Privacy policy

Who operates Fixonic

Groovy Digital Ltd trading as Fixonic operates this website and is the retailer for products explicitly sold by Fixonic.

Registered in England and Wales. Company number: 17174752.

Registered office: 64 Avon Street, Birmingham, B11 4SE, United Kingdom.

Contact: support@fixonic.co.uk.

Information we collect

We collect account and contact details, listings and images you submit, repair questions and answers, article contributions, votes, followed discussions and private community reports, supplier-application and business details, inventory and product-evidence records, saved items, searches, bids, buyer–seller messages, order and delivery records, support requests, device push tokens, security logs and limited marketplace-usage events. Delivery records can include carrier tracking events and, where a carrier provides them, proof-of-delivery details such as the recorded delivery location, safe-place or doorstep photo, recipient or signer information and delivery time. For delivery estimates we also process a seller's private dispatch postcode and a buyer's chosen destination postcode. We issue a random website or app-install identifier and process limited network information for security and fraud prevention. Payment details are entered with Stripe or PayPal and are not stored by Fixonic, although we receive payment references, outcomes and risk information needed to operate the order.

How we use information

We use this information to operate accounts, listings, auctions, checkout, payouts, fulfilment, alerts, fraud prevention, support and marketplace moderation; to meet legal obligations; and to improve marketplace reliability. Carrier proof-of-delivery evidence is used to show the buyer delivery information and to help authorised Fixonic staff investigate non-delivery claims, refunds, disputes and suspected fraud. Delivery-proof media is kept private rather than published as listing media. We do not sell personal information.

Listing text is automatically checked before publication for prohibited offers such as presales, digital codes or accounts, off-platform contact and payment requests, counterfeit or blacklisted goods, lock bypasses and unsafe batteries. Compliant listings publish immediately; clear matches are blocked without entering a manual queue.

Every buyer–seller message is automatically checked for references to off-platform payment. A match warns both participants and creates a moderation alert. A listing enters human review only when a user submits a report. Moderators may review the reported listing, relevant messages and account history to prevent scams and enforce the marketplace rules.

A seller's full dispatch postcode and coordinates are not shown publicly. Buyers see only a coarse area or outward code and rounded straight-line mileage. A buyer's postcode preference is stored in the website session or protected app storage and is included in an order's private delivery record at checkout. It is not shown to a seller before verified payment.

Repair Hub questions, answers, votes and accepted solutions are used to operate the public repair knowledge base. Automated rules block obvious scams, private contact, account or activation-lock bypass requests and other prohibited content before publication. Safety-related words may add a prominent caution rather than suppress legitimate diagnostic discussion. A private report enters the staff review queue but does not automatically remove the contribution.

Repair Workbench projects—including the selected device and fault, symptoms, private notes, checklist state, planned parts and owned tools—are visible only to the account owner and authorised Fixonic staff who need access to operate or support the service. Public marketplace listings do not expose those private project notes.

Cookies, local storage and personalisation

Fixonic separates browser storage into necessary and optional purposes. Necessary storage is used for authentication, security, checkout, saved privacy choices, theme or interface preferences and other functions required to provide the service. Necessary storage cannot be switched off through the optional-consent control because the marketplace would not work reliably without it.

Personalisation is optional. If you choose it, Fixonic may use first-party browsing signals such as viewed listings, recommendation impressions, searches and filters to improve your SignalGraph recommendations. Fixonic may also combine permitted search activity into aggregate demand signals to decide which missing repair parts or tools are worth sourcing for the catalogue; the aggregate demand record stores counts and scores rather than the individual user or session identifiers used to calculate them. If you reject or later disable personalisation, browser recommendation telemetry is not recorded and the web marketplace falls back to non-personalised discovery sections. Core records created because you deliberately save, bid, buy, sell or open a repair project remain part of providing those services.

Analytics is optional. If you choose it, Fixonic may record first-party journey events such as starting a listing, opening a guide or entering checkout so we can measure whether features work. Optional analytics is blocked in the browser and checked again on the server when consent is not present. Fixonic does not require a third-party advertising identifier for this measurement.

Your optional choices are stored in the necessary fixonic_consent_v1 preference cookie for up to 180 days. You can accept all optional purposes, reject them, choose them separately and change the choice later using Cookie settings in the site footer. Native clients can also send an explicit personalisation or analytics opt-out to the API.

See the Cookie Policy for cookie names, purposes, typical retention periods and the controls for changing optional choices.

Fixonic Shield profiling and fraud prevention

Fixonic Shield uses first-party account, device, network, transaction, listing, bidding, reservation, payment-attempt, dispute, refund, messaging and confirmed policy-enforcement activity to detect fraud and coordinated abuse. It can compare activity with Fixonic's internal risk list and identify linked accounts. We do not claim access to private industry or law-enforcement blacklists unless a lawful, documented data-sharing arrangement is in place.

Risk identifiers such as email, phone, device, network, delivery address and payment or payout references are normalised and converted into keyed one-way fingerprints before they are stored in the Shield identity graph. Staff normally see only a masked hint, reason code, score and supporting Fixonic activity—not the raw identifier in the risk tables. The secret key remains server-side. This reduces exposure but does not make the underlying activity anonymous where other operational records must lawfully be retained.

When Fixonic objectively records an original auction winner failing to pay, or a seller failing to dispatch a paid marketplace sale after the applicable deadline and grace period, Shield may place the account's recent exact network-address fingerprint on a temporary block list. The automatic rule does not add a whole subnet or carrier/VPN range. At the current policy settings the periods normally progress from 30 to 90 to 270 days for repeated confirmed events and are capped at 365 days. An expired entry stops matching automatically, and a block associated with a waived or corrected buyer non-payment record is revoked. Staff can also revoke an erroneous risk-list entry.

The assessment can allow an action, monitor it, or temporarily hold or block a high-risk action. It does not use race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or another protected characteristic. A flag is not automatically a policy strike or permanent ban. Where a decision has a significant effect, you can use the Fixonic Shield review centre to request meaningful human review, explain relevant circumstances and challenge inaccurate data. Staff can approve the activity, correct a false positive or uphold a restriction with a recorded reason.

Sharing and processors

Information is shared only as needed with the other party to a transaction, authorised Fixonic staff, and service providers that host the app, deliver email or notifications, store media, monitor errors, resolve UK postcodes, process payments, or fulfil a clearly disclosed supplier-direct order. A fulfilment provider receives only the delivery and order information needed to send that purchase. UK postcode lookup uses Postcodes.io without an account or paid API key. We may disclose information where law requires it or to protect users and the marketplace.

Retention

Profile, preference and saved-item data is removed or anonymised when an account deletion completes. Public repair questions and answers may remain under an anonymised account so discussions and accepted solutions still make sense. Orders, payment evidence, disputes, tax records, safety reports, moderation records and fraud-prevention records may be retained for the period required to complete transactions, resolve claims, prevent repeat abuse and comply with law. Risk-list entries can expire or be revoked, and false-positive decisions are recorded so the same signal can be treated appropriately in later assessments. Temporary exact-network-address block entries stop applying at their configured expiry even where the underlying abuse event is retained for legitimate fraud-prevention or transaction-record purposes. We minimise or anonymise retained records where possible. Tax and accounting records are normally retained for six years after the end of the company financial year they relate to, or longer where a legal requirement, active investigation or unresolved claim requires it. Other transaction, support, safety and fraud records are assessed according to the open issue, the applicable claim or appeal period and whether identifying information is still necessary. You can request a review of the data we retain by contacting our privacy address below.

Your choices and rights

You can change optional cookie and personalisation choices at any time using Cookie settings in the website footer. You can also change notification settings, block users, report content, request a human review of a Shield decision and request account deletion in the app. You can request deletion on the web from the account deletion page. Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, restrict or object to use of your information, or complain to a data-protection authority.

Security, transfers and children

We use access controls, encrypted transport and operational monitoring designed to protect data. No service can guarantee absolute security. Service providers may process information outside your country under appropriate safeguards. Fixonic marketplace accounts are for people aged 18 or over.

Contact and changes

Contact privacy@fixonic.co.uk with a privacy or data-rights request. We will post material policy changes here and update the effective date.