Privacy policy

SharpenIt (we, us, our) is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy describes what personal information we collect, how we use it, and your rights under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

If anything here is unclear, email hello@sharpenit.com.au and we'll explain.

1. What we collect

When you place an order or contact us, we collect:

• Contact details — your name, email, phone number.
• Delivery details — your street address, suburb, state, postcode (for both mail-in return and pickup).
• Order details — the knives you've sent, tier, quantity, prices, dates.
• Communication history — emails you send us and our replies, plus any reminders or follow-ups we send you.
• Marketing attribution — if you arrived via a tracked link (QR code, ad, referral), we record the campaign source so we know what's working.
• SMS opt-in flag — only if you tick the box on the order confirmation page.

Card details: we never see, handle, or store your full card number, expiry, or CVV. Payments are processed by Square — see §4 below.

2. How we use it

• Fulfilling your order — packing, posting, sharpening, returning your knives.
• Communicating about your order — confirmation, status, "your knives are on the way back".
• Re-sharpening reminders — we'll email you when your knives are due for another sharpen (typically every 6–12 months, depending on use). You can opt out of these any time.
• Asking for a Google review after your order is fulfilled — once, then we leave you alone.
• Meeting our legal obligations — tax records, consumer-law disputes.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your contact details with anyone except the third parties listed in §4 below, and only to the extent necessary to deliver the service you ordered.

3. Marketing communications

After your first order, you're on our re-sharpen reminder list. Every email we send includes a one-click unsubscribe link.

If you're a business (cafe, restaurant, butcher), we may send you a one-off introductory email — that's also unsubscribable in one click.

4. Third parties we share data with

We use a small number of trusted service providers. Each only sees the data they need to do their job:

• Square — payment processing. When you pay, you go to Square's hosted checkout, which collects your card details directly. Square is PCI-DSS compliant; we receive only a confirmation that the payment succeeded plus a Square order ID, never your card data. Square's privacy policy.
• Australia Post — return-shipping label and parcel tracking. We give them your delivery address.
• Google — we use Google Workspace email to send and receive customer messages. Some routine business writing assistance (drafting blog content, marketing material) uses Google's Gemini API; this involves general business prompts, not your personal data.

We don't use Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, or any third-party advertising trackers on this site.

5. Cookies & local storage

We use a small consent modal the first time you visit. Whatever you choose is stored in your browser. Here's exactly what we set, in either case:

• Always set, regardless of your choice: an anonymous sharpenit_session_id (a random UUID) is generated when you arrive and held in your browser's session storage. We also write it as a session-only first-party cookie on this domain (no expiry — gone when you close the tab) so the server can keep the page you're seeing consistent across reloads. We use it to count anonymous conversions per page version. It is never linked to your name, email, or any other identifier; never persisted across sessions; and never sent to any third party.
• If you accept: we additionally generate a random first-party visitor identifier (a UUID like b8c1e5f0…) and store it in your browser's local storage, plus a matching first-party cookie set to expire in 1 year. This persists across sessions, lets us see which pages help people order over time (basic conversion analytics), and gets discarded as soon as you ask. We do not sell or share this identifier and we don't use it for cross-site tracking.
• If you decline: only the "you've declined" flag is stored. No persistent visitor identifier is created. The anonymous session-only ID above still applies (it's necessary for the page experience to work), but it dies with your tab.

You can change your mind at any time via the Cookies link in the footer of any page, or by clearing your browser storage.

Separately, Square sets short-lived session cookies during checkout — these are necessary for the payment to work, and Square handles them under its own privacy policy.

6. How long we keep it

• Order and customer records — kept for at least 7 years to satisfy Australian Tax Office record-keeping rules.
• Email correspondence — kept indefinitely unless you ask us to delete it, so we can refer back to prior conversations.
• Marketing reminder list — kept until you unsubscribe.

7. Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Principles, you can:

• Access — ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct — ask us to fix anything wrong.
• Delete — ask us to delete your data. We'll honour this for marketing data immediately and for order records once tax-record retention obligations have lapsed.
• Unsubscribe — opt out of any marketing email with one click.

Email hello@sharpenit.com.au with the subject line "Privacy request" and we'll action it within 30 days.

8. Security

Customer data lives in a database on a hosted server with restricted access. Card data never touches our infrastructure (Square handles it). Passwords are not stored in plain text. Backups are encrypted.

If a data breach occurs that's likely to result in serious harm to you, we'll notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

9. Children

This service isn't directed at people under 18. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children. Parents can email us to have any inadvertently collected data removed.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time — for example, if we add a new payment provider or change how we handle marketing. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will reflect any change. Material changes will also be flagged on your next order confirmation.

11. Contact

Privacy questions, complaints, or access requests:

SharpenIt
Arcadia Vale, NSW
hello@sharpenit.com.au

If you're not satisfied with our response, you can lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.