This policy explains what personal information Reviewers Choice Awards collects, what we do with it, and the choices you have. We try to keep it readable. If anything is unclear, email us at hello@reviewerschoiceawards.org and we'll explain.
Reviewers Choice Awards is operated by Aesthetic Laser Institute Inc., a Texas, United States-incorporated entity. We are the data controller for the personal information described below.
1. What we collect
We collect different things depending on how you use the site.
If you visit the site without signing up
We log basic technical data — your IP address (used only for rate-limiting and abuse prevention, then purged after 30 days), your browser's user-agent string, and which pages you viewed. We don't set tracking cookies for advertising and we don't share this data with ad networks.
If you check eligibility (the /check tool)
We store the business name, city, and (optionally) website you queried. We pass these to Google Places to verify the business and pull its public review profile. We don't collect or store your email or any personal contact information unless you choose to claim the award. If you do, your evaluation result becomes part of your member record.
If you claim an award and become a member
We collect: your business name, your contact email, your business's public review data (rating, review count, recency), and any custom description or photo you choose to upload to your directory profile. Stripe processes your payment — we receive a customer ID and subscription status from Stripe, but never your card number or full payment details.
If you contact us
When you email us, we keep that email — including your address and the message — to respond and to keep a record of the conversation. We don't use it for marketing.
2. How we use it
- Operate the service — verify award eligibility, create your member account, send the welcome email, run the AI visibility setup pipeline, publish your verified directory profile.
- Communicate with you about your membership — receipts, refund confirmations, listing-published notifications, AI visibility completion, password resets.
- Comply with our refund policy — track substantive-use timestamps so we can apply the policy fairly when a refund is requested.
- Prevent abuse — rate-limit eligibility checks, detect automated abuse of the directory, and protect against fraud on Stripe-processed transactions.
- Improve the service — aggregate, anonymized analytics about which pages get traffic and which features get used. We don't use individual-level analytics for advertising or selling.
We don't sell your personal information. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't use it to train AI models that aren't directly powering your experience on this site.
3. Third parties who see it
We use a small set of third-party services to operate the platform. Each one has its own privacy policy that governs what they do with the data we send them.
| Service | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Your name, billing address, card details, and subscription status. | Process payments and refunds. We never see card details. |
| Resend | Your email address and the contents of any email we send you. | Deliver transactional emails (welcome, refund confirmations, etc.). |
| Turso | All data we store about you (database hosting). | Database infrastructure under a standard data-processing agreement. |
| Google Places API | Public business name, city, and (optionally) website you queried. | Verify the business exists and pull its public review profile. |
| Hosting provider | Server-level access logs (IP, user agent, request paths). | Run the application servers and CDN. |
We don't pass your information to any other parties unless we're legally required to (subpoena, valid law-enforcement request) or you've explicitly asked us to.
5. How long we keep it
- Member account data — kept for the duration of your membership and for up to 7 years after cancellation, for accounting and tax compliance.
- Eligibility check queries — kept indefinitely as aggregated, non-PII data for service-quality analytics. Your IP address attached to a query is purged after 30 days.
- Transactional email records — Resend retains a delivery log per their policy; we mirror status/delivery confirmations in our database for support continuity.
- Refund request records — kept indefinitely as immutable audit records, per the substantive-use refund policy commitment to fair, reviewable decisions.
- Server access logs — typically 30 days, then purged.
When you delete your account, your account data is removed within 30 days. Some records may persist longer where law requires (e.g., tax records, refund audit trails).
6. Your rights
Regardless of where you are, you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct information that's wrong.
- Delete your information (subject to retention requirements above).
- Port your information to another service in a machine-readable format.
- Object to specific uses, including any that you feel weren't covered above.
California residents have additional rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We don't sell or share personal information for advertising — but if you want a formal confirmation of that fact for your records, email us.
To exercise any right, email hello@reviewerschoiceawards.org. We'll respond within 30 days.
7. Children
The service is intended for adults operating businesses. We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe we've collected information about a child, email hello@reviewerschoiceawards.org and we'll delete it.
8. Changes
If we materially change how we handle your personal information, we'll update the date at the top of this page and email active members about the change. Continued use of the service after a change means you accept the updated policy.
9. Contact
Questions about your privacy or how we handle your data?
Email hello@reviewerschoiceawards.org. I read every message.
For postal correspondence: Aesthetic Laser Institute Inc. (d/b/a Reviewers Choice Awards). Address available on request — contact hello@reviewerschoiceawards.org
— Tonya