This is a translation. If the English and Dutch versions differ, the Dutch version applies.
1. Who is responsible for your data
BusOffer.com is a trade name of Racks B.V., KVK (Chamber of Commerce number) 74865684, Oosterlaan 24, 2101 ZR Heemstede. That company is the controller (verwerkingsverantwoordelijke) of the personal data collected through this platform. If you have questions, you can contact us at hallo@busoffer.com.
2. What data we collect
- Search data: departure location, destination, any intermediate stops, date and times, group size, chosen type of coach and, if you fill it in, a day programme.
- Contact details: name and email address (always required to complete a price comparison or request) and phone number. Your phone number is not required if you only ask for prices, and it is required if you request a booking, because the coach company will call you about it.
- Messages: any additional information you send with a booking request, your messages to a coach company, your questions to our team and your conversation with the AI assistant in the help window (without your contact details, see article 5).
- Technical data: your IP address, very briefly, to prevent misuse of our forms (see article 5), what is stored in your own browser (see the overview in article 6) and, only with your consent, what Google Analytics measures (also article 6).
- What you tell us after your trip: whether the trip went ahead, and with which coach company.
- A review, if you write one: your stars, your text and your name as you choose to have it shown on the site.
- Where your request started: on which page of our site you filled in the search form, and which website you came to us from. Of that website we only store the name, such as google.nl, or the name of a campaign. No cookie is needed for this.
- If you have a business account for your organisation: the details of the organisation, of you and your colleagues, and what you fill in there yourselves. This is set out in article 9, "A business account".
3. What we use this data for
- To show you a personal price comparison (legal basis: performance of the contract with you as a user of the platform).
- To forward your request or interest to the coach company you have chosen (legal basis: performance of the contract).
- To secure and improve the platform (legal basis: legitimate interest).
- For analytical cookies, solely with your consent (legal basis: consent).
4. Sharing with third parties
When you show interest in an offer or request a booking, we share the data you have provided (name, email address, phone number if given, and your message) with the coach company concerned, so that it can contact you directly. We never sell your data to third parties and do not share it more widely than necessary to handle your request.
If you request a coach company's phone number on your price overview, we let that company know that you will probably call. It then receives your route, the date, the number of people and the number of your request, but not your name or your email address.
If you request a booking or ask a question of a coach company that has not yet joined BusOffer.com, we send that company an email to invite it. That email contains your name, your departure and destination addresses as you entered them, the date and the number of people. Your email address and your phone number are not included.
If a coach company that has joined already has a trip on the day of your trip that ends near your departure point, that company can see your request in order to make you an offer, even if you have not approached it yourself. It then sees your departure and destination addresses as you entered them, the date, the departure time and the number of people. It only sees your name, email address and phone number once you respond to that offer: if you request a booking, let us know that you have booked with them, or send the company a message.
If you write a review, it is shown publicly on the coach company's page, with your name as you choose to have it shown. By default that is only your first name.
We also use services from other companies. For each service, what is sent to it is set out below.
- Vercel (Vercel Inc., United States) hosts the site. The part of the site that works with your data runs in their data centre in Frankfurt. As with any website, Vercel sees your IP address in doing so, and it keeps a log of the requests made to the site.
- Neon stores our database, in a data centre in Frankfurt. Everything you fill in on the site is stored there.
- Mailgun sends our emails, via its servers in the European Union. Every email we send you, and every email about your request to a coach company, passes through it.
- ImprovMX receives the mail you send to a busoffer.com address, such as hallo@busoffer.com, and forwards it to our mailbox at Google (Gmail). That mailbox also receives the notifications the site itself sends us, for example about a new question to our team, containing your name and your question.
- PDOK, the Dutch government's national address register (Kadaster), helps us find a Dutch address. While you type an address, and when we calculate your route, the text of that address is sent there, with house number and postcode if you enter them. Our own server makes that request, so PDOK does not receive your IP address, nor your name or your email address.
- openrouteservice (HeiGIT, Heidelberg) calculates how many kilometres your trip is by road. Only coordinates are sent there, rounded to about a hundred metres: no address, no name and no email address. We request such a distance once and store it, so that the same route is not requested again on every visit.
- Google Maps (Google Ireland Limited) draws your route on a real map on your price overview. That map loads as soon as you open that page, even if you chose only the necessary cookies in our cookie notice, because the route on the map is part of the price overview. The points of your route are sent to Google as coordinates, not as an address, and without your name or email address. If you have entered a full address, such a point does lie exactly at that address. As with any service your browser fetches something from, Google also sees your IP address, which browser you use and from which page the map is requested, and Google may place its own cookies. On all other screens where your route appears, such as at a coach company, the map only appears when someone presses the button. What Google does with that data is set out in Google's privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy). Some pages about a city or a location (for example where a coach may stop) also have a Google Maps map. It only loads when you yourself click “View the places on the map”; until then nothing is sent to Google. That map shows only the places from our sources, nothing about you.
- Google Analytics (Google Ireland Limited) is only used if you give your consent for it in the cookie notice. What is then sent to it is set out in article 6.
- Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.), with storage in the European Union, receives a report from us when something goes wrong on the site. Such a report concerns the error: which type of page, which browser and where in our code it went wrong. From a personal page, such as your price overview, we only send the type of page and not the number of your request. We do not send any name, email address, IP address, cookies or search text, and we do not record what you do on your screen or which pages you viewed before.
- Anthropic (Claude), only if the AI help in the help window is switched on; the window then states itself that you are talking to an AI assistant. If you ask a question there, the text of that conversation is sent to Anthropic, which writes the answer from our own explanations. We keep the conversation for six months, to see where visitors get stuck and to improve the site; we first remove any email addresses and phone numbers you type in, and no name, IP address or cookie is stored with it. After that it is deleted automatically. If you put your question to our team after the conversation, the conversation is already filled in in your question; you see what you are sending and can edit it. So do not include any data you would rather not share. In addition, a BusOffer.com staff member may have the text of a question to our team put to Anthropic, which then drafts a reply. This only happens when a staff member chooses to do so, never automatically; we remove your name, your email address and your phone number first. We cannot scrub out what you yourself have written in your message. The draft reply is always read and edited by a person before you receive it. And if you type what you are looking for in one sentence above the search form ("Rather in one sentence?"), that sentence is sent to Anthropic, which extracts the departure point, the destination, the date and the number of people from it to fill in the form for you. We do not store that sentence: not in our database, not in a log and not in an error report. So do not include any data that is not needed for it.
- Google or Apple, only if you dictate your trip using the microphone next to "Rather in one sentence?". Your own browser then converts your voice to text. The browser does this with a service from its maker: Google for Chrome and Edge, Apple for Safari. Your browser first asks your permission to use the microphone. We receive no audio and record nothing; we only receive the text, and we treat it the same as a sentence you type (see above under Anthropic). What Google or Apple does with the audio is set out in their own privacy policy. If you don't want that, type your sentence, or fill in the form yourself.
5. Retention period
We do not keep your data longer than necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. The site does the clearing up itself, automatically, according to the periods below.
Clearing up means: your name, email address and phone number are removed; everything you have written yourself, such as your comments, your day programme and your messages to coach companies, is erased; of your addresses only the place name remains; and the emails about your request and any quote a coach company sent you are deleted. What remains (the places, the date, the group size and the amount) no longer says who you are. We keep that for the accounts and the statistics.
- A request for which you did not request a booking: six months after your trip has taken place, and never earlier than six months after your request.
- A request with a booking: two years after the day of your trip. As long as your trip is still to come, we clear nothing.
- Messages between you and a coach company: two years after the last message, or earlier if your request is cleared.
- A question to our team: one year after it has been closed, or two years after it last changed if it was never closed. Your name, your email address, the messages and the emails about it are then removed.
- Copies of the emails the site sends: one year, or earlier if the request they relate to is cleared. Invoices, credit notes and payment reminders to coach companies fall under the statutory retention obligation of seven years. Your name does not appear on them; for a trip, they show the date and the route.
- Addresses we have looked up: so as not to have to request an address again every time, we remember which location belongs to the text typed in. No name, email address or request is stored with it. We do not clear this memory automatically.
- The brake on our forms: to prevent someone from spamming our forms, trying to guess request numbers or trying out passwords, we count how often something is submitted from the same IP address and, for some forms, with the same email address. Such a count runs for at most one hour and is then removed within the hour.
- Backups: we make a daily backup of the database that is kept for two weeks, and a monthly one that is kept for three months. Data we have cleared may therefore still be in those backups for up to three months.
- Our own mailbox: the mail you send us, and the notifications the site sends us about requests and questions to our team, are kept in our mailbox (see article 4). The site does not clear that automatically.
- Your review stays on the site, with the name you chose to have shown. If you want it removed, email us at hallo@busoffer.com.
- A conversation with the AI assistant in the help window: six months after your last question, after which it is deleted automatically. No name, IP address or cookie is stored with it, and we remove any email addresses, phone numbers, bank account numbers and postcodes with house numbers you type in before it is stored. A name or street you put in your question yourself cannot be removed automatically.
6. Cookies
We ourselves place one cookie for customers: if you open your price overview via the link in our email, your browser remembers a secret key for that one request. That way you, and only you, see your own details there and can change your request. If you sign in to a business account, a cookie that keeps you signed in is added. In addition, we store two things in your own browser: your choice in the cookie notice, and a short list of the requests you have opened on this device. This is called browser storage; it works like a cookie, but is not automatically sent to our server. Exactly what is stored and for how long is shown in the overview at the bottom of this article.
For analytical cookies we always ask for your consent first via the cookie notice. If you switch on "Analytical", or choose "Accept all", we use Google Analytics, from Google Ireland Limited, to count how many people visit which page and where they come from.
If you don't choose that, Google Analytics is not loaded and nothing is sent to it. With your consent, Google Analytics sets two cookies (_ga and _ga_ followed by a code) that recognise your browser on a later visit. Google sees your IP address in doing so, but does not store it.
We do not send any name, email address or phone number, and from a personal page, such as your price overview or a link from an email, we only send the type of page and not the code in it. What you type into a form is not sent either.
We do not use Google Analytics for advertising: data sharing with Google for advertising and Google signals are switched off. What Google itself does with the data is set out in Google's privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy). You can change or withdraw your preferences at any time with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page. If you withdraw your consent, measuring stops immediately and we remove the Google Analytics cookies.
We count which button you choose in the cookie notice ourselves: only how often each choice is made per day, without a cookie, without an IP address and without storing who it was. That way we know what share of visitors Google Analytics sees.
This is everything that can be stored in your browser via BusOffer.com:
- busoffer-cookies (browser storage): which choice you made in the cookie notice. This stays until you clear it in your browser; with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page you can change your choice.
- busoffer-aanvragen (browser storage): the last ten requests you opened on this device, with the request number, the route and the date, so that you can find them again under "Your requests". With that number you open your price overview. Your name, email address and phone number only appear there if the key from your email is also stored in this browser. This stays until you clear it in your browser; if you share a computer with others, clear it when you are done.
- bo-sleutel- followed by the number of your request (cookie): the secret key for that one request. It contains no name or email address. This cookie is needed for you to see your own details, so we do not ask consent for it. It stays for 400 days, or until you clear it in your browser.
- _ga and _ga_ followed by a code (Google Analytics cookies): only if you give your consent. They recognise your browser on a later visit and stay for two years by default; if you withdraw your consent, we remove them.
- busoffer_sessie (cookie): only if you sign in as a coach company or to our admin area. This cookie keeps you signed in, for seven days or until you sign out, and contains a random key and no name.
- busoffer_zakelijk (cookie): only if you sign in to a business account. This cookie keeps you signed in, for seven days or until you sign out, and contains a random key and no name.
- busoffer_zakelijk_in (cookie): sits alongside the previous one and contains only a "1", so that "My account" appears at the top of the site instead of "Sign in". No key and no name; it disappears when you sign out or after seven days.
- On your price overview, and on a page with a map once you have opened it yourself, the Google Maps map may place Google's own cookies (see article 4).
7. Security
We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data against loss or unlawful use.
Your price overview has its own web address, with the number of your request in it. Anyone who has only that address sees the trip and the prices, but not your name, email address or phone number, and cannot change anything in your request. That also requires the secret key, which is only in the links in your emails. Coach companies never receive that key. We block anyone who tries to guess numbers. So only forward the link from your email to people you trust. If you want to share your comparison with your group, use the "Share with your group" button: that link contains no key.
8. Your rights
You have the right of access to, rectification of and erasure of your personal data, the right to object to the processing, and the right to data portability. To exercise these rights, contact us at hallo@busoffer.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (Dutch Data Protection Authority).
9. A business account
With BusOffer Business (BusOffer Zakelijk), a school, club, company or other organisation arranges its coach trips in one account, together with colleagues. For this we store more than for an ordinary request. The organisation itself decides what it fills in about other people, such as the names on a passenger list, and is itself responsible for that. For that data about other people, the organisation is the controller and we are its processor; the arrangements on this are set out in the data processing agreement, which can be found in the account under "Details and settings", also as a PDF.
- What we store: the name of the organisation and its billing details; for each member, the name, email address, role and, if you fill it in, a phone number; the organisation's trips and who requested them; and what you fill in yourselves, such as regular departure points, projects, standing requirements, the group leader on the day (name and phone number), the passenger list (names and, where given, dates of birth) and the page for participants.
- Who sees what: every member of the organisation sees the organisation's trips and details. With a booking, a coach company sees the billing details, the standing requirements and the group leader on the day, at the same moment it sees your name and email address (see article 4). Of the passenger list, a coach company only sees how many people are on it, never the names or the dates of birth. Anyone who has the link can open the page for participants: it shows the trip, the times and the group leader on the day, and no prices, no coach company and no passenger list.
- The reminder for next year: we only send this email if you switch it on yourself, once, on the day you choose, and only to you. With the link at the bottom of that email you switch off all your reminders.
- How long: we delete the passenger list, the note for participants and the group leader on the day thirty days after the trip. An invitation to a colleague that can no longer be used is deleted after thirty days. The trips themselves follow the periods in article 5. We close an account that has not been used for two years; thirty days, one week and 48 hours beforehand the organisation's administrators receive an email, and anyone who then logs in or presses "Account behouden" (Keep account) keeps the account. An administrator of the organisation can also close the account themselves. The members' names, email addresses and phone numbers are then removed, as are the passenger lists, pick-up points, projects and notifications. Of the trips, only what the coach companies need for their accounts remains: the date, the places, the group size and the amount, without names. The billing details that went to the coach company with a booking (the organisation's name, address, VAT number and KVK (Chamber of Commerce) number) remain on that booking, without an email address.
- Viewing by BusOffer.com: a BusOffer.com employee can see in our admin area which organisations have a business account, with their members and their trips. To help, for example with a question from you or to check that everything works properly, they can also view your account. This is read-only: while viewing, they cannot change anything, send anything or do anything on your behalf, and they do not sign in to a member's account. Even then they do not see the names and dates of birth on a passenger list, only the number. If something needs to change, for example deleting data because you ask us to, they do that in our admin area and not in your account. Every time your account is viewed, we record who it was and when. You can see this yourselves under "Collega’s" (Colleagues), for the past thirty days.
10. Changes
We may amend this privacy policy from time to time. The most recent version is always on this page.