Privacy Policy
Texas Forever Charters · Lake Travis · Austin, Texas
This policy explains what information we collect from you, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We've kept it in plain language. If anything's unclear, email us at tx4evercharters@gmail.com or call (737) 368-1669 — we'd rather have a real conversation than confuse you with legal jargon.
Who We Are
Texas Forever Charters is a family-owned captained boat charter business operating exclusively on Lake Travis, Austin, Texas. Charters depart from Volente Beach Waterpark & Resort. We're not a national platform or a franchise — bookings, customer support, and operations are all handled directly by the owners (DJ and Dane).
Reach us at tx4evercharters@gmail.com or (737) 368-1669.
Age Requirement
The booking organizer must be 21 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. See "Children's Privacy" below for more.
Information We Collect
We collect different types of information depending on how you interact with us. We only collect what we need to operate the charter business.
Booking information. When you book a charter, we collect your name, email address, phone number, city, state, party size, special requests, charter date and time, and which vessel you selected.
Payment information. All payments are processed by Stripe. We never store credit card numbers, CVV codes, or full card data on our servers. We receive only a Stripe customer ID and payment metadata (amount, payment status, last-4 of card for display) — enough to reconcile your booking and refund you if needed.
Liability waiver information. Every guest must sign a digital liability waiver before boarding. The waiver collects: date of birth, age (computed from DOB), emergency contact name and phone, your digital signature, IP address, and user agent at the time of signing. This information is collected solely for legal compliance — to confirm the waiver was signed by an adult, by you, on the date claimed.
Marketing information. If you subscribe to our newsletter, we store your email address with our newsletter provider (Mailchimp). If you opt in to SMS alerts in the future, we'd store your phone number for that purpose. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any marketing email.
Technical information. Our website uses Google Analytics to track anonymized traffic — page views, device type, general geographic location (city/region, not precise), and which site referred you. This data does not personally identify you.
Chatbot interactions. If you chat with our AI assistant on the homepage, your messages are sent to Anthropic's API to generate a response. We don't store these conversations long-term — they exist briefly in server memory while the response is being generated, then they're gone. We don't use chatbot conversations for marketing or training.
How We Use Information
- To process and confirm your charter booking.
- To send you transactional emails: booking confirmation, reminder before your charter, balance-due reminders, the waiver link, post-charter feedback request.
- To send marketing emails only to customers who explicitly subscribed. We don't add you to a marketing list because you booked a charter.
- To comply with Texas state law and federal regulations (sales tax filings, liability documentation).
- To improve how we run our business — what's working, what's not, where we can do better.
Third-Party Services We Use
To operate the website and the charter business, we rely on a small set of trusted vendors. Each one only sees the data they need to do their job:
- Stripe — processes credit card payments and damage deposit holds.
- Supabase — stores our customer database, bookings, and signed waivers.
- Vercel — hosts this website and runs our backend functions.
- Mailchimp — delivers newsletter and marketing emails to subscribers.
- Resend — delivers transactional emails (booking confirmations, reminders, feedback requests).
- Anthropic — powers the AI chatbot on the homepage.
- Google Analytics — provides anonymized website traffic analytics.
Data Sharing
We do not sell your personal information to third parties under any circumstances. Personal data is shared only with the vendors listed above, and only as much as each one needs to do its job. We don't share data with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing networks.
We may disclose information if required by law (court order, subpoena, regulatory request) — and only to the extent required.
Data Retention
- Booking and payment records — retained for 7 years for tax, accounting, and legal purposes (per IRS and Texas state requirements).
- Liability waivers — retained indefinitely for legal protection. A waiver's whole purpose is the future-proof record.
- Marketing email subscribers — retained until you unsubscribe.
- Analytics data — retained per Google Analytics defaults (typically 14–26 months).
Your Rights
You have the following rights regarding your personal information:
- Right to access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Right to correction — request that we fix inaccurate data.
- Right to deletion — request that we delete your data, subject to the legal retention requirements above (we cannot, for example, delete a waiver that still applies to a recent charter).
- Right to opt out of marketing — unsubscribe from any marketing email or ask us to remove you from the list at any time.
- California residents — you have the additional right to know what specific data we have about you, the right to request deletion (subject to the same legal retention), and we confirm we do not sell your data to third parties.
To exercise any of these rights, email tx4evercharters@gmail.com. We'll respond personally — usually within a few days.
Cookies
We use a minimal set of cookies — some required for the site to function (e.g., remembering your booking-in-progress state across page reloads) and some for Google Analytics. You can disable cookies in your browser settings; some features (like resuming an in-progress booking after returning from the payment page) may not work properly if cookies are disabled.
Security
We use industry-standard security measures: HTTPS encryption everywhere, payment processing by Stripe (PCI-DSS compliant), database encryption at rest via Supabase, and limited access to customer data — only the owners can read the database. That said, no method of online transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.
If we ever experience a data breach affecting your personal information, we'll notify affected customers as soon as we reasonably can and as required by law.
Children's Privacy
Our service is for adults — booking organizers must be 21 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn we've collected personal data from a child under 18 (other than what's necessary for a parent-signed waiver), we will delete it. Parents who believe their child has submitted information should email us immediately at tx4evercharters@gmail.com.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time as our business or applicable laws change. Material changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date below. We won't quietly change how we use your data — anything significant gets called out clearly.
