We collect what we need to run Word Around: your contact details, the review alerts for your business, and copies of the reviews customers leave you on Google. With your authority we publish replies to those reviews on your Google profile. Your tap cards count how often they are used, but they don't tell us who tapped them. We don't sell any of it. Some of it is handled by providers in the United States. You can ask us to see, fix or delete your information at any time.
1. Who we are
Word Around is a service run by Jared Bartolo, trading as V2 Designs, ABN 73 171 765 491, based in Werribee, Victoria, Australia. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean V2 Designs. "You" means anyone who visits this website, sends us an enquiry, or uses the service.
You can reach us any time at hello@v2designs.com.au or on 0495 039 767.
2. If you send us an enquiry
The form on this website collects:
- Your business name
- Your name
- Your mobile number
- Your suburb
- Your email address
Your details are saved on our server, and a text message with them is sent to Jared's phone so he can call you back. If you call, text or email us instead, we keep whatever you choose to tell us, along with your number or email address.
Please don't send payment details or sensitive personal information through the form. We don't ask for them and we don't want them.
3. If you become a customer
To run the service, we collect and hold:
- Your contact and account details: business name, your name, mobile, email and suburb.
- Payment details: payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
- Access to your Google Business Profile: you add our Google account as a manager on your profile. That lets Google send us notifications about your profile, including new reviews. We use this access to read reviews of your business and to publish replies to them, and for nothing else. We don't change your business details, hours, photos or description, and we don't read or answer messages sent to your profile.
- Copies of reviews of your business: when a review arrives, we keep a copy of the reviewer's name as it appears on Google, the star rating, the review text and the date. These reviews are already public on Google.
- How you like replies to sound: the tone preferences you give us when you sign up.
- The replies we publish: we keep a copy of every reply posted to your profile, the review it answers, when it went up, and whether it was posted automatically or after you approved it.
- What we email you: when you sign up we email you a welcome message, your service agreement and a cancellation notice, to the address you gave us. We keep a record that it was sent.
- Public information about nearby businesses: for your monthly summary, we look up the public star rating and review count of your business and a few businesses near you on Google. This is information about businesses, not about people.
Tap cards
A tap card opens your Google review page. It doesn't ask the customer for anything, and it doesn't set a cookie on their phone.
When a card is tapped or its QR code scanned, we do record the tap: which card it was, the date and time, whether the card was active, and the user-agent line the browser sends, which we keep the first 180 characters of. A user-agent line names the browser and operating system, so we can tell a tap on an iPhone from one on an Android phone. We use this to count how often each of your cards is used and to put that figure in your monthly summary.
We don't record the IP address of the person tapping, we don't know who they are, and we can't link a tap to a review or to a customer.
4. How we use AI
We use Google's Gemini AI to write the replies to your reviews and to summarise what customers keep mentioning in your monthly report. To do that, the text of the review, the reviewer's first name as it appears on Google, and the tone settings you gave us are sent to Google.
Some of those replies are published without a person reading them first. Replies to four and five star reviews are posted to your Google profile automatically, unless the customer has raised a problem. Any reply to a review containing a complaint is never posted automatically, whatever the star rating, and nor is any reply to a review of three stars or under: those go to you by text and wait for your go-ahead. You can ask us to hold every reply for your approval instead, and you can edit or delete any reply that has already gone up.
AI can get things wrong. If a published reply is wrong, tell us and we'll correct or remove it. We don't use AI to make decisions about you, your customers or anyone else that have a legal or similarly significant effect on them, and we don't use your information to train AI models of our own.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal information to anyone. We share it only where we need to in order to run the service:
- Hostinger hosts this website, our email, and the server that runs Word Around. That server is located in the United States.
- Twilio (United States) sends our text messages, including your review alerts, and the alert Jared gets when you send an enquiry.
- Google (United States) holds your Business Profile. It notifies us of new reviews and receives the replies we publish on your behalf through the Google Business Profile API. Its Gemini AI writes those replies and your summaries, and Google Places supplies the public business ratings in your monthly summary.
- Stripe processes subscription payments.
- Resend (United States) sends our emails to you, including your welcome email, your service agreement and your cancellation notice. It receives your name and email address.
- Professional advisers and authorities, such as our accountant, or a regulator or court where the law requires it.
We never use one customer's information for another customer. We may combine de-identified figures across all customers, such as the average number of reviews a business gets each month, to improve the service. Those figures never identify you, your business or your customers.
Overseas disclosure
Hostinger's server, Twilio, Google and Resend handle information in the United States, and Stripe may process payment information outside Australia. By sending an enquiry or using the service, you consent to your information being handled overseas by those providers. We choose established providers and give each one only what it needs, but we can't control the laws of other countries.
6. If you left a review for one of our customers
Your review is public on Google. We hold a copy of it for the business you reviewed, so we can tell the owner about it and write the reply that appears under your review. That reply is published in the business's name, with the business's authority, and it may use your first name as it already appears on your review. We will never contact you privately, and we never use your details for anything else.
Replies to reviews of four stars and up are usually published without the owner reading them first. If your review raises a problem, the reply is held and only published after the owner has read and approved it. The same applies to every review of three stars and under.
If you'd like your details removed from our copy, email us and we'll do it. To change or delete the review itself, you'll need to do that through Google.
7. Cookies and tracking
This website doesn't use advertising cookies or tracking pixels, and nothing on it identifies you.
We do count visits to our own pages, so we can see whether people are finding us. When a page loads it saves a random code in your browser's local storage (not a cookie), so that coming back isn't counted as a new visitor. It sends us that code, the page you're on, the page that linked you here, your screen size and the user-agent line your browser sends. We don't keep your IP address, and none of it tells us who you are.
The tap card links record the tap itself, as described in clause 3. No cookie is set and no IP address is kept.
Our fonts load from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your IP address when the page loads.
8. How long we keep it
- Enquiries: up to 24 months after we last hear from you, so we can pick up the conversation if you come back.
- Customer account and billing records: while you're a customer, then for seven years, as Australian tax law requires.
- Copies of reviews and the replies we wrote and published: while you're a customer. We delete them within 90 days after you cancel.
- Tap records for your cards: while you're a customer, then deleted within 90 days after you cancel. We may keep the monthly totals, which don't identify anyone.
- Access to your Google profile: we remove ourselves as a manager when you cancel, and you can remove us yourself at any time.
You can ask us to delete your information sooner, and we will, unless the law requires us to keep it.
9. Keeping it secure
We take reasonable steps to protect your information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access. That includes serving this site over HTTPS, protecting our accounts with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, and limiting access to your information to Jared. No system is completely secure, so we can't guarantee it. If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we'll notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required.
10. Your rights
You can ask us at any time to:
- Show you the personal information we hold about you
- Correct anything that's wrong or out of date
- Delete your information
- Stop contacting you
Email hello@v2designs.com.au. It's free, and we'll normally respond within 30 days. We may need to confirm who you are first so we don't hand your details to someone else.
11. Complaints
If you think we've mishandled your information, email us with the details. We'll look into it and respond within 30 days. If you're not satisfied, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
As a small business, we may not be legally bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). We follow the Australian Privacy Principles anyway, because handling your details properly shouldn't depend on how big we are.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The current version always lives at this address, with the date it was last updated at the top. If a change significantly affects information we already hold about you, we'll tell you directly.
13. Contact us
Email: hello@v2designs.com.au
Phone: 0495 039 767
Werribee, Victoria, Australia