Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Draft dated September 17, 2026, updated September 18
The short version
We don't ask who you are. No account, no email, no phone number. You can use every part of this site without telling us your name.
If you upload an electricity bill, we read it to price plans at your real usage. We never keep the bill file. We never save your name, address, or account number. We keep your provider, usage, ZIP, and bill amount for 30 days so your comparison works, then delete them.
We make money when you enroll in a plan through our links. That never changes how plans are ranked.
The rest of this page says the same thing in more detail.
1. What we collect without you doing anything
Basic web traffic. Like every website, our server sees your IP address, browser type, and the pages you load. We use Pirsch, a privacy-focused analytics service that does not use cookies and does not track you across other sites. Pirsch shows us counts — how many people viewed a page, which buttons were tapped, and broad categories of Pete replies without ZIP codes or chat text — not who you are.
Your ZIP code, if you type one in. We use it to show plans for your area. We don't tie it to you.
A theme cookie. If you switch between light and dark mode, we set one cookie (ate_theme) so the page remembers. It holds the word "light" or "dark" and nothing else.
A referral cookie (ate_ref), only if you arrived through a partner link. It holds a short partner code so the partner gets credit if you enroll. It lasts 90 days and does not identify you.
A click cookie (ate_sid), set the first time you click a plan's enrollment button. It holds a random ID so we can match that click to a completed enrollment. It lasts 90 days and contains nothing about you.
Admin cookies (ate_auth, ate_admin) exist only for the site operator's login and are never set for visitors.
2. What happens when you upload a bill
This is the part that matters most, so here is exactly what the code does.
The file itself. Your bill — PDF or photo — is held in the server's memory only while it is being read. It is never written to disk, never saved to a database, never stored in the cloud. When the analysis finishes, the file is gone.
What we read from it. We extract your electricity provider, your monthly usage, your current rate, your bill amount, your ZIP code, and your plan type. Bills also contain your name, service address, account number, and ESI ID; we read those to understand the bill but we never save them.
What we keep, and for how long. For each upload we store: provider, monthly usage, ZIP and utility territory, bill amount, plan type, and the type of account (home or business). We also store technical details about the file — its size, type, and page count — but not the file and not its name. These records are deleted automatically 30 days after upload by a cleanup job that runs every night.
Your name, address, account number, and ESI ID are never stored on our servers.
In your own browser. While you move from the upload to your results page, the full analysis — including the personal details we don't store — sits briefly in your browser's session storage so the results page can display them to you. Our results page clears it as soon as it loads, and again when you leave. It never leaves your device.
3. How we read your bill — Google Gemini
We use Google's Gemini service to read bills. This means:
- For a PDF, we extract the text on our server and send that text to Google.
- For a photo, we send the image to Google.
- Google reads it and sends back the numbers.
Google's terms for this service, as of this draft: they may keep what we send for up to 55 days to check for abuse of their service. They state they do not use it to train their models. We use Google's paid tier, which carries those terms. We have not enabled any additional zero-retention arrangement with Google.
You can read Google's own policy at ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms.
If you'd rather not have your bill read by Google, don't upload it — everything else on the site works without a bill.
4. When you click "Choose this plan"
You leave our site and go to PowerHQ, our enrollment partner, who completes the sign-up with the electricity provider. Before you leave, we record that a click happened: which plan, your ZIP, the usage you selected, the time, your browser type, and a one-way scrambled version of your IP address that cannot be reversed. The click cookie from section 1 is recorded with it. After 30 days we strip the browser and IP details from that record. After 90 days we delete it.
Once you're on PowerHQ's site, their privacy policy applies. We send them the plan, your ZIP, and your usage. We do not send them your name or bill — we don't have them.
5. Pete, our energy assistant
Pete is software. If you chat with Pete, your messages go to Google's Gemini to generate replies, under the same Google terms described in section 3. We don't save your chat — nothing you type is written to our database or files, and our logs don't record your messages. Please don't put account numbers or personal details into the chat; Pete doesn't need them.
6. What we never do
- We never sell your information.
- We never share it with advertisers. There are no ads on this site.
- We never call, email, or text you. We can't — we don't collect a way to.
- We never let a provider or partner pay to change how plans are ranked.
- We never store your bill file, name, address, account number, or ESI ID.
7. How we make money
When you enroll in a plan through a link on this site, the provider pays us a commission through PowerHQ. Plans are ranked by what they would cost you. Commission is never a factor. Ties are broken by the cheapest plan first, never by which pays us more. The full explanation is on our How we rank and how we're paid page.
8. Crawlers and bots
We block automated crawlers from our enrollment links so they can't trigger sign-ups. We log rejected bot requests — user agent and a scrambled IP — for 90 days, to keep the site working for real people.
9. Your choices
- Don't want a bill read? Enter a ZIP instead. Every plan still shows.
- Want a bill's records gone sooner than 30 days? Here's the honest answer: we can't find yours. We never store your name, email, address or account number, so there's nothing to match a request against. The records delete themselves within 30 days, and until then they contain only your provider, usage, ZIP and bill amount — not who you are.
- Cookies. We set three at most: the theme preference, the partner code if you came from a partner link, and the click ID from the first time you click an enrollment button. None of them identifies you or follows you to other sites, so we don't ask you to "accept" them. Clear them in your browser any time; the site keeps working.
10. Children
This site is for adults choosing an electricity plan. We don't knowingly collect anything from anyone under 18.
11. Changes
If we change how we handle your information, we change this page and update the date at the top. Because this page describes what the code actually does, a change to the code means a change here.
12. Contact
A-Intent LLC
Houston, Texas
[email protected]