What we collect
What the report needs, and three answers you can choose to give us.
- Your email address
- To create your account, sign you in, and reach you about your account and your report. If you only gave it to us before launch, to tell you when we opened; we also keep where on the site you joined from, including the ZIP code if you joined from one we could not serve, so we know which areas to add next.
- Your name, if you give us one
- To greet you on your account page and to know who is writing when you contact us. You can change or remove it on your account details page.
- Your ZIP code
- To find which delivery utility serves you and which plans are sold there.
- Your street address, as you type it
- To find the meter that serves it and the utility whose wires reach it. It is sent to the address services named under "Who processes it for us" while you type: each time you pause, once what you have typed is at least four characters and includes a number, so a partly typed address is sent too. We do not save what you type into the address search. We do save the addresses a search returns in your ZIP code, so you can pick yours: up to six, which can include addresses other than yours, each with its street, city, ZIP code, meter number (ESI ID) and utility. If you pick one, we keep its meter number, utility, house number and street, and your account keeps the meter number, house number and street with that address.
- Your twelve months of usage
- The kilowatt-hours per month the ranking is calculated on: typed in by you, or a typical year for the household size you pick or the monthly average you type in.
- Your name and profile picture, if you continue with Google
- Google passes them to us when you sign in with it, and we store them with your account. Nothing on this site uses them.
- Your ESI ID, if you give us one
- The meter number on your bill. It is how the wires company identifies the point where your home is served, and the number a switch is keyed on. We store it; typing it confirms nothing on its own.
- Who bills you for electricity today, if you tell us
- To count which providers people come to us from. It changes nothing in your ranking.
- What you write in "Anything we should know about this address?"
- That box appears only when we could not find your meter from your address. We save what you write, up to 2,000 characters, and read it ourselves to learn why; nothing in it changes your report. It is kept like the other details you enter on the way to a report (see "How long we keep it"), and stays with your account once they become part of it.
- Page views
- Our hosting providers count which pages are visited, roughly where from (country, state and city), the site that linked there, and the browser, operating system and device type. The counts are anonymous: they use no cookies and build no profile of you, and the only link between one page view and the next is a code derived from the request, discarded within a day.
- Request logs
- Our hosting providers record an IP address, a browser type and a timestamp for each request, as part of running and securing the site.
We do not ask for your Social Security number, your date of birth, or your account number with your current provider. We have no way to read your bill or your meter.
Cookies
We set only authentication cookies (the one that keeps you signed in, and short-lived ones that carry a sign-up or a password reset through to completion) and one cookie that lasts 24 hours and links your browser to the details you enter on the way to a report. We set no analytics or advertising cookies, and no other company sets cookies through this site. The payment page is Stripe's, and any cookie it sets is Stripe's.
What we do with it
We use it to produce and deliver your report, to sign you in, and to answer you when you write to support. We use aggregate counts that identify nobody to understand how the service is doing.
When a report is issued, we email you a summary of it: its date and address, the lowest-cost plan we found at each contract length with its estimated annual cost, and a link back to the report, which asks you to sign in.
We may also email you once as the term of a plan in your report comes to an end. We do not know which plan you signed, so we assume the one your report ranked first and count forward from the report's date; the email says that it is a guess, and it invites you to run a new report. It carries an unsubscribe link; replying to it or writing to support works too, and either way we will not send another.
We do not sell your personal information. Your usage, your account and the plans you were shown never go to an electricity provider. The one exception is the street address you type to find your meter: as "Who processes it for us" explains, the lookup service we use says it searches it through Light, which is itself an electricity provider, so Light may receive that address. We have no agreement with Light and are paid nothing by it.
We do not use your information to advertise to you elsewhere. Apart from the report summary and that one reminder, we do not send email you did not ask for.
Who processes it for us
We run on other companies' infrastructure, in the United States. Each company in the table below handles data on our instructions and for no purpose of its own, except Stripe, which sells you the report under its own policy.
- Hosting and database providers
- Store your account, sign-in records, ZIP code, usage figures, ESI ID and the addresses a meter search returns; serve the website; and keep the request logs described above.
- Payment processor
- Stripe — see "Paying for a report" below.
- Sign-in provider
- If you choose to continue with Google, Google authenticates you and passes us your email address and basic profile, never your Google password. If you sign in with an email address and a password instead, Google is not involved.
- Email delivery
- Resend sends the emails that confirm an account, reset a password or sign you in, and the summary of each report, so it receives your email address and the message we send you, which for a summary includes the report's address and plans.
The street address you type to find your meter goes to meterplan.com, run by Meter Energy Inc., a Texas electricity broker, which looks up the meters at an address. Its own documentation says that lookup runs on Light's address search, and Light is itself a Texas retail electricity provider, so the address may reach Light too. We have no contract with either company governing what they do with it, and neither works on our instructions.
When meterplan.com finds no meter for the address in your ZIP code, we send the address and your ZIP code to the US Census Bureau's geocoder, to ask only whether the address exists; the Bureau handles them under its own policy.
Google Fonts serves the typefaces this site uses and receives the IP address of each request as a result, under Google's own policy. It sets no cookies.
We use AI to read the plan documents providers publish, which are public. That work happens across every plan before anyone asks for a report, and none of your information is sent to an AI provider.
Paying for a report
You pay on a page that Stripe hosts. Stripe is the seller of record for the purchase: it collects your name, billing address and card details on that page under its own privacy policy and that of Link, its checkout service, and it sends you the receipt. We never see or store your card number.
Stripe tells us that you paid, how much, and the purchase's reference, and we keep those with the record of your purchase for as long as tax and accounting law require. Refunds and disputes go through Stripe; our Refund Policy says what we will and will not do.
How long we keep it
Your account and its usage figures stay until you delete the account. A report you have bought stays while your account does, because something you paid for should still open later. An email address given before launch stays until you ask us to remove it. If you complain, to us or to the Public Utility Commission of Texas about us, we keep the complaint and our correspondence about it for at least two years, or until two years after the agency closes a complaint filed there if that is later, because that agency requires electricity brokers to keep complaint records that long.
The addresses a meter search returns are kept with the other details you enter on the way to a report, not with an account. They are cleared when you continue from the report signed in and those details become part of your account, except the meter number, house number and street of the one you picked, which your account keeps with that address until you remove the address or change its ZIP code. Typing a meter number for it replaces the picked one and clears its street. Details that never do stop working a day after you start, and a clean-up that runs twice a week deletes them, addresses included, about five weeks after you start.
Technical logs are kept for as long as our hosting providers retain them, for security and troubleshooting.
Deleting your account
Use "Delete your account" on your account page. If you can't, write to support@wattmarshal.com from the address on the account and ask. Either way, we delete your account and its sign-in record, along with everything held against it, including your name, the ZIP code, the street you picked, the usage months and the ESI ID, and the account's email address from any pre-launch list. We keep the minimum record of a completed purchase that tax and accounting law requires, and any complaint correspondence the broker rules require us to keep (see How long we keep it), and nothing beyond those.
Apart from the meter number, house number and street of the one you picked, the addresses a meter search returns are never held against an account: they are cleared when the details they were kept with become part of one, and otherwise deleted as "How long we keep it" says.
You can also ask what we hold about you, and we will tell you.
Legal obligations
Watt Marshal LLC may disclose your information, without notice, if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that doing so is necessary to comply with the law or with legal process served on us or on this site; to investigate fraud or misuse of the service; or, in urgent circumstances, to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.
Children
This service is for adults arranging electricity service. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.
Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Only our own services can reach the database, and their credentials are held in a managed secret store rather than written into our code.
No system is perfect and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your information, we will tell you.
Changes, and how to reach us
We may update this policy to reflect changes in our practices, in the law, or in regulatory guidance. When we do, the updated policy is posted here with a new "Last updated" date. Reviewing this page from time to time is worth doing.
Questions, requests and complaints go to support@wattmarshal.com.