Privacy policy

Draft pending legal review. This policy describes how this website actually works today. It has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer against the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

1. Who we are

Consult It is operated by Louis Neil Robertson, a sole trader based in Queensland, trading under the registered business name Consult itt (ABN 75 433 133 622). In this policy, “Consult It”, “we” and “us” mean that business.

Privacy contact: help@consultit.com.au, or use our privacy request form.

2. What we collect

We only collect what we need to introduce you to a consultant, take bookings and payments, pay consultants, assess consultant applications and answer your messages.

Who	What we collect	Where it comes from
People sending an enquiry	Name, email, optional phone and suburb, whether the enquiry is for a business or personal, what you need help with, budget, timing, the consultants you chose, and your matching questionnaire answers	The enquiry form and matching questionnaire
People who book and pay online	Name, email, phone, billing country/postcode, optional business name and tax ID, your acceptance of our terms, and what you booked. Card details are collected and held by Stripe, not by us	Stripe’s checkout page
Consultant applicants	Name, email, optional phone, city and state, ABN, LinkedIn or website, the areas you consult in, experience, qualifications, insurance status, services and pricing, and biography	The consultant application form
Consultants who receive payouts	Your Stripe account ID and whether Stripe has verified you and your bank account. Stripe collects your identity documents, date of birth and bank details directly; we don’t receive copies	Stripe
People who contact us	Name, email, topic and message	The contact form or email
People who chat with Neil or Kelly (our AI assistants)	The messages you type and the assistant’s replies. We don’t ask for your name or contact details in the chat	The chat window on our website
Privacy and unsubscribe requests	Name, email and the details of your request	The privacy request and unsubscribe forms
Website visitors	Technical information our host needs to deliver the site and stop abuse, such as IP address and browser type	Automatically, through our hosting provider

We do not ask for dates of birth, identity documents or card details on our own forms. Where those are needed for payments or payouts, Stripe collects them directly. We don’t use advertising cookies or tracking pixels unless you agree to them (see our cookie policy).

Sensitive information. Some services, such as relationship or performance coaching, can touch on health or other sensitive matters. Please don’t include health, medical or other sensitive details in an enquiry. The consultant will ask if they need them, and only with your consent.

3. Why we use it

To suggest and introduce consultants, and to pass your enquiry to the consultants you choose.
To take payment for bookings, pay consultants, give refunds and handle payment disputes.
To assess and verify consultant applications.
To reply to your messages and requests, including answering questions through our AI assistants.
To run, secure and improve the website.
To send occasional updates, only if you opted in. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link.
To meet our legal obligations.

Consultants. When you book a consultant, we give them your name and contact details so they can arrange the session. Your enquiry goes to the consultants you choose. If you don’t choose any, it goes to up to three suitable consultants we select, and we tell you who they are. Consultants are independent businesses with their own privacy obligations.
Service providers who help us run Consult It:
- Netlify, Inc. hosts the website and receives form submissions. It is based in the United States.
- Google LLC provides our business email (Google Workspace). Booking, payout and refund notifications are emailed to our own inbox.
- Stripe (Stripe Payments Australia Pty Ltd and its related companies, including Stripe, Inc. in the United States) processes payments, verifies consultants’ identity for payouts, and helps prevent fraud. Stripe handles that information under its own privacy policy.
- GitHub, Inc. stores the website’s content. It holds no customer data.
- Anthropic PBC (United States) provides the AI model behind Neil and Kelly. Your chat messages are sent to Anthropic to generate replies. Consult It doesn’t store chat conversations; they stay in your browser tab until you close it. Anthropic handles them under its commercial terms and privacy policy. [Lawyer to confirm the wording on Anthropic’s retention and use of API data.]
Authorities, where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information.

5. Overseas disclosure

Netlify, Google, Stripe and Anthropic may store or process data outside Australia, including in the United States. We use reputable providers with security controls in place. [Lawyer to confirm the APP 8 wording.]

6. How long we keep it

These retention periods are proposed and will be confirmed with our lawyer:

Enquiries and contact messages: 2 years after our last contact with you.
Unsuccessful consultant applications: 12 months.
Listed consultants: for as long as they are listed, then 7 years for business records.
Bookings, payments and refunds: 7 years, for tax and accounting records. Stripe keeps its own records as its privacy policy describes.
Unsubscribe requests: kept indefinitely, so we never email you again.

7. Security

Only Consult It can access form submissions, booking records and payment records, through its own Netlify, Google and Stripe accounts. We never see or store full card numbers. The payments admin area is protected by a password held only by Consult It, and the website is served only over HTTPS.

8. Children

Consult It is for people aged 18 and over. Our forms ask you to confirm your age, and we don’t knowingly collect information from children under 18. If you’re a parent or guardian and think a child has given us their information, contact us and we’ll delete it.

9. Your rights: access, correction and deletion

You can ask us to:

give you a copy of your personal information
correct it
delete it
stop sending you marketing

Use the privacy request form or email help@consultit.com.au. We may need to confirm your identity, and we aim to respond within 30 days. Where we can’t delete something because the law requires us to keep it, we’ll explain why.

10. Complaints

Contact us first at help@consultit.com.au, and we’ll respond within 30 days. If you’re not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

11. Changes

When this policy changes, we’ll update it here and change the date at the top.