Data Deletion
Applies to ecmarine.co.za and the El Capitan Marine booking app.
1. SUMMARY
You can ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you at any time. This page explains what gets deleted, what we are legally required to keep, how long the process takes, and how to make the request.
This notice sits alongside our Privacy Policy and our Terms. Where they conflict, the Privacy Policy governs.
2. YOUR RIGHT TO DELETION
Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA), you may request that we delete or destroy personal information that:
- we are no longer authorised to retain,
- is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or obtained unlawfully, or
- you originally consented to us processing, where you have now withdrawn that consent and no other lawful basis applies.
Exercising this right is free and will not affect any other rights you have.
3. HOW TO REQUEST DELETION
Choose whichever is easiest:
- In the app. Sign in, then go to Profile > Delete my account and confirm.
- By email. Send a request to hello@ecmarine.co.za from the address on your account.
- By phone. Call us on +27 82 895 3106 and we will send you a confirmation email to verify the request.
- By post. Information Officer, El Capitan Marine,
We will verify your identity before acting on a request, normally by confirming you control the email address or mobile number on the account. This protects you from someone else deleting your bookings.
If you are asking on behalf of someone else (for example a child, or a guest you booked for), tell us the relationship and we may ask for proof of authority.
4. WHAT WE DELETE
On a confirmed request we remove or irreversibly anonymise:
- your name, email address, phone number and postal address
- your account and sign-in records (magic-link and OTP history)
- emergency contact details and any next-of-kin information
- guest details you captured for passenger manifests
- profile preferences, saved notes and communication preferences
- marketing subscriptions and consent records tied to your identity
- photographs or documents you uploaded, where they identify you
5. WHAT WE MUST KEEP, AND WHY
Some records cannot be deleted on request because other South African law requires us to retain them. In those cases we de-identify the record: the booking, payment or safety record survives, but it is no longer linked to you.
- Financial and tax records, meaning invoices, payments and refunds, are kept for 7 years. This is required by the Companies Act and the Tax Administration Act.
- Signed indemnities and waivers are kept for 7 years, so that we can defend potential injury claims and meet our maritime safety obligations.
- Booking and trip records are kept for 3 years and are then anonymised. We need them for operational, insurance and dispute-resolution purposes.
- Vessel logs and passenger manifests are kept for as long as SAMSA requires under maritime safety regulation.
- Records subject to an active dispute, claim or investigation are kept until the matter is concluded, as a legal obligation or legitimate interest.
Payment card details are never stored on our systems. Card data is handled entirely by our payment provider, so there is nothing for us to delete.
6. TIMING
- We acknowledge your request within 5 business days.
- Identity verification happens immediately on your reply, in most cases.
- Your account is deactivated and hidden from all staff views immediately on confirmation.
- Your personal information is erased or anonymised within 30 days.
- Your information is removed from our backups within 90 days, as backup cycles expire.
If we cannot complete a request within 30 days we will tell you why and give you a revised date.
7. IF YOU HAVE AN OPEN BOOKING
We cannot delete an account with a confirmed upcoming trip, an unpaid balance, or an open refund. Cancel or complete the trip first, or ask us to do it for you as part of the same request, and the deletion will proceed from there. Our cancellation policy still applies to any trip cancelled this way.
8. WHAT DELETION MEANS FOR YOU
- You will no longer be able to sign in, and your booking history will not be recoverable. Download your data first if you want a copy (see below).
- Any future booking will start a fresh account.
- Loyalty or repeat-customer status, where applicable, is lost.
- Deletion is permanent. We cannot restore an account once the 30-day window has passed.
9. GETTING A COPY OF YOUR DATA FIRST
You have a right of access as well as a right of deletion. Before deleting, you can request an export of everything we hold about you: bookings, payments, waivers and communications, as a machine-readable file. Ask via Profile > Download my data, or by emailing us. Exports are supplied within 30 days.
10. THIRD PARTIES
Where we have shared your information with a processor acting for us, we pass the deletion request on to them. This may include:
- our payment provider (transaction records, subject to their own legal retention)
- our email and SMS delivery providers
- our cloud hosting provider
- analytics and error-monitoring services
Some third parties hold their own legally mandated records that they must keep independently of us. Where that applies we will tell you who to contact.
11. MARKETING ONLY
If you only want to stop hearing from us, rather than delete your account, use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email, or change your Profile > Notification settings. Transactional messages about a trip you have booked, such as confirmations, weather cancellations and safety notices, cannot be switched off while the booking is live.
12. CONTACT AND COMPLAINTS
Information Officer, El Capitan Marine, [TBC - registered company name and registration number], [TBC - physical address], Cape Town, South Africa. hello@ecmarine.co.za, +27 82 895 3106.
If you are unhappy with how we handled your request, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa), JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001. complaints.IR@justice.gov.za, https://inforegulator.org.za