Privacy Policy
Merv is a field-operations app for HVAC contractors. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and how to get it deleted. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
1. Who we are
Merv is built and operated by Roman Semchuk, based in the United States. For anything in this policy, including access and deletion requests, write to privacy@mervhvac.com.
Merv is in beta. It is being trialled with a small number of contractors. Features described here may change, and this policy will be updated when they do.
2. Two kinds of people this policy covers
Contractors and their staff — the people who create a Merv account and use the app. We are responsible for their account data.
The contractor's own customers — homeowners and businesses whose name, address, phone and email a contractor types into Merv so they can service them. The contracting company decides what to enter and why; we only store and process it on their instructions. In data-protection terms the contractor is the controller and Merv is the processor. If you are a homeowner asking about your own details, contact the contractor who serviced you — they can correct or delete your record directly, and we will help them do it.
3. What we collect
Account information
Email address, name, optional phone number, your role (manager or technician) and the company you belong to. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes by our authentication provider — we never see them.
Business data you enter
Customers (name, service address, phone, email), jobs and their schedules, equipment records, your price catalog, estimates, invoices, checklists, activity history, and company settings including a logo you upload.
Photos
Job photos and equipment nameplate photos you take or select, along with any captions you add. They are stored in private buckets that are not publicly readable; the app fetches short-lived signed links at the moment it displays them.
Approximate location — weather only
If you grant location permission, the app reads your device's coordinates while the app is open and sends them to Open-Meteo to show local weather on the home screen. We do not store your location, and we do not track your movements or your route. Declining the permission simply hides the weather card; everything else works normally. Merv has no background location tracking of any kind.
Diagnostics
If the app crashes, a crash report is sent to Sentry containing the error, the device model and the OS version so we can fix it.
Anti-abuse
Sign-in, sign-up and password-reset screens run a Cloudflare Turnstile check to block automated attacks. Cloudflare receives the information needed to make that assessment.
What we do not collect
- No advertising identifiers, and no advertising at all.
- No third-party analytics or behavioural tracking.
- No background or continuous location.
- No contacts, calendar, microphone or SMS content. When you send a customer an "on my way" text, it opens your phone's own messaging app with the text pre-filled — you press send, and we never see the message.
- We do not sell data. We never have and there is no plan to.
4. How we use it
- To run the app: showing your jobs, customers, estimates and photos to the right people in your company.
- To authenticate you and keep one company's data separate from another's.
- To generate the documents you ask for — customer proposals and invoices.
- To send email you have asked for: account confirmation, password reset, and backup copies if you switch them on.
- To generate AI suggestions when you use an AI feature (see below).
- To fix crashes and keep the service secure.
We do not use your business data for marketing, and we do not profile you.
5. AI features
Merv has optional AI features that help build an estimate, read a supplier price sheet, draft a checklist, or transcribe a paper checklist. When you use one, the relevant content is sent to Anthropic (the makers of Claude) to generate a suggestion — that can include the job description, your price catalog, and any photo or PDF you attach to the AI dialog.
Anthropic processes this to return a result and, under its commercial API terms, does not use it to train its models. AI features are only triggered by an explicit tap — nothing is sent to a model in the background. Suggestions are always yours to accept, edit or reject before anything is saved.
6. Who we share it with
We use a small set of service providers. Each one only receives what it needs to do its job.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, authentication, file storage | All account, business and photo data |
| Anthropic | AI suggestions | Content you submit to an AI feature |
| Sentry | Crash reporting | Crash details, device model, OS version |
| Resend | Backup and report email | The recipient address and the attached backup |
| Cloudflare | Bot protection, website hosting | Anti-abuse signals on auth screens |
| Open-Meteo | Weather | Approximate coordinates, no identity attached |
| Expo / Google Play | App build and distribution | Standard install and crash telemetry |
We will also disclose data if the law genuinely requires it, and we would tell you unless we are forbidden to.
7. Where data is stored
Data is hosted on Supabase's cloud infrastructure. Some of the providers above process data in the United States and other countries, so your data may be transferred outside the country where you live.
8. How long we keep it — and what deletion really means
Your business data stays until you delete it or delete your account. When you delete your account, we do exactly what the account deletion page describes. Three retentions survive that deletion, and we would rather state them plainly than bury them:
a. An anonymized membership record is kept
Your login is deleted outright. The record of your membership in the company is anonymized in place rather than removed: the name becomes a non-identifying label such as Former technician #2B43, and the phone number and the link to your login are erased. This is because jobs, estimates, invoices and photos reference who did the work — deleting the record would rewrite the company's business and tax history, including the name on an invoice a customer has already received. The anonymized record contains no personal information about you.
b. Backups keep data for up to 90 days
We take an automatic nightly backup so a company can recover from a mistake or an outage. A deleted account's or company's data therefore remains inside encrypted backup copies for up to 90 days, after which those copies are automatically deleted. Backups are only ever read to restore data.
If your company switched on emailed backup copies, any copy already sent is in a mailbox we do not control and cannot retrieve.
c. Photos
Photos live in private Supabase Storage and nowhere else. Deleting a photo in the app moves it to a trash area for 30 days, then it is permanently removed. Deleting a company removes its photo files outright.
9. Your rights
- Access — everything about you is visible in the app; managers can export the company's full data set from the Company screen.
- Correction — edit it in the app, or write to us.
- Deletion — in the app under Profile → Delete account, or by email. See Delete your account.
- Portability — the export produces JSON and CSV files you can keep or take elsewhere.
- Objection and complaint — write to us first; if you are in a region with a data-protection authority, you may also complain to it.
We answer requests within 30 days. We may need to confirm you control the email address on the account before acting on one.
10. Security
- Traffic is encrypted in transit; data is encrypted at rest by our hosting provider.
- Every company's data is isolated at the database level, so one company cannot read another's.
- Technicians see the jobs assigned to them; managers see the whole company. Price lists and financial figures can be hidden from technicians by a manager.
- Photo files are private and only reachable through short-lived signed links.
- Automated attacks on sign-in and password reset are blocked by a challenge.
No system is perfect. If you find a security problem, please write to privacy@mervhvac.com — we would much rather hear it from you.
11. Children
Merv is a tool for working tradespeople. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
12. Changes
If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and, for anything significant, tell account holders by email.