Privacy

Only what the platform needs to run a booking. Concretely:

• Your account. Email address and password (handled by Firebase Authentication — we never see the password), display name, and whether you are a client or an AV pro. If you sign in with Google or Facebook we receive your name, email and profile photo from them.
• Your profile. Anything you choose to put there: city, bio, skills, hourly rate, photo, portfolio links, equipment, languages. A pro’s profile is public — that is the point of it. Your email address and phone number are not part of it and are never shown there.
• Bookings and availability. Event name and type, date, times, venue and location, headcount, your notes and requirements, the agreed price, and the status history of the booking. Pros also store the days and hours they publish as available.
• Messages. The conversation between a client and a pro, including any files you attach. Readable by the two of you — and, technically, by us as the operator of the database. We do not read them except when you ask us to help with a dispute or we have to investigate abuse.
• Gear rentals. Listings you publish, and for an order: the dates, the items, the total, and a delivery address if you choose delivery rather than pickup.
• Payment records. The amount, currency, date and a Stripe reference for each payment. See Payments — card numbers never reach us.
• Your phone number, only if you turn on text notifications. We store the number, and when and how you turned them on — that record is what proves we had your permission. Turning them off, or replying STOP to a text, ends them immediately and permanently.
• Technical logs. Standard web server logs (IP address, user agent, the page requested) kept by our host, and crash reports when something in the app breaks. Crash reports are stripped of email addresses and access tokens before they are stored, and are readable only by the site administrator.

We do not run analytics or advertising trackers, we do not build a profile of you for marketing, and we do not sell or rent your data to anyone.

• To create your account and keep you signed in.
• To show a pro the details of a job so they can decide whether to take it — and to show you their availability.
• To take payment, issue receipts and pay pros out.
• To send you the notifications a booking needs: a new request, an acceptance, a payment receipt, a date change, a cancellation. You can turn off email for the non-essential ones in Settings; receipts and cancellations always go out because you need the record. Text messages are off unless you turn them on, cover four time-critical events only, and are never sent between 9pm and 8am unless the booking is within a day.
• To keep the platform working and safe — fixing crashes, stopping spam and abuse, and meeting our tax and legal obligations.

The other party to your booking sees what the booking needs: your name, the event details, and your messages. A pro does not see your other bookings; a client does not see a pro’s other work.

Beyond that, these services process data on our behalf:

These providers store data outside British Columbia, Canada, including in the United States. We will also disclose data if a law or a valid court order requires it.

Card details are entered on Stripe’s own checkout page and go straight to Stripe. HQAV never receives, stores or has access to your card number. What we keep is the amount, the currency, the date, whether it succeeded, and Stripe’s reference for it — enough to show you a receipt and to pay the pro.

We use the minimum: a Firebase Authentication session so you stay signed in, and a stored preference for light or dark mode. There are no advertising or analytics cookies. Clearing your browser’s site data signs you out and resets the theme; nothing else is lost.

• Your account and profile — until you delete it. Deleting your account from Settings removes your profile and signs you out permanently.
• Bookings and payment records — kept after account deletion, because the other party has a record of the same job and because tax law requires us to keep financial records (generally six years in British Columbia, Canada). They are detached from your profile.
• Messages — kept for as long as the conversation exists so the other party still has their side of it.
• Crash reports and server logs — short-lived operational data, deleted once the bug is fixed.

• See it. Your dashboard shows your bookings, payments and messages, and Settings has a one-click export of your account data as a file.
• Correct it. Edit your profile at any time from your profile page.
• Delete it. Settings → delete account. Read the retention note above first: the booking and payment records survive, detached from you.
• Turn off email. Settings → notifications. Receipts and cancellations still send.
• Ask us anything. Email support@hqav.ca. If you are in a jurisdiction with statutory data rights (BC’s PIPA, Canada’s PIPEDA, the GDPR), those rights apply and we will honour them.

HQAV is for people doing paid professional work. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly create accounts for them.