Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Racket Rescue ("we", "us", "our") repairs and restores racket sports equipment and operates the club and coach directory at racketr.com. We are the responsible party for your personal information as defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA").

2. What we collect

We only collect what we need to do the job you have asked us to do. We do not buy personal information from third parties. We do not build advertising profiles ourselves, though the Meta Pixel described in section 10 does report site activity back to Meta.

If you book a repair

• Your first and last name
• Email address and mobile number
• Collection and delivery address, including city, postal code and country
• Details of the racket(s): make, model, condition, number of items, and any bag or cover sent with them
• Photographs you upload of the damage, and photographs we take before, during and after the work. As set out in our Terms, photographs of the equipment may be used in our marketing. They show the racket, never your name or contact details, and you can ask us to exclude your equipment at any time.
• Payment status and amounts (but not your card details, see section 4)
• Courier tracking and waybill references
• Any notes you send us by email or WhatsApp about the job

If you list a club or coach profile

• Contact name, email address and telephone number
• Business or coaching name, description, sports offered and rates
• Physical address, city, province and country, and the map coordinates derived from it
• Photographs and logos you upload
• Website and social media links you choose to provide
• A password, stored only as a one-way hash that cannot be reversed

If you buy or sell on Racket Trader

• Your name, email address and telephone number
• Listing details and photographs
• Delivery address for completed orders

If you rate a club or coach

• Your email address, used solely to verify the rating is genuine and to prevent duplicates. It is not published.

3. Why we collect it

Marketing to our customers

Once you have used one of our services you are a customer of Racket Rescue, and we may use the contact details you gave us to market our own racket repair and related services to you, by email, WhatsApp, SMS or telephone. This is permitted by section 69(3) of POPIA, which allows a business to market to an existing customer where the details were obtained in the course of providing a service and the marketing relates to similar services.

Transactional messages are not marketing and continue regardless: repair status updates, quotes, invoices, collection and delivery notifications, and guarantee correspondence are part of the service you asked for.

If you have never used our services and simply enquired, we will not add you to marketing without your agreement.

4. Payments and card details

If you pay by EFT we see only what appears on the bank transfer: your name, the reference and the amount. We do not have access to your bank account or banking login.

5. Who we share it with

We share personal information only where it is needed to deliver the service. We do not sell it, rent it, or trade it. The complete list of third parties who receive any of your information is:

Cross-border transfers. Google Fonts, OpenStreetMap and Meta operate servers outside South Africa, so loading a page may involve a transfer abroad. PayFast and The Courier Guy process within South Africa. Where information leaves the country, section 72 of POPIA applies and we rely on the recipient being subject to laws or binding agreements providing comparable protection.

6. How long we keep it

7. Your rights under POPIA

You have the right to:

• Know what we hold: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correct it: have inaccurate or incomplete information fixed
• Have it deleted: ask us to delete information we no longer have a lawful reason to keep. We cannot delete records we are legally required to retain, such as invoices within the five-year tax period.
• Object: object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Withdraw consent: where we rely on consent, such as a published listing, withdraw it at any time
• Not be subject to automated decisions: we do not make decisions about you by automated means alone
• Complain: to us, and to the Information Regulator (see section 12)

To exercise any of these, email repairs@racketr.com with "POPIA request" in the subject line. We will respond within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not disclose your information to someone else.

8. How we protect it

• The entire site is served over HTTPS, and plain HTTP requests are redirected to the encrypted connection
• Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes and are never recoverable, even by us
• Card details never enter our systems (see section 4)
• Admin and portal areas require authentication, with sessions that expire automatically
• Database queries use parameter binding to guard against injection
• Public forms are protected against automated abuse and against email header injection
• Configuration files holding credentials are blocked from web access at server level

9. Club and coach listings

Listings are published deliberately: that is the point of a directory. When you submit one, the business or coaching name, description, sports, area, contact details you provide, photographs and map position become publicly visible, and search engines may index them.

Do not put personal information in a listing that you would not want public. A home address used as a coaching location will be visible on a map. If you would prefer only a suburb shown, tell us and we will adjust the precision.

Some listings are created from publicly available information as unclaimed placeholders so players can find local clubs. If a listing refers to you or your business and you want it changed or removed, email us and we will action it. No account needed.

10. Cookies and tracking

We use the minimum necessary:

• Session cookies: to keep you signed in to an admin or portal area. Essential; the site cannot work without them.
• Preference storage: remembering things like a dismissed banner or a tactical board setting, held in your own browser.
• Meta Pixel: we advertise on Instagram and Facebook, and the Meta Pixel tells us which of those adverts lead to a booking. It records that a page was viewed and that a booking was completed, and it sets cookies belonging to Meta Platforms Ireland Limited. We do not send Meta your name, email address, phone number or any detail of your repair.

The Meta Pixel is an advertising tracker and it works across sites. If you would rather not be included, you can turn off tracking in your browser settings, use a tracker-blocking extension, or adjust your advert preferences in your own Facebook or Instagram account. Nothing on this site stops working if you do.

Meta processes that data as a separate responsible party under its own terms. Their privacy policy is at facebook.com/privacy/policy.

We do not run any other advertising or analytics trackers. If that changes, this section will be updated.

11. Children

Our services are intended for adults. Where a racket belongs to a child, we deal with the parent or guardian, and the contract is with that adult. We do not knowingly collect information directly from a child under 18 without the consent of a competent person, as POPIA requires. If you believe we hold a child's information without proper consent, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Complaints

Please raise it with us first. Most things are a misunderstanding we can fix quickly. Email repairs@racketr.com and mark it "Privacy complaint".

If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the regulator:

13. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information we will update this page and change the date at the top. Where a change materially affects you, we will tell you directly by email rather than relying on you noticing.

See also our Terms & Conditions, which cover repairs, the guarantee, payment and returns.