logs, and rate limits on sign-in codes.
It is not used for advertising, it is not profiled, it is not sold, and it is never shared with another shop on the platform. Each shop’s data is isolated at the database level, so one shop cannot query another’s customers even by mistake.
Photographs
The photographs deserve their own section, because they are the most personal thing here: pictures of your property, usually taken at your door.
They are taken by the rider when your device is collected and again when it is handed back, and sometimes by a technician during diagnosis. They exist so that "it was already cracked" is a question with an answer.
Who can see them:
- The shop’s owner and staff, on the job screen.
- The rider assigned to collect or deliver your device.
- Anyone holding your tracking link. The pickup photographs are shown on that page without signing in, because the link travels by WhatsApp and has to open on whatever phone is to hand. Treat the link as private and do not forward it.
- RepairBy staff, only when a shop asks us to look at a problem. That access is recorded against the person who used it.
How long they are kept: until the repair is over, and then for the period the shop has set — 90 days unless they changed it. If the repair carries a warranty that runs longer than that, the photographs are kept until the warranty ends, because they are the evidence in a warranty claim. A job that is still open keeps its photographs however old they are.
After that they are deleted automatically. A job runs every night and removes both the pictures and the stored files behind them; nothing is kept "just in case".
You can ask for them sooner. Your tracking page has a button that deletes the pickup photographs there and then, once your repair is finished and any warranty has ended. Those two things protect you as much as the shop, which is why they come first.
How long things are kept
- Sign-in codes: five minutes, and stored hashed rather than in the clear.
- Photographs: as described above — the shop’s retention period after the repair ends, or the end of the warranty, whichever is later.
- Invoices, payments and the job records they refer to: about 6 years. Section 36 of the CGST Act, 2017 and rule 6F of the Income-tax Rules, 1962 require a business to keep its books for that long, and this is the one thing an erasure request cannot take with it.
- Message logs: kept with the job, and removed when the job is.
- Everything else — your name, address, coordinates, device details and notes — until you or the shop asks for it to be removed.
The database is backed up every night. Something deleted today stays in those backups until they are rotated out, which is normal for any service and is the one place a deletion is not instant.
Your rights, and how to use them
- A copy of what is held about you. Ask the shop: they can export their jobs, customers and invoices, and yours are in there.
- A correction. Ask the shop to fix a wrong name, number or address; they can edit all three.
- Deletion. Ask the shop, or write to us. Your name, number, address, coordinates, device details, notes and photographs are removed. Where a job never became an invoice or a collected payment, the whole job goes with them.
- Deletion of the photographs alone, from your tracking page, without deleting anything else.
- To stop hearing from us. Ask the shop to stop messaging you. Note that the sign-in code is not marketing — without it you cannot sign in at all.
What survives a deletion request, and only this: the invoice, the payment record and the job number those belong to, for the 6 years the tax rules require. The invoice PDF already issued keeps the name and number that were printed on it, because a tax invoice cannot be edited after it has been given to a customer.
Your mobile number also stays on your sign-in record if you still have a repair history with another shop on RepairBy — it is how you sign in there. Write to us if you want that removed too.
How it is protected
- Every shop’s rows are separated inside the database itself, not merely by the code that queries them.
- Sign-in codes are stored hashed, expire in five minutes, allow five attempts, and are rate-limited per number.
- Session cookies are HTTP-only and scoped to the exact site that issued them.
- Photographs are uploaded straight to storage with a link valid for one file, one action and five minutes.
- When RepairBy staff sign in as a shop to help with a problem, that is recorded, and the shop sees a banner saying it is happening.
No system is perfect. If something does go wrong we will tell the shops affected, and their customers where the law requires it.
Children
This service is for adults booking a repair. We do not knowingly collect anything about a child. If you believe a child’s details are here, write to us and they will be removed.
Changes to this policy
The date at the top of this page is when it last changed. Where a change materially affects what is collected or who sees it, shops are told before it takes effect.
Contact
Write to privacy@repairby.app with anything on this page, including a request to see or delete your data. Tell us the mobile number you booked with, so we can find you.
If your question is about a particular repair, the shop will answer it faster than we can — their number is on the site you booked from.