Berny's Appliances LLC ("Berny's Appliances," "we," "us," or "our") is a family-owned appliance and HVAC repair company based in Knoxville, Tennessee, serving customers within roughly 50 miles of Knoxville since 2022. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you visit bernysappliances.com, contact us, or schedule a service — and how we use, share, retain, and protect that information. We wrote this policy in plain language so you can read it once and understand it. If anything is unclear, please email support@bernysappliances.com or call (629) 401-2622.
This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect through our website at bernysappliances.com, our customer-facing online tools (booking forms, the customer photo upload page at /photos, and our embedded web chat), and through related service operations such as phone calls, text messages, emails, and on-site appointments at customer homes.
Berny's Appliances LLC is registered in the State of Tennessee. Our place of business is 200 Prosperity Dr, Knoxville, TN 37923. We are a single-location small business — we are not a marketplace, broker, or aggregator, and we do not resell customer data to third parties.
This policy does not cover information practices of third parties whose websites or services may link to or be linked from ours (Thumbtack, Angi, Google, Square, etc.). Each of those companies has its own privacy policy and we encourage you to read them.
When you contact us, schedule a repair, or use our website, you may give us information such as:
When you visit our website we automatically receive technical information that helps us run the site and improve performance:
When you reach out to us through a third-party lead platform like Thumbtack or Angi, that platform shares some of your information with us so we can respond:
Lead-platform data is governed by the platform's own privacy policy in addition to ours. When we reply to you through the platform's messaging API, we send only the message content and necessary metadata — we do not send the platform information beyond what they already have.
When you pay with a card or digital wallet through a Square invoice, Square Inc. handles the card transaction. We never see your full card number, CVV, or expiration date. We do receive limited information after the payment is complete: the payment ID, the amount paid, the tip amount (if any), the timestamp, and the payment method type (e.g., "card," "Cash App Pay"). See Section 7.
We use your information for the legitimate business purposes you would expect from a service company you hired:
We do not use your information for purposes unrelated to the service you hired us for, and we do not sell it. See Section 8.
Our office uses an AI assistant powered by Anthropic's Claude to help triage incoming text-message and web-chat conversations from new customers. Here is exactly what that means in practice:
About Anthropic: we use Anthropic's Claude API under Anthropic's Commercial Terms, which explicitly prohibit Anthropic from using customer-submitted content to train their AI models. Anthropic retains data only as needed to operate the service and detect abuse. For details, see Anthropic's Privacy Center.
When a technician needs to see your appliance before quoting parts or returning, we may text you a secure link to upload photos at bernysappliances.com/photos. The page is built with several privacy-friendly choices:
Our text messages, multimedia messages, and outgoing phone calls are sent through Twilio, a US-based communications provider. When you give us your phone number on a booking form or by speaking to us, you are agreeing to receive transactional messages related to your service request — appointment confirmations, on-the-way updates, parts arrival notices, invoice links, post-service follow-ups, and review requests.
Twilio's privacy practices are described at twilio.com/legal/privacy.
Card payments and digital wallet payments (Cash App Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay) are processed by Square Inc., an independent payments company that is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified. We do not see, store, or process your full card number, security code, or expiration date on our systems.
From a completed payment we receive only:
That information lets us mark your invoice as paid, post the right amount to our books, and pay the technician. Square's privacy practices are governed by Square's Privacy Notice.
We share information only with the parties below, only to the extent needed for the purpose described, and only under written contracts (where applicable) requiring those parties to protect your information.
| Provider | What they do for us | What we share |
|---|---|---|
| Twilio | Send SMS/MMS messages and place outbound voice calls. | Your phone number and the message contents. |
| Mailjet | Send transactional emails (estimates, invoices, follow-ups). | Your name, email, and message contents. |
| Square | Process card payments and digital wallets; sync your customer record. | Your name, address, email, phone, invoice line items, and your card data (which goes directly to Square — not us). |
| Anthropic | Provide the Claude AI model used for SMS and web chat triage. | Conversation contents and limited context as described in Section 4. Anthropic is contractually prohibited from using this data to train models. |
| Google Cloud / Firebase | Host our website, store databases, store uploaded photos and audio, and authenticate employee access. | All information described in this policy is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure under our account. |
| Google Maps Platform | Geocode addresses and calculate driving distances to estimate diagnostic fees. | Addresses you provide. |
| Google reCAPTCHA | Protect web forms from bots. | Browser/device signals at the moment a form is submitted. |
| Google Analytics / Tag Manager | Measure website traffic and improve the site. | Pseudonymized usage data, IP address, and cookie identifiers. |
| ServicePower | Look up factory-warranty job tickets when we are dispatched as a factory-authorized technician. | Work order numbers and equipment serial numbers, where applicable. |
When you contacted us through Thumbtack or Angi, we communicate back through their messaging system in addition to (or instead of) SMS. The messages we send through those platforms are received by you and by the platform itself. Each platform has its own privacy policy:
We may disclose information if we believe in good faith it is necessary to comply with applicable law, a subpoena, or a court order, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Berny's Appliances, our customers, our employees, or the public.
If we ever sell the business, merge with another company, or are acquired, customer information would likely transfer as part of that transaction. We would notify customers in advance of any such transfer.
Our website uses cookies and similar technologies. The categories below summarize what each one does:
Do Not Track (DNT): some browsers send a "Do Not Track" signal. There is currently no industry-standard interpretation of this signal, so we do not currently respond to DNT signals. We do honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal as a "do not sell or share" request from California residents (see Section 13).
How to control cookies: all major browsers let you block, accept, or delete cookies. The exact steps depend on your browser; search "manage cookies" plus your browser name. You can also opt out of Google Analytics specifically with the Google Analytics opt-out add-on.
Third-party tags: our Google Tag Manager container can deploy tags from third parties (Google Analytics today, possibly an ad-conversion pixel during a campaign). These tags may collect information about your visit across sites that also use them. Each third party has its own privacy policy.
How long we keep different categories of information:
| Category | Retention | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Customer service records (work orders, photos, technician notes, parts ordered) | Indefinitely | To support warranty claims, identify recurring issues, and comply with tax recordkeeping. |
| SMS and web chat conversation history | Indefinitely | Service history and dispute resolution. |
| Voicemail recordings | Indefinitely | Service history. |
| Payment records (Square) | At least 7 years | IRS and Tennessee tax recordkeeping. |
| Photo upload audit logs (with hashed IP) | Up to 1 year | Abuse detection and security investigation. |
| Website analytics | Per Google Analytics defaults (typically 14 months) | Site improvement. |
If you ask us to delete your personal information and you have no open balance or active warranty, we will delete the information we are not required by law to keep. See Section 13 for the formal process.
We use industry-standard practices to keep your information safe:
No system is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee against every threat. If we ever experience a security incident affecting your personal information, we will notify you as required by applicable law.
Our services are intended for adults arranging home appliance and HVAC repair. They are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected information from a child under 13, we will delete it. A parent or guardian who believes we may have collected information about their child may contact us at support@bernysappliances.com and we will investigate and respond promptly.
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act) gives you specific rights regarding your personal information. We extend these rights to all California customers, regardless of whether Berny's Appliances meets the formal CCPA business thresholds.
In the past 12 months we have collected the categories of personal information described in Section 2. Categories include identifiers, customer service records, geolocation (approximate, derived from address or IP), audio/visual information (voicemails and photos you submit), commercial information (services purchased), internet/network activity, and inferences derived from any of the above. Sources are described in Section 2; purposes are described in Section 3.
Email support@bernysappliances.com or call (629) 401-2622. Please include your full name, the phone number(s) and email address(es) you have used with us, and a clear statement of what you are requesting. We will verify your identity by matching information you provide to information already in our records (and by calling the phone number on file before deleting). We respond to verifiable requests within 45 days, with up to a 45-day extension if reasonably necessary (we will notify you).
Authorized agents: you may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. We will require the agent to provide written permission signed by you and to verify their own identity.
Global Privacy Control: we treat the GPC browser signal as an opt-out of "sale or sharing." Because we do not sell or share, this is effectively a no-op, but we record the request.
The Tennessee Information Protection Act (TIPA) took effect July 1, 2025, and gives Tennessee consumers rights similar to those described above. Berny's Appliances is below the TIPA business thresholds, but as a matter of policy we extend the same rights to Tennessee residents that we extend to California residents (see Section 13): the right to know, delete, correct, opt out of sale/share/targeted advertising, and non-discrimination. Use the same contact information in Section 13.3 to submit a request.
If you live in a US state with its own privacy law (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, etc.), the rights and processes described in Section 13 are available to you on request.
Berny's Appliances is a Tennessee local-services business serving customers within roughly 50 miles of Knoxville. We do not actively offer services to residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, or other countries. If you contact us from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be processed in the United States, where data-protection laws may differ from those of your country. If you are an EU/UK resident and would like to exercise rights under GDPR or UK GDPR, contact us at support@bernysappliances.com.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as our practices change or as the law evolves. The "Effective date" near the top tells you when this version became active. For material changes we will post a prominent notice on the website and, when feasible, send a notification to active customers. Continued use of our website or services after a change becomes effective constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
For privacy questions, requests, or complaints:
We aim to acknowledge privacy requests within five business days and to provide a substantive response within 30 days. Thank you for trusting Berny's Appliances with your information — we take that trust seriously.