Version 1 — Last updated: September 16, 2026
Privacy Policy — Appliance Parts North
Appliance Parts North (“APN”, “we”) is operated by ELECTROFIABLE inc. (Québec, Canada). This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect when you use appliancepartsnorth.ca, what is public and what stays private, why we use it, who processes it on our behalf and what your rights are. It applies to visitors, buyers and sellers. Words such as “Seller Terms”, “Marketplace Terms” and “Offer Policy” refer to the documents of those names.
1. Who is responsible
ELECTROFIABLE inc. is responsible for the personal information collected through the Platform. The person in charge of the protection of personal information is the Privacy Officer of ELECTROFIABLE inc., who can be reached at info@appliancepartsnorth.ca.
2. Information we collect
2.1 Account information. When you create an account: login name, email address, name and the customer information handled by WooCommerce. One account serves for buying and selling.
2.2 Seller profile. If you create a seller profile: your public seller name; your legal name or business identity and seller type (individual or business); your city and region or province; the postal code of your shipping origin, which is collected and kept private and is used to compute Canada Post shipping rates; your phone number, submitted and then verified; your availability settings (available or away, chat and call flags, time zone); your return policy text (versioned, each version kept immutably); private notes you enter.
2.3 Phone verification. To verify your phone number we send it to Twilio Verify, which delivers a one-time code. We store the submitted number, its verified status and the time of verification.
2.4 Payments and billing. Marketplace purchases are processed by Stripe through Stripe Connect: each sale is charged directly on the connected Stripe account of the seller concerned (a “Direct Charge”), whose account is the merchant for that sale, and card numbers never reach APN. If you subscribe to a paid seller plan, subscription payment is handled by Stripe on hosted Checkout and Portal pages. We never see or store your card details. We store the Stripe customer and subscription references, your plan, its status and billing events needed to manage capacity (including the grace period after a payment failure). During Stripe Connect onboarding, Stripe collects seller identity and bank information directly; APN never sees or stores it.
2.5 Offers. The offers you publish: price, quantity, SKU, fulfillment mode, condition, origin, test status, and the texts you write (test method, warranty details, highlights, description, donor appliance or model, defects, install tips), plus your photos.
2.6 Acceptances, acknowledgements and attestations. We keep an append-only acceptance ledger recording, for each acceptance or acknowledgement: your user identifier, the policy concerned (Marketplace Terms, this Privacy Policy notice, Seller Terms, accuracy attestation), the version number accepted, a context reference (for example the registration or the offer submission concerned) and a timestamp. We do not record your IP address or browser in this ledger. This lets us and you identify exactly which version of a document you accepted; the text of each published version is archived unchanged.
2.7 Messages. The Platform includes buyer-to-seller messaging. We process the content of on-platform conversations and their contact metadata. Notification e-mails about a conversation include the text of the latest message. Guests (visitors without an account) can take part in a conversation through tokenized links sent to their e-mail address. Anti-abuse measures may record technical data such as IP address.
2.8 Technical data. Server logs (IP address, browser, pages requested) collected by our hosting provider’s environment (Hostinger) for security and operation.
2.9 Purchases and orders. When you buy, checkout collects your shipping address, your billing details and your e-mail address. We keep order records and, for each seller involved in an order, a per-seller vendor-order record. Transactional e-mails are sent to the billing e-mail address of the order: an order e-mail, and one shipment e-mail for each shipment of a vendor order.
3. What is public and what is private
3.1 Public or potentially public: your public seller name; your approximate location (city and region or province); your availability status (available or away, chat or call flags, local time derived from your time zone); your phone number only if you explicitly opt in to show it; the content of your offers (price, quantity, condition, origin, test status, your narrative texts and your photos).
3.2 Private — never published: your legal name or identity; your seller type (individual or business); your submitted and verified phone number (private by default); your exact address and your shipping-origin postal code (kept private — only your city and region are shown publicly); your billing identifiers and Stripe references; your plan; your private notes; your acceptance and attestation records; your account credentials; your checkout information as a buyer (shipping address, billing details, e-mail), which is shared only with the selling seller for their own sale and with the providers listed in section 6.
3.3 A pickup address, if you choose to give one to a buyer, is exchanged privately between you and that person, not through a public page.
4. Why we use your information
- To create and secure your account and let you buy and sell with the same account.
- To verify that a seller controls the phone number given (Twilio Verify) and to display it publicly only with your opt-in.
- To publish your offers under APN catalog records and show buyers your availability and approximate location.
- To process your orders: collect your checkout information, create order and vendor-order records, give the selling seller your name and ship-to address for their own sale, compute Canada Post shipping rates from origin and destination postal codes, and send transactional e-mails (an order e-mail and one shipment e-mail per vendor-order shipment).
- To operate buyer-to-seller messaging, send notification e-mails that include the latest message, and let guests take part in a conversation through tokenized e-mail links.
- To process marketplace payments (Stripe Connect) and to manage subscription plans and capacity (Stripe), including grace period and floor-to-STARTER rules described in the Seller Terms.
- To keep proof of your acceptance of the Marketplace Terms and Seller Terms, of your acknowledgement of this policy and of accuracy attestations (acceptance ledger), and to keep immutable versions of your return policy.
- To moderate offers (automatic by default, human by exception), handle reports of abuse and enforce our policies.
- To answer your requests and communicate service information.
- To operate, secure and improve the site.
5. Consent and legal basis
5.1 We collect and use your information with your consent, given when you create an account, create a seller profile, submit an offer or subscribe to a plan, and where necessary to provide the service you request.
5.1a This policy is a notice, separate from the Marketplace Terms. When you create an account you contractually accept the Marketplace Terms; you are separately given notice of this Privacy Policy and asked to acknowledge that you have read it. That acknowledgement is recorded in the acceptance ledger (section 2.6) with the version of this policy, distinctly from your acceptance of the Terms. This policy is not merged into the Terms as a single contract, and acknowledging it does not by itself constitute the specific consents described in 5.2.
5.2 Explicit consent is asked separately for (a) sending your phone number to Twilio to receive a verification code and (b) displaying your phone number publicly. You can withdraw the public display opt-in at any time in your seller settings; your number then becomes private again.
5.3 You may withdraw consent for other uses by contacting us; some withdrawals may prevent you from selling (for example a verified phone is required to sell).
6. Who receives your information
When you buy, the seller of your order sees your name and your ship-to address for their own sale, inside their authenticated seller dashboard, in order to prepare and ship that order. Apart from that, we share personal information only with the service providers needed to run the Platform:
| Provider | Role | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Web hosting of the site and database | All data stored by the site |
| Stripe | Marketplace payment processing (Stripe Connect Direct Charges on the seller’s connected account) and subscription billing (Checkout and Portal pages hosted on stripe.com; no Stripe script embedded in our pages today ) | Buyer email, plan and payment details entered directly on Stripe; seller identity and bank information collected directly by Stripe during Connect onboarding (never seen or stored by APN); card data never reaches APN |
| Twilio Verify | Phone number verification (server-to-server call from our site; no Twilio script in your browser) | Phone number, verification code delivery |
| Canada Post | Shipping rate computation | Origin and destination postal codes for rate quotes |
The site runs on WordPress and WooCommerce with plugins including Polylang (languages), LiteSpeed Cache (caching) and Rank Math (SEO). These are software components of the site, not recipients of your data. We do not use analytics or advertising vendors at this time. We do not sell personal information.
Some providers may process data outside Québec and Canada.
We may disclose information when required by law or to protect the rights and safety of users and of ELECTROFIABLE inc.
7. Cookies
7.1 What is active today. The site only uses technologies that are strictly necessary to provide the service you request:
| Technology | Purpose | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress login and session cookies | Keep you signed in; security (nonces) | WordPress (site software) |
| WooCommerce session and cart cookies | Maintain your session and cart while you use the site | WooCommerce (site software) |
| Language cookie | Remember whether you use the English or French version | Polylang (site software) |
| Cache “vary” cookie | Serve the correct cached version of a page (for example logged-in vs anonymous, language) | LiteSpeed Cache (site software) |
None of these is used to track you across sites or to build a profile.
7.1a Browser geolocation. On a part page, the site can ask your browser for your location in order to show your distance from a seller. Your browser displays an explicit permission prompt, and no location is accessed unless you accept it.
7.2 What is not on our pages. Stripe Checkout and Portal are hosted on stripe.com; when you subscribe you leave our pages and Stripe’s own cookie practices apply there — no Stripe script is embedded in our pages today. Twilio Verify is called from our server; no Twilio script runs in your browser. Our hosting provider (Hostinger) keeps server logs (section 2.8).
7.3 No analytics, no advertising, no banner. We do not use analytics, advertising, behavioural tracking, marketing pixels, embedded third-party content or third-party chat at this time. Because only strictly necessary technologies are active, no cookie consent banner is displayed today; this is the sole reason there is none.
7.4 Before anything changes. Before any future activation of analytics, advertising, behavioural tracking, marketing pixels, embedded third-party content or third-party chat, we will carry out a privacy and consent review and deploy a consent banner before activation, and we will update this section.
8. Retention
- Account and seller profile data: kept while your account is active; after you close your account, it is deleted or anonymized within a reasonable period, except where a longer retention is required by applicable law.
- Acceptance ledger entries (Marketplace Terms, Privacy notice, Seller Terms, accuracy attestations) and return policy versions: kept, as an append-only record, for as long as needed to evidence your commitments and to meet applicable legal retention requirements.
- Billing references and subscription events: kept for the period required by applicable accounting and tax law.
- Order and vendor-order records, and messaging content: kept for as long as needed to operate and evidence the transaction and to meet applicable legal and accounting retention requirements.
- Phone verification records: kept while the number is on your profile; a limited verification history is kept afterward as a security and anti-abuse record.
- Server logs: kept on a rolling basis for up to approximately 90 days, then deleted, except a specific log that must be kept longer for a security or legal reason.
- Offer content and photos: kept while the offer exists (including while archived), and for a reasonable period afterward, subject to applicable law.
9. Your rights
Subject to applicable law (Québec Law 25 and PIPEDA — ), you may: access the personal information we hold about you; ask for correction; withdraw consent; request deletion or anonymization where the law allows; ask for a copy of information you provided in a structured format where applicable; and lodge a complaint with the competent privacy authority. Requests: see section 12. We may need to verify your identity before answering.
10. Security
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the information (access control, encrypted connections, card payments processed by Stripe so that no card data is stored by APN, private storage of uploaded photos). In case of a confidentiality incident presenting a risk of serious injury, we will notify the persons and authorities required by law.
11. Changes to this policy
Each version of this policy carries a whole-number version and a date; the first production version is version 1. The version number changes only on a material change (for example a new purpose, a new recipient, a new technology under section 7); a purely editorial change does not change the version and only updates the “last updated” date. On a material change we announce it on the Platform and ask you to acknowledge the new version at your next login or action; each acknowledgement is recorded with the exact version, and the text of every published version is archived unchanged. The French and English versions have the same structure and version.
12. Contact
ELECTROFIABLE inc. — 123 Rue Jacob, Repentigny (Québec) J5Z 4S9, Canada — Privacy requests: info@appliancepartsnorth.ca — Person in charge of the protection of personal information: the Privacy Officer of ELECTROFIABLE inc. See also the Contact page.