Season Car Rental Limited (“Season Cars”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a prestige and luxury car hire company based in London. We are the “data controller” for the personal data described in this policy, meaning we decide how and why it is processed.
Registered office: Arch 56 Ingate Pl, Nine Elms, London SW8 3NS. Company number: 11934150 (registered in England and Wales). Contact: info@seasoncars.com / 0207 046 0048.
This policy explains how we collect and use personal data about visitors to our Website, people who make enquiries or bookings, drivers and additional drivers named on a booking, and recipients of our marketing communications. It does not cover the practices of third-party websites we may link to.
We collect the following categories of personal data:
• Enquiry and contact data — name, email address, phone number, and the content of any enquiry or quote request you submit.
• Booking and hire data — full name, date of birth, home address, driving licence number and details, DVLA Check Code, passport details, and a proof-of-address document (e.g. a utility bill or bank statement).
• Motoring history data — details of motoring convictions, offence codes, prosecutions, accidents, incidents, fire or theft losses, and other information needed to assess insurance eligibility (clauses 10–12 of our Hire Terms). This is “criminal offence data” under UK data protection law — see Section 6 below for how we handle it.
• Payment data — the card type and last 4 digits used to make a booking or take a security deposit; full card numbers are processed by our payment provider and are not stored on our own systems.
• Vehicle collection/return data — condition reports, mileage, fuel level, and photographs or video taken at collection and return, used to assess damage, fuel and mileage charges.
• Communications — records of calls, emails and messages between you and our Sales and Aftercare teams.
• Marketing preferences — your consent status and history for email and SMS marketing (see our Marketing Policy).
• Website and cookie data — IP address, browser/device type, pages visited, and cookie identifiers (see Section 12, Cookies).
We collect personal data: directly from you (via our Website enquiry/booking forms, by phone, email, or in person at collection/delivery); from the DVLA, when you provide your Check Code; from our insurers and insurance brokers, in the course of assessing and confirming cover; from a travel agent, concierge or corporate booker, where a booking is made on your behalf; and automatically, through cookies and similar technologies when you use our Website (see Section 12).
UK GDPR requires us to have a valid “legal basis” for each use of your personal data. The table below sets out our main purposes and the basis we rely on for each.
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Responding to enquiries and providing quotations | Legitimate interests — to run our sales process efficiently |
| Assessing your eligibility to hire and arranging insurance cover | Performance of a contract; legal obligation (insurance regulation); consent, for criminal offence data (see Section 6) |
| Taking payment and the security deposit | Performance of a contract |
| Managing your booking, vehicle collection, return and aftercare | Performance of a contract |
| Investigating damage, excess mileage, fuel shortfall, fines or accidents | Performance of a contract; legitimate interests in recovering costs we are entitled to |
| Preventing and detecting fraud | Legitimate interests; legal obligation |
| Sending you service messages about your booking (confirmations, collection reminders, deposit release) | Performance of a contract |
| Sending you marketing by email or SMS | Consent, or the “soft opt-in” for existing customers (see our Marketing Policy) |
| Improving the Website and understanding how it is used | Consent (for non-essential cookies) or legitimate interests |
| Complying with our legal and regulatory obligations (e.g. tax, accounting, insurance record-keeping) | Legal obligation |
As part of assessing insurance eligibility, we ask about motoring convictions, offence codes and driving history (see Section 3). Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, this counts as “criminal offence data” and can only be processed where a specific condition in Schedule 1 of the Act is met.
We process this data on the basis of the “insurance purposes” condition (DPA 2018, Sch. 1, Part 3), because it is necessary for us, our insurers, or our insurance brokers to assess your risk for insurance purposes, and because collecting this information without your explicit knowledge would prejudice that assessment. We keep an internal Appropriate Policy Document, referenced in our Data Protection Policy, that sets out our retention and deletion practices for this data and the safeguards we apply.
Where a booking is referred to our insurers for approval (e.g. international licence holders, or drivers with a minor conviction), a decision to decline or add conditions to cover may be made using automated risk-scoring tools operated by our insurer or broker, in addition to human review. Where a decision is made solely by automated means and has a significant effect on you (e.g. an outright decline), you have the right to request human review, to express your point of view, and to contest the decision. Contact us at info@seasoncars.com to exercise this right.
We share personal data with:
• The DVLA, to verify your driving licence via your Check Code;
• Our insurers and insurance brokers, to assess and provide cover for your hire;
• Our payment services provider, to process card payments and security deposits;
• Mailchimp (operated by Intuit Inc.) and Mandrill (Mailchimp’s transactional email service), to send marketing and transactional emails on our behalf;
• Fast SMS, to send marketing and operational SMS messages on our behalf;
• IT, hosting and website infrastructure providers, who support our Website and internal systems;
• Our professional advisers (accountants, solicitors, insurers) where necessary for their advice;
• Law enforcement, regulators or courts, where we are legally required to do so, or to protect our rights or the safety of others; and
• A buyer, if we sell or reorganise our business, subject to the same protections set out in this policy.
We do not sell your personal data to third parties.
Some of the third parties listed in Section 8 — in particular Mailchimp and Mandrill, which are US-based — may process your data outside the UK. Where this happens, we ensure an appropriate safeguard is in place, such as the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK–US Data Bridge (an extension of the EU–US Data Privacy Framework), or another mechanism recognised as adequate under UK GDPR. You can ask us for more detail about the specific safeguard used by contacting info@seasoncars.com.
| Data | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Enquiry / quote data that does not lead to a booking | 12 months from last contact, then deleted |
| Booking, contract and payment records | 6 years from the end of the hire (statutory limitation period / HMRC record-keeping requirement) |
| Driving licence, passport and proof-of-address copies | Duration of the hire plus 12 months, then securely deleted, unless a claim, dispute or fraud investigation requires us to keep them longer |
| Motoring conviction / criminal offence data | The shortest period necessary to assess and document insurance eligibility for the hire, then securely deleted — see our Appropriate Policy Document |
| Collection/return condition reports and photos | 12 months from the end of the hire, or until any related dispute is resolved, whichever is later |
| Marketing consent records and preferences | Until you withdraw consent or opt out, then retained on a suppression list indefinitely to ensure we do not contact you again |
| CCTV footage (if applicable) | 30 days, unless required for an ongoing investigation |
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:
• Access the personal data we hold about you;
• Have inaccurate data corrected;
• Ask us to delete your data, where we have no legal reason to keep it;
• Restrict or object to certain processing, including direct marketing (you can object to marketing at any time, free of charge);
• Receive a copy of data you have provided to us in a portable format, where processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means;
• Withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent; and
• Complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — ico.org.uk, telephone 0303 123 1113 — if you believe we have not handled your data properly, although we would welcome the chance to resolve your concern directly first.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@seasoncars.com. We will normally respond within one month.
Our Website uses cookies. Necessary cookies are essential to the Website’s operation and do not require consent. We also use a marketing-email consent cookie, which records whether you have opted in to receive marketing emails, and (where enabled) analytics cookies, which help us understand how the Website is used. You can manage your cookie preferences at any time using the cookie settings link in our Website footer, or through your browser settings.
Our services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under the age of 18, and our vehicles cannot in any event be hired by anyone under the applicable minimum driver age (Hire Terms, clauses 10.1–10.2).
We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or the law. The current version will always be available on our Website, and we will show the date it was last updated.
Season Car Rental Limited, Arch 56 Ingate Pl, Nine Elms, London SW8 3NS.
Email: info@seasoncars.com | Telephone: 0207 046 0048.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk.