Privacy policy

Talk Shops (talkshops.app) · Last updated November 9, 2026

Talk Shops is a tool that auto service and repair shops use to send their customers progress updates and estimates. This page explains what information about you is stored when your shop uses Talk Shops, what it is used for, how it is protected and when it is deleted.

Your auto shop decides what to enter and is responsible for your repair records. Talk Shops stores and sends that information for the shop. If you have a question or request about your information, contact your shop first. You can also email Talk Shops at [email protected].

What we collect

• Contact details your shop enters: your name, mobile number and/or email address, and whether you prefer texts or email.
• Vehicle and repair details: year, make, model, license plate, the concern you described, the repair order number, the progress of the repair, notes and messages, estimates, prices and bills.
• Things you add on your car's page: check-in details, photos you upload (up to six), and your approve or decline choices with the name you type to sign them, plus the time you sent them.
• Photos the shop takes of your vehicle during the repair.

You don't create an account and we don't ask for a password, payment card, or your home address. The customer page doesn't use advertising or analytics trackers and doesn't set cookies.

How it is used

• To show you your car's progress, estimate and bill on your private page.
• To send you texts or emails about your repair when your shop updates it.
• To let your shop see your decisions and look up past repairs.

We don't sell your information or use it for advertising. We don't send you marketing messages.

Your private link

You never log in. Instead, the first text or email you get contains a private link to your car's page. Each link contains a long random code (about 150 random bits from a secure random number generator) that is unique to your repair, so it can't realistically be guessed. Anyone who has the link can open the page, so please don't forward or post it. If you think someone else has your link, ask your shop to close that repair and start a new one.

How it is secured

• Encrypted connections: the site and all data sent to and from it travel over HTTPS.
• Locked-down database: repair records are stored in a Supabase (PostgreSQL) database with row-level security turned on and all public access removed. Browsers can't read the tables directly. Every request goes through our server, which only returns a repair to someone holding its private link, or to the signed-in shop that owns it.
• Shops sign in: shop staff sign in with an email and password or a Google account. A shop can only see its own customers and repairs.
• Limited uploads: customer photos must be JPEG images under a size limit, and uploads close once work on the car begins.

No system is perfectly secure, and we can't promise that information will never be accessed without permission.

Who else handles your information

We use a few service providers to run Talk Shops. They process information only to provide their service to us:

• Supabase stores the data and runs our server code.
• Cloudflare hosts the website.
• Twilio delivers text messages (your phone number and the message text).
• Resend delivers emails (your email address and the message text). Replies to those emails go to your shop.
• Google (Gemini AI) powers the shop's AI tools: marking possible damage on walk-around photos, reading a shop's price list when the free reader in your browser can't, the repair how-to assistant, and sorting a customer text reply when Talk Shops' own reply sorter isn't sure. The photo or text involved is sent to Google to get the result. Text replies have phone numbers, emails and links removed first.
• Stripe handles shop subscription payments. Customers never pay through Stripe here.
• Google Fonts supplies the site's fonts, so your browser contacts Google when it loads the page.

Repair how-to answers are shared between shops so a repeat question gets a fast answer. Only the vehicle (year, make, model and engine), a generic version of the question and the answer are shared, never a customer's name, phone, email, plate or VIN.

How Talk Shops learns. Talk Shops sorts customer text replies with its own small model, which runs on our servers. To make it better, when a shop's staff answer a customer's text we keep a copy of that customer text with names, phone numbers, emails, links, addresses, VINs, plates and other numbers removed, plus what the model guessed and whether staff used the suggested reply. That copy is not linked to the shop, the repair or the customer, is used only to train the reply sorter, and is deleted after 12 months. Shops can turn this off any time in Settings (“Help improve Talk Shops”). The same goes for questions staff type into the Ask help chat that it couldn't answer well: we keep the question with the same details removed and which Help answer it guessed or the person picked, so we can write better answers. We do not train on photos, price lists or anything else from shops.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• While your car is at the shop, its record stays active.
• When the car is picked up or the repair is closed, the record moves to the shop's archive.
• Archived records are deleted automatically one year after pickup or closing.
• Your shop can delete a record permanently at any time before then.

Your choices

• Stop texts: reply STOP to any text from us.
• Access, correction or deletion: ask your shop. They can update your details or delete your repair record. If you can't reach them, email [email protected].
• You don't have to upload photos or fill in check-in details online. You can give them to the shop in person instead.

Children

Talk Shops is meant for vehicle owners and isn't directed at children under 13.

Contact

Questions about this policy: [email protected].

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update this page and the date at the top.