Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Emerald Coast Rent a Car is an independent car-rental desk on Florida’s Emerald Coast. Usual handover is Miramar Beach. “We” means this desk and its owner. Questions about this policy: (850) 000-1780 or vburduja11@gmail.com.

2. What we collect

We collect information you give us, information created by the booking, and limited technical data from the browser.

• Contact. Name, email, phone, and the method you prefer (phone, email, WhatsApp or Viber).
• Driver. Age you enter on the form. We do not ask you to type a licence or ID number on the website. We look at those documents at pickup.
• Trip. Car, dates and times (US Central Time), pickup and return locations, hotel or house address if you ask for delivery, flight airline and number if you add them, extras, and notes.
• Messages. Contact-form messages and the emails or chat we exchange about a booking.
• Handover. Inspection notes, mileage, fuel level, and photos of the car at pickup and return. Those photos are evidence of condition, not a public gallery.
• Payments. Amount, currency, status, refunds, Stripe session or payment IDs, and a last-four / brand if a card is saved with your consent. We never store the full card number or security code.
• Technical. IP address, browser type, and pages visited, plus cookies so the site can take a booking. Booking pages do not get marketing pixels or analytics from us.

3. How we use it

• Create the hold, take payment, confirm the booking, and send the invoice.
• Meet you, walk the car, and settle extras after return (each expense once).
• Answer questions, change requests and cancellations.
• Prevent fraud, duplicate unpaid bookings, and misuse of signed links.
• Keep tax, chargeback and legal records.
• Send marketing email only if you have not unsubscribed. Booking mail still goes out.

4. Who we share with

We do not sell your personal information and we do not rent our list. We share only what is needed:

• Stripe — to take the rental, authorize a deposit, refund, or save a card you consented to.
• Email delivery — to send confirmations, invoices and (unless you opted out) occasional marketing.
• Staff on this desk — to run handover and support.
• Google Analytics — only if we have turned it on, and never on private booking pages.
• Law, courts or insurers — when we reasonably must, for example a ticket, accident or chargeback.

Airports and hotels do not get your booking file from this site unless we are arranging the handover with you.

5. Payments and saved cards

Checkout is Stripe’s hosted page. We store Stripe’s reference, amount and status so we can confirm the booking and issue refunds. A security-deposit hold, when enabled, is a Stripe authorization at pickup — not a charge we keep as revenue.

Saving a card stays off until we enable it and you agree. If you save one, we keep Stripe’s payment-method ID, brand, last four digits, expiry, and the consent record (including a version and the IP at the time). You can ask us to revoke that consent. We will not charge a saved card unless that feature is on and a limit is set.

6. Private booking pages

Review, payment return and status pages use a signed URL. That signature is the access token. Those pages send Cache-Control: no-store, X-Robots-Tag: noindex, and a no-referrer policy. They do not get analytics, canonical tags or social previews from us. Do not post or forward the full signed link. Anyone with it can open that booking.

7. Cookies and analytics

We use cookies so you can browse and complete a booking. The banner asks you to Accept or Decline. We store that choice for 180 days. You can change it from Cookie settings in the footer.

Optional analytics stays off unless we turn it on and you accept. Your booking link never gets it. Decline keeps only the cookies the site needs to work.

8. Email choices

Customer emails include an unsubscribe link for marketing. One-click unsubscribe from Gmail is supported. We store the address on an unsubscribe list so we do not send marketing again. We still send booking, payment, deposit and invoice mail for trips you make — those are part of the rental, not a newsletter.

9. How long we keep it

Unpaid holds that expire stay in our records so we can see what happened; they are not a live reservation. Confirmed bookings, payments, refunds, inspection photos and expense lines are kept for tax, chargebacks and claims. We do not delete financial rows to “clean up” the database. Contact-form messages are kept so we can reply and see prior requests. If you ask us to delete marketing contact, we add you to the unsubscribe list instead of pretending we never had the address.

10. Your choices

• Ask for a copy of the booking and contact data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct a name, email, phone or address on a booking.
• Ask us to stop marketing email (use Unsubscribe, or write to us).
• Ask us to delete what the law lets us delete. We may keep payment, tax and claim records we are required or allowed to keep.
• Do not share your signed booking URL. If you think it leaked, contact us and we will help you from a new safe link where we can.

11. Security

The public site runs over HTTPS in production. Payments go through Stripe. Admin access is separate from customer booking links. No system is perfectly safe. If we learn of a breach that Florida law requires us to report, we will notify you and the authorities as required.

12. Children

You must be at least 21 to rent. This site is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18 for a booking.

13. Florida law

This policy is meant for a Florida desk and people who book with us. It is governed by Florida law. Venue is the state courts in Okaloosa County or Walton County, Florida, unless another law requires otherwise. See also the Terms & Conditions.

We may update this page. The version in force is the one posted when you submit a booking or a contact form. If a change is material, we will date it at the top of the page.