Privacy Policy

1. Who this covers

This policy covers The Bell System, based in Moore, Oklahoma ("we", "us"). It applies to the website at thebellsystems.com, the web application at app.thebellsystems.com, and the iOS and Android apps, which are the same application inside a phone shell. "The Service" means all of those together.

The Service is sold to automotive dealerships and used by their staff: salespeople, sales managers, general managers and administrators. It is not a consumer product and is not offered to the public.

2. Dealerships and their customers

Two kinds of people appear in the Service, and the rules differ.

• Dealership staff have accounts. We decide how their account and activity data is handled, and this policy is our commitment to them.
• Dealership customers do not have accounts and never interact with the Service. Their information is entered by staff in the course of a sale. For that information the dealership is the data controller and we are its processor: we store and process it on the dealership's instructions and do not use it for anything of our own. Requests about a customer's information should go to the dealership; if they come to us we pass them to the dealership and help it respond.

3. What we collect

Staff accounts

• Name, work email address, mobile phone number (for text-message alerts, if the dealership turns them on), employee ID, role, and the store you belong to.
• Sign-in records, session identifiers, whether you are marked available to take alerts, and a device token for push notifications if you allow them.
• Everything you do in the Service that the dealership needs a record of: bells rung and answered, response times, deals worked, counter offers, steps completed, files attached, and settings changed. Much of this is written to an append-only audit log, which is the point of the product: a record the dealership can rely on.

Customer information entered by staff

• The customer's name, and where staff enter them, phone number, email address, postal address, date of birth, vehicle of interest, trade-in, and free-text notes.
• If a salesperson scans the barcode on a driver's licence, the barcode is decoded on the phone itself into the fields above. The image is not uploaded and not stored.
• Photos or documents staff attach to a deal.

Information the Service creates

• Timestamps for every step of a deal, which produce the response-time and performance figures the dealership sees.
• A single location fix attached to certain bells. See section 4.

4. Location, specifically

• A location fix is taken only when a salesperson rings a bell that calls a manager to them: a customer on the lot, a request for help, or a customer leaving. The phone keeps refining that fix for about twelve seconds after the tap, then stops.
• No location is collected between bells, in the background, when the app is closed, or for any other action in the Service. The apps request "while using" location permission only and never ask for background access.
• The fix is stored on that bell's record, alongside its accuracy, and is shown to managers at the same store as a distance and direction from the sales desk. A manager marks the sales desk's position once; that is the only other location the Service stores.
• Declining location permission changes nothing else. Bells ring exactly as before, without a position.
• The salesperson's own screen says when a position has been shared for a bell.

5. How we use it

• To run the Service: deliver alerts to the right managers, keep the response clock, show the floor board, and keep the record.
• To give the dealership the reporting it bought: response times, engagement, close rates, and the coaching views built on them.
• To support you and keep the Service secure and working, including investigating misuse and diagnosing faults.
• To bill and communicate with the dealership.

We do not sell personal information, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not build profiles of dealership customers across dealerships.

6. Who we share it with

• Your dealership. Managers and administrators at your store see staff activity and customer records for that store. Multi-store groups see across their own stores. Each dealership group's data is isolated from every other group's at the database level.
• Service providers who process data for us under contract and only on our instructions: our hosting provider (servers in the United States), Apple and Google for push notifications, Twilio for text-message alerts where a dealership enables them, and Google Workspace for email. Each receives only what it needs to do that job.
• Law and safety. If required by law, or to protect the rights, safety or property of dealerships, their staff, their customers, or us.
• A change of ownership. If The Bell System is acquired or merges, the data moves with it under this policy, and we will tell affected dealerships.

7. How long we keep it

• Deal and notification records are kept for the period the dealership sets in its configuration. The default is two years from the deal closing.
• Staff accounts are kept while the person works at the dealership and are deactivated when the dealership removes them. Their name stays on the historical records they created, because a deal record with the salesperson blanked out is not a record.
• Audit logs are kept for the life of the dealership's account.
• When a dealership ends its subscription, we delete or return its data on request and otherwise delete it within a reasonable period, except where we must keep it by law.

8. How we protect it

• All traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes.
• Every dealership group's data is separated by row-level security in the database, enforced by the database itself rather than by application code alone.
• Access within our company is limited to the people who operate and support the Service, and their actions are logged.
• No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information we will notify the dealership, and you where the law requires it, without undue delay.

9. Your choices and rights

• Permissions. Location and notifications are controlled by your phone. Turn either off at any time in the phone's settings; the Service keeps working without them.
• Your account. You can see and correct your own profile in the Service. Your dealership's administrator can correct or remove your account.
• Access, correction, deletion. Staff can ask us for a copy of their information, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete what we are not required to keep. Customers should ask their dealership, which can act directly or ask us to. We respond within the time the applicable law allows and do not treat anyone differently for asking.
• State privacy laws. Residents of California and other states with privacy statutes have the rights those laws provide, including the right to know, to delete, to correct, and to not be discriminated against for exercising them. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.

To make any request, email adam@thebellsystems.com. We may need to confirm who you are before acting.

10. The website

• If you book a consultation or send us a message, we keep what you enter so we can reply.
• The website records page views and interactions to a system we run ourselves. It does not load third-party advertising or tracking scripts.
• The application uses a cookie to keep you signed in and nothing else. The website does not set tracking cookies.

11. Children

The Service is a workplace tool for adults employed by dealerships. It is not directed to anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

12. Changes and contact

When this policy changes we will update the date at the top and, for changes that matter, tell dealerships directly. The current version is always at thebellsystems.com/privacy.html.

Questions, requests, or concerns: adam@thebellsystems.com, or write to The Bell System, Moore, Oklahoma.