Terms, privacy and cancellation

Who we are

Zoe Smith provides the Needle in the Sand research service described below.

You can contact Zoe Smith about the service, your privacy or a cancellation at hello@needleinthesand.co.uk or 07879990111. Business address: 5 Norham Court, Peterborough, PE2 8UX.

What you are buying

Full Holiday Research is a £29 one-off research service. There is no subscription and no further charge.

• Independent research into destinations, areas and specific properties against the brief you give us.
• A ranked shortlist explaining why each option is placed where it is.
• Evidence-backed strengths, limitations and trade-offs attributed to the sources we used.
• The sources we relied on, and an honest list of what we could not confirm.
• A written report that is yours to keep.

What we are not

We are not a travel agent or tour operator. We do not book, hold or reserve anything for you, and paid placement does not determine recommendation order. Relevant commercial relationships are disclosed. You book directly with the provider you choose, on their terms.

The £29 one-off tier does not promise live bookable prices or live availability. Prices and availability we mention are research findings at the time we looked.

Your part

Our research is only as good as the brief. Please give accurate travel dates, traveller details, budget and preferences, and tell us promptly if anything changes.

Delivery

We aim to deliver orders completed between 09:00 and 18:00 on a working day within one working hour. Orders completed outside those hours enter the next working-day queue. If research needs longer, we will contact you.

This is an aim, not a guarantee.

Our standard of service

We will carry out the research with reasonable care and skill. Nothing in these terms removes or limits your statutory rights under consumer law.

Third-party information

Information from providers, review sites and other third parties can change at any time and can be wrong. Before you book, please recheck price and availability, and check passport, visa, health, insurance, accessibility and provider terms for your own circumstances.

If something goes wrong

Please tell us at hello@needleinthesand.co.uk and describe what happened. We will look into it and reply. Your statutory remedies for a service that is not carried out with reasonable care and skill are unaffected.

Cancellation

You normally have 14 days to cancel a service bought online. The Cancellation Information page explains how this works, including what happens if you ask us to start straight away.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring a claim in the courts that apply where you live in the United Kingdom, and nothing here removes mandatory consumer rights.

Who is responsible

Zoe Smith is responsible for the personal information described in this notice.

You can contact Zoe Smith about the service, your privacy or a cancellation at hello@needleinthesand.co.uk or 07879990111. Business address: 5 Norham Court, Peterborough, PE2 8UX.

What we collect

We collect only what the research needs.

• Your name, email address and account sign-in details.
• Traveller labels, ages and dates of birth where you give them.
• Travel dates, departure point, budget, preferences, accessibility needs, free-text notes and the review topics that matter to you.
• Your shortlist choices, any prices you enter yourself, and feedback you send us.
• Payment and entitlement records from Stripe. We never see or store full card details.
• Service and security records, such as sign-in events and error logs.
• The research sources we find and the results we produce for you.

Accounts and travellers

Accounts are for adults. An adult may provide limited details about child travellers where those details affect the research, such as an age or a date of birth for room or ticket suitability.

Why we use it, and our lawful bases

We state these cautiously and only for what we actually do.

• Steps you request before a contract, such as preparing a brief or a free direction summary.
• Performing the research contract you have paid for.
• Complying with legal obligations, for example tax and accounting records.
• Our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure and improving it, balanced against your interests.
• Consent, used only for optional things such as publishing a testimonial. You can withdraw it at any time.

Automated assistance

We use automated tools and AI models to help gather, organise and assess holiday research against your brief. A report is released automatically only when fixed evidence, completeness and safety checks all pass; otherwise it is held for human review. These tools do not make a decision about you that has legal or similarly significant effects. You decide whether to act, and we never book anything for you.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of suppliers to run the service.

• Supabase — database, sign-in and file storage.
• Stripe — payment processing and entitlement.
• Resend — sending service emails.
• Lovable — hosting, aggregate analytics and the AI gateway.
• Google Gemini, accessed through that gateway — research assistance.
• Brave Search — web search for research sources.
• Holiday-provider websites — the hotel, departure airport, dates, duration, party size and child ages needed for public availability searches. These requests do not include your name, contact details, Needle account or brief identifiers, or your budget; budget comparison stays internal.

We do not sell your data

We do not sell personal data. Relevant commercial relationships are disclosed and do not determine recommendation order.

Storage on your device

We use strictly necessary storage to keep you signed in and to save your brief as you work on it.

We do not use advertising cookies or optional customer-behaviour analytics. We use only storage needed for sign-in, security and saving a brief, plus aggregate operational hosting information from Lovable. We will give notice and obtain consent where required before introducing optional analytics.

How long we keep it

We keep an active account and its briefs while the account remains open. Completed research and routine correspondence are normally kept for 24 months. Order, payment, consent, cancellation and refund records are kept for six years after the end of the relevant tax year. Security and delivery logs are normally kept for up to 12 months. We delete or anonymise information sooner where it is no longer needed, unless the law requires us to retain it.

International transfers

Our main database is hosted by Supabase in the European Union. Stripe, Resend, Lovable, Google and Brave may process information in the UK, European Economic Area or other countries, including the United States. Where information leaves the UK, we rely on an applicable UK adequacy regulation or contractual safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct or delete it, object to or restrict some uses, ask for portability, and withdraw any consent you gave.

Email hello@needleinthesand.co.uk and we will help. If you are unhappy with how we handle it, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

Your 14-day right

You have 14 days from the day the contract is made to cancel this service, without giving a reason.

How to cancel

Email hello@needleinthesand.co.uk with a clear statement that you are cancelling, and your order reference. You can use the model form below, but you do not have to. Sending your cancellation before the 14 days end is enough.

If you cancel before we start

You get a full refund of the £29.

If you asked us to start immediately

If you expressly asked us to begin during the 14-day period and you then cancel while the research is part-way through, you may have to pay a proportionate amount for the work already supplied. We will explain that amount before we charge it.

Once the service is fully performed

If you expressly asked us to start immediately, acknowledged that you would lose the right to cancel on full performance, and we have delivered the completed research, the 14-day right no longer applies.

Your statutory rights

None of this affects your statutory rights if the service is not carried out with reasonable care and skill.