Budget Ireland Privacy Policy 

Notice Last Updated:  March 2021

Welcome to the Privacy Notice of Avis Budget operating within the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as independent licensees under license from Avis Budget Group, Inc. 

Please take the time to read this Privacy Notice as it is important for you to know how we collect and use your personal information. By "personal information" we mean all information that relates to a living individual and either identifies, or may be used to identify, that individual.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the use of your personal information by any locations not owned nor controlled by Avis Budget Ireland, please contact Avis Budget Group, Inc. at DPO@abg.com.

Avis Budget Ireland may change portions of this Privacy Notice from time to time, so be sure to check back. If we make a change that significantly affects your rights or, to the extent we are permitted to do so, significantly changes how we use your personal information, we will notify you by way of a prominent posting on our websites, e-mail and/or postal mail prior to the change becoming effective.

Please select any of the following hyperlinks to learn about the ways we collect, use, share and disclose personal information:


Getting Started

Avis Budget Ireland wants you to feel comfortable about giving us access to your personal information. Use this Privacy Notice to find out what happens to your personal information when you interact with Avis Budget Ireland and what choices you have.

This Privacy Notice covers the personal information that Avis Budget Ireland collect, use and disclose through your use of our products and services either online or offline.

Avis Budget Ireland needs to collect personal information from you to rent a vehicle or provide our other services. We collect personal information when you give it to us, such as by telephone, fax, postal mail, email, live chat, at the counter, upon completion of an application or enrolment form, joining our loyalty scheme or through your use of our websites or mobile Apps or the use of our products and services.

Please be aware that, in certain circumstances, where you do not provide personal information which is required by us, we will not be able to provide the products and services under our contract with you or may not be able to comply with a legal obligation on us. For example, when renting a vehicle with us we will require information such as your name, address, payment information and driver's licence. If you fail to provide this information to us we will be unable to rent a vehicle to you. You will be made aware if this situation arises and what the consequences of not providing the personal information will be.

Sometimes, we will combine the personal information we receive from you with other information we received from other sources so we can provide you a more customised and hassle-free experience. This information may include your name, contact information, travel itinerary, booking request and other information that is relevant to your booking. These third parties include:

  • Travel agents or a third-party booking service that you used to make your reservation;
  • Your employer or association if you are using a corporate / association account;
  • Avis Budget Group, Inc.
  • Insurance Companies
  • Police and other law enforcement agencies if you are involved in an accident during your rental, or suffer any loss, damage or theft of the vehicle, or if you incur any speeding, parking, toll or other traffic-related fines or commit any traffic offences during your rental.

The purposes for which we use this information is set out in further detail in the rest of this Privacy Notice. There are a number of bases in data protection law that permit us to use your personal information for these purposes. These are: (1) that you have provided your consent to us using your personal information for that purpose (e.g. where you have given us your consent to send you electronic marketing); (2) that we need to use that personal information in order to fulfil our contract to provide products or services to you (e.g. using your information for vehicle rentals or joining our loyalty programme); (3) that the processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, provided we have balanced these against your rights and interests; and (4) where we need to comply with a legal obligation (e.g. responding to government or law enforcement information requests).

These legitimate interests are: (a) to ensure effective administration and management of your relationship with us, including any rentals with us; (b) to understand how our customers use our services and to manage our vehicle fleet; (c) to carry out research and analysis on what services or products our customers want or how they would like us to improve our services and products; (d) to understand how our customers use our websites and Apps and identify any issues in how the websites and Apps are used and how we can improve the customers usage experience; (e) to tell our customers about the various products and services we can offer; (f) understand and respond to customer feedback; (g) to better tailor and personalise the promotions and benefits that we offer to our customers; (h) to prevent, detect, or investigate unauthorised use of our vehicles and systems and ensure we comply with law and our policies; and (i) manage any disputes and accidents and take legal or other professional advice.

We will collect technical information about your devices when you use our websites and Apps where permitted. To learn about our online data collection, go to the Online Data section.


Renting A Vehicle

When you make a reservation, rent a vehicle or join a program such as a corporate programme, we collect information to provide you with our great services (for example, renting a vehicle, including performing the vehicle rental contract, providing any requested optional extras, taking payment, pre-authorisations and security deposits and providing discounts and offers or other benefits) and for our legitimate business interests (for example research and development of new products and services, undertaking fraud and security checks and enforcing our legal rights). The information we collect includes:

  • name;
  • email address (if you are booking online or wish to receive e-receipts);
  • home address (for license validation and billing);
  • employer details and business address (if you are a member of a corporate program);
  • telephone numbers at which we can reach you;
  • date of birth (for license validation and legal requirements);
  • gender (for license validation);
  • payment information such as your credit or debit card details
  • tax number (if specifically requested);
  • information from driver's licence and/or other government issued identification, including if you are an additional driver for the specific rental (for license validation and legal requirements);
  • information from another form of identification documentation such as passport or national identity card if your driver's licence does not include a photo or is not recognisable as you and/or proof of address such as a utility bill (for security and anti-fraud purposes). The information we collect and retain will only include your photo ID where you are informed of this;
  • special discount codes, partner member numbers, association memberships, corporate rewards programs (if you request discounts, special privileges and points programs);
  • special requests and preferences, including:
    • your preferences regarding optional extras such as damage waivers and other protections;
    • where a delivery or collection service is available, the address where we will drop off or pick-up the vehicle and any optional extras you requested; and
  • other information that may be required to rent you a vehicle and/or provide you with services.

If you have an accident, or suffer any loss, theft or damage to the vehicle during your rental or suffer any mechanical failure, we will collect information regarding such incident including your report of the incident and any police or other third party report including details of those involved, together with the nature of any personal injuries and/or damage to the vehicle and optional extras. We will use this information to perform our contract with you (for example, the vehicle rental agreement and/or the terms of any optional extra like insurance); for our legitimate business interests (for example, in recovering the costs of any loss or damage caused to the vehicle); for complying with any legal obligation on us (for example, making any required notification of the incident to appropriate authorities); and establishing, exercising or defending legal claims arising as a result of such incident. We may share this information with the relevant insurance companies.

During your rental we will collect where and when you rented the vehicle, where and when you returned the vehicle, insurance preferences, fuel consumption, mileage, accident history and other information related to the vehicle and your use of it. This information is required in order to provide you with the services you requested under the rental contract or for our legitimate business interests (for example to monitor the usage of our vehicle fleet).

In addition to the purposes listed above, we use this information to better understand our customers and provide you with relevant offers.

We will also collect information about any speeding, parking, toll or other traffic-related fines that you incur or any traffic offences that you commit during your rental where these are provided to us by any law enforcement agency. We will use this information to deal with such fine or offence in accordance with the terms of your vehicle rental agreement with us.

Where you inform us that you have a medical disability that requires an adapted vehicle or other driver aid we will use that information in order to provide you with the service you requested and where you have given your explicit consent to us using that information.

When you call us (from any phone), we may record or monitor the call for quality control, training or similar purposes.

When you purchase a gift certificate or voucher, we collect the name and mailing address of the gift recipient in order to fulfil your order. We will only use this information for the specific reason for which it is provided. If you believe that one of your contacts has provided us with your personal information and you would like to request that it be removed from our database, please contact us at the details set out in the Data Controllers And Contact Details section below.


Insurance Products

If you have requested any of the insurance products that we offer during your rental, such as Personal Accident Insurance we will pass your personal information to the insurer which is underwriting that product for the purpose of you entering into a contract with that insurer for that product. The name of the insurer will be made available to you when you are requesting the relevant product.

In the event that you make any claim under one of these insurance products, your personal information relating to the claim will be provided to the insurer and any appointed claims handler. We do this to fulfil the terms of our agreement with you and to establish, exercise or defend any associated legal claims.

The use of your personal information by that insurer will be subject to the terms of that insurer's privacy notice.


Photos & Video

Where indicated by signage at the relevant location, our rental locations are also equipped with video security surveillance systems as well as cameras that record as our vehicles depart/enter our lots.


Online Data

When you download, visit and use our websites and/or Apps, we automatically collect technical information. This section tells you more about what technical information we collect and why we collect it.

IP Addresses & other information collected automatically: We may collect your IP address when you visit our websites to help us diagnose problems with our main computers, for system administration, to report aggregated information to our business partners, and to audit the use of our website. We do not normally link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. In select circumstances, we may use IP addresses to help us identify you when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our Website Terms and Conditions or to protect our service, site, users or others. We may also collect your browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/ or clickstream data to analyse trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

Session Replay: When you visit our website, we will sometimes also record information about your browsing session on the site, including which pages you visited and any forms on the website that you completed. We review this information to identify any technical issues in the operation of our sites and to improve the user interface of our sites. We use a third party to help us with this service and this information will be passed to that third party for this purpose but this information is not disclosed to any other third party.

Cookies & other similar technologies: Please refer to the Cookie Policy which you will find hyperlinked in the footer section on each of our websites.

Mobile Analytics: When you download and use our Apps, we use mobile analytics software to help us better understand the functionality of our App on your mobile device. Our analytics may record how often you use the App, how you use the App, aggregated usage, performance data and where you downloaded the App from. To read more about how we use information for research please see the Analytics section.

Mobile GPS and Push Notifications: If you let us, when you use our Apps we may collect location markers using the GPS in your device. Knowing approximately where you are helps the App provide you better service, such as finding the nearest rental location near you. This also helps us send you push notifications or other communications based on your location (for example, nearby special offers) and for providing certain services such as arrival and return notifications, providing information about vehicle location, available upgrades, etc. We will only share this information with our mapping provider for the purpose of providing you our services. To ensure you receive proper notifications, we will need to collect certain information about your device such as operating system and user identification information. If you change your mind about sharing your location or receiving push notifications from the App, adjust the settings of your mobile device to turn off transmission of geolocation data or to stop transmission of push notifications at any time. Just remember if you do turn these features off, you will not receive information tailored to your location or special locations-based offers.


Online Advertising

We use third-parties to provide online or electronic ads on our behalf. These third parties use data about your visits to our websites and Apps usage to send you customised ads that may be of interest to you. This information is collected using cookies, scripts, pixel tags, etags, web beacons and other similar technologies by us and our third-party advertising partners in accordance with our Cookie Policy which you will find hyperlinked in the footer section on each of our websites.


Marketing

We may share personal information with third parties (as detailed in the Information Sharing section) to help us with our marketing and promotional projects, such as managing our social media pages, running contests, sweepstakes and other promotions, or sending marketing communications.

We will only use your personal information to send you marketing where you have given us your consent to receive marketing or we are otherwise permitted by applicable law to do so. This marketing will be sent to you either electronically or to your postal address.

Don't want to receive promotional and marketing post, emails and text messages from us and our partners? No problem! You can withdraw your consent to direct marketing or tell us you do not want to receive such marketing at any time. See Your Choices section to find out how.


Analytics

We use analytic software, such as Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics and others, to help us to better understand the functionality of our software on our websites and Apps on your device. These software tools record technical information including about your device together with usage information such as how often you use our website or App, which features you use or don't use in the website App or which pages you visit on the website, aggregated usage, performance data, where the App was downloaded from and information about your visit to the site, including details of some of the URL clickstream to, through and from our website. Further information about these tools is set out in our Cookie Policy which you will find hyperlinked in the footer section on each of our websites.

Want to learn about all what happens when you visit our websites or use our Apps? Learn more under the Online Data section.


Connected Vehicle

We offer a range of vehicles for rental some of which have been fitted with an on-board device so as to be connected to the internet and to collect and provide certain categories of information (including your personal information) to us and to the provider of the on-board device (and relevant third-party service providers) ('connected vehicle'). The use of the connected vehicle data collected is primarily to assist us in making the rental process more efficient and less time consuming for you.

In the table below we have set out the categories of data we collect relating to your use
of the connected vehicle and the purpose(s) for which we make use of this data:
 

Data Collected Purpose(s) of collecting this data Legal Basis for Processing
Fuel Readings
  • We collect this data to assist us taking readings regarding the fuel tank levels at the beginning of your rental period and when you return the connected vehicle at the end of your rental period.
  • We also use this data more generally to better understand fuel consumption rates and driving efficiencies across our fleet.

  • Performance of Contract

  • Legitimate interests

    • To maximise the efficiency and performance of our fleet
Diagnostic / maintenance information (such as warning lights, tyre pressure, service requirements, oil life, etc.)
  • To efficiently schedule services, maintenance and repairs of the connected vehicle.
  • To anticipate and, where possible, prevent breakdowns of the connected vehicle
  • To help ensure that the connected vehicle is provided to you in a roadworthy condition and to understand and assess any damage caused to the vehicle during the rental period.

  • Performance of Contract

  • Legitimate interests

    • To maximise the efficiency and performance of our fleet and to seek to avoid breakdowns impacting your rental
Mileage Readings
  • To understand the mileage accumulated by the connected vehicle and by you whilst driving the connected vehicle
  • To manage the mileage of vehicles across all of our rental agreements (including short term and longer term agreements)
  • To facilitate the calculation of any mileage-related charges imposed on you in connection with an agreement you have with us
  • To identify service and maintenance requirements based on mileage.

  • Performance of Contract

  • Legitimate interests

    • To maximise the efficiency and performance of our fleet
Vehicle Telemetry information (such as location, speed, acceleration, impact data)
  • To manage our insurance including incident notification and investigation
  • To manage our connected vehicle inventory
  • To detect and prevent loss of our connected vehicles
  • To assist us calculate charges relating to barrier free tolling
  • To assist us calculate charges relating to cross border movement of the connected vehicle
  • Performance of Contract.
  • Legitimate interests.


Children

Our websites, apps and services are not for children under the age of 16. This includes any links to other websites that we provide for your convenience. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children for any reason. If you think Avis Budget Ireland has received personal information of your child or another minor, please contact our Data Protection Officer at the address set out in the Data Controllers And Contact Details section.


Information Sharing

Avis Budget Ireland may use and share your personal information to affiliated and non-affiliated organisations as follows:

Third Party Recipient Purpose of Disclosure Legal Basis for Processing
Avis Budget Group, Inc in order to perform our contract with you and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business.
  • Make and confirm your rental reservation;
  • Provide our rewards program and update partner points and rewards;
  • Connect with your corporate and commercial accounts;
  • Assist with navigation assistance or itinerary planning; 
  • Provide customer assistance;
  • Resolve toll, traffic or parking violations; 
  • Processing any claims relating to accidents and/or injuries; 
  • Providing roadside assistance services; 
  • To protect or defend the rights or well-being of us, our employees, customers or others; 
  • Verify safe driver criteria for qualified drivers. 
  • Performance of Contract;
  • Legitimate Interests;
  • Legal obligation; Consent.
     

    
 
Travel agents in order to perform our contract with you when you use a travel agent and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business
  • Make and confirm your rental reservation;
  • Process payments and refunds;
  • Assist with navigation assistance or itinerary planning;
  • Provide customer assistance;
  • Providing roadside assistance services;
  • To protect or defend the rights or well-being of us, our employees, customers or others.
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate Interests.
Your employer or organisation in order to provide you with benefits of a corporate or association program and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business.
  • Verify drivers licenses or other government identification.
  • Verify eligibility to use designated account and discount codes;
  • Connect with your corporate and commercial accounts.
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate interests.
Brokers in order to perform our contract with you when you book a rental through their service and to protect our business from fraud and bad debts
  • Make and confirm your rental reservation; 
  • Process payments and refunds;
  • Provide customer assistance;
  • Handle debt collection; 
  • Fraud check.
  • Legitimate Interests.
Booking engines in order to perform our contract with you when you use a booking engine and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business
  • Make and confirm your rental reservation.
  • Verify eligibility to use designated account and discount codes;
  • Process payments and refunds;
  • To protect or defend the rights or well-being of us, our employees, customers or others.
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate Interests.
Credit card issuers in order to obtain payment from you
  • Process payments and refunds;
  • Fraud check; 
  • Handle debt collection.
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate Interests.
Corporate account manager in order to provide you with benefits of a corporate or association program and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business If you are renting with a corporate,membership or other similar commercial entity account, we may share personal information with the organisation that manages the account for their own purposes. We recommend you review their privacy policy to learn more about their privacy practices.
 
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate Interests.
Marketing agent in order to provide you with benefits of a corporate or association program and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business
  • Provide our rewards program and update partner points and rewards; 
  • To protect or defend the rights or well-being of us, our employees, customers or others.
  • Performance of Contract; or 
  • Legitimate Interests.
IT service providers including IT platform providers and website analytics service providers in order to in order to perform our contract with you and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business.
  • Support our IT systems and infrastructure; 
  • Provide maintenance services for our IT systems and infrastructure;
  • Provision of data hosting and other data processing services;
  • Provide analytics services relating to your use of our website to identify any technical or user interface issues and/or improvements in connection with the website
  • Legitimate interests.
Government, regulatory and law enforcement agencies in order to meet our legal obligations
  • To verify your driver's license and ensure you meet our safe driver criteria;
  • As requested by these agencies if the disclosure is required or permitted by law;
  • To take action regarding illegal activities, traffic offences or violations of terms of service;
  • If we have a good faith belief that there is an emergency that poses a threat to the safety of you or another person;  and
  • as otherwise required or permitted by law.
  • Legal requirement; or
  • Legitimate interests.
Insurance companies and claims handlers in respect of any insurance product you purchase in connection with your rental
  • Provide and service the insurance product you have requested;
  • Manage any claims that may be made under the relevant insurance policy
  • Performance of contract; or 
  • Legitimate interests.


We may also transfer or assign your personal information to third parties as a result of, or in connection with a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of assets, bankruptcy, reorganisation, or liquidation. Or if we are involved in defending a legal claim, information about you that is relevant to such claim may be disclosed to third parties as a result of, or in connection with, associated legal proceedings.

We may, in accordance with the Marketing section, share your information with business and promotional partners (where you have provided your consent to such information sharing) in order to send you information about products and services you may like. If you decide you no longer want to receive such promotional and marketing messages, please read the Your Choices section to find out how you can opt-out.


Your Choices

If you want to opt out of receiving promotional and marketing emails, text messages, post and other forms of communications from us or our promotional partners in relation to which you might receive in accordance with the Marketing section, you can best opt out by using one of the following ways:

  • Log into your account and update your profile.
  • Click "unsubscribe" at the bottom of an email we sent you.
  • Go to our Data Controllers And Contact Details section to email the customer service representative suited for you.

If you do opt out of receiving promotional and marketing messages, we can still contact you regarding our business relationship with you, such as account status and activity updates, survey requests in respect of products and services we have provided to you after you rent from us, reservation confirmations or respond to your inquiries or complaints, and similar communications.

Want to close your account, stop doing business with us, or otherwise opt out of us collecting, using or disclosing your personal information? We will be sorry to see you go. Please contact our customer service representatives in accordance with the Data Controllers And Contact Details section.

Please also see your rights set out in Your Privacy Rights section.


Safeguards

The security of your personal information is important to us. We take reasonable steps to make sure your information is protected from unauthorised use, access, disclosure, alteration, destruction or loss. For financial or payment information, we use firewalls and Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. We take security very seriously but as no system is 100% secure, we can't completely guarantee the protection of your personal information, any more than any other organisation can.

We do not ask for financial or payment information, such as your credit card number, passcode, account number or pin number, in an e-mail, text or any other communication that we send to you. Please always check that any website on which you are asked for financial or payment information in relation to our rentals or services is operated by ABG or its affiliates. If you do receive a suspicious request, do not provide your information and report it by contacting one our customer service representatives as set out in the Data Controllers And Contact Details section.

You are responsible for keeping your account passcode, membership numbers and pin numbers safe and secure. Don't share those with anyone. If there is an unauthorised use or any other breach of security involving your information, you must notify us at the customer service contact information below as soon as possible.


Information Retention

Avis Budget keeps your personal information for no longer than is reasonably necessary or required by law. How long we keep it depends very much on the type of information and purpose for which it was collected.

The criteria we use to determine the retention period for certain categories of data is as follows:

  • the length of time that you are a member a loyalty scheme that we operate or a member of any corporate programme;
  • how frequently you rent with us or when you most recent rental occurred;
  • whether there are contractual or legal obligations that exist that require us to retain the data for period of time;
  • whether there is any ongoing legal claim that relates to any rental you have made with us, or that is otherwise related to your relationship with us;
  • whether any applicable law, statute, or regulation allows for a specific retention period;
  • whether the personal information is considered to be a special category of personal information, in which case a shorter retention period generally would be applied; and
  • what the expectation for retention was at the time the data was provided to us.


Your Privacy Rights

You may have – in accordance with applicable data protection laws – the following rights when it comes to our handling of your personal information:

  • Right of access – you may have the right to request a copy of the personal information we have about you and to request supporting information explaining how the personal information is used.
  • Right of rectification – you may have the right to request that we rectify inaccurate personal information about you.
  • Right of erasure – you may have the right to request that we erase personal information about you.
  • Right to restrict processing – in some situations, you may have the right to request that we do not use the personal information you have provided (e.g. if you believe it to be inaccurate).
  • Right to data portability – you may have the right to receive certain of your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit such information to another controller.
  • Right to withdraw consent – where we process your personal information based on consent (including direct marketing consents), you have the right to withdraw consent at any time. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Furthermore, even in case of a withdrawal we may continue to use your personal information as permitted or required by law

 

Right to object: In addition, where we are processing your personal information based on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) you may challenge this. However, we may be entitled to continue processing your information based on our legitimate interests or where this is relevant to legal claims. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

[In addition, if specifically provided for under your local law, you will have a right to define post-mortem guidelines – meaning you may define guidelines regarding the storage, erasure and disclosure of your personal data after your death.]

Please get in touch with us using the contact details set out in the Data Controllers And Contact Details section if you would like to exercise any of these rights or in case you should have any concerns about how we process your personal information. You are also free to lodge complaint with the supervisory authority, should you feel that we process your personal information in a way that is against applicable law.


Data Controllers And Contact Details

Avis Budget Ireland provide car rental services under license from Avis Budget Group, Inc. requiring access to systems provided and controlled by Avis Budget Group, Inc. In this case Avis Budget Group, Inc. are the Data Controller and Avis Budget Ireland are the Data Processor. Outside of collecting and processing data under license from Avis Budget Group, Inc., and for all other personal data collected and processed by Avis Budget Ireland, Avis Budget Ireland are the Data Controller.

Please contact us using the details below in respect of any issues or questions you have regarding our processing of your personal information.

Avis Budget Ireland,
Athlone Road,
Roscommon,
Republic of Ireland

dataprotection@budget.ie

 

The Avis Budget Group, Inc., Data Protection Officer can be contacted using the details below.

Data Privacy Officer,
Avis Budget House,
Park Road,
Bracknell,
Berkshire,
RG12 2EW

DPO@abg.com