Your account

1. Creating an account and signing in

You can create an account with an email address, a mobile phone number or a Google account. When you use an email address or a phone number, you verify your identity with a one-time password (OTP) that the system sends to that email address or number. When you use a Google account, verification is done through Google. If you have set a password on your account, you can also sign in with that password. You do not need an account to book a ticket; an account lets you view and manage your bookings in one place.

2. Your account details

The contact details you give in your account, such as your name, email address and telephone number, should be correct and be a channel at which you can actually be reached, because we use them to send your tickets, to tell you about changes to your bus departure and to contact you about refunds. You can edit these details yourself on the My Account page. If they are incorrect or out of date, our messages may not reach you. How we use personal data is set out in the privacy notice.

3. Looking after your account

You should make sure that no one else uses your one-time passwords or your password, or gets access to the email, phone or Google account you use to sign in, and you should not tell your one-time password to anyone, including our staff.

We treat a transaction made after signing in by a method in item 1 as your transaction, unless:

• the transaction took place after you told us under the next paragraph and we had had a reasonable time to suspend use of the account;
• we knew or should have known that the transaction did not come from you; or
• the transaction resulted from a fault in our system or of our personnel.

If you suspect that someone else is using your account, please tell us promptly through the contact channels in section 1 of the privacy notice, and change your password (if you have one). We are responsible for the security of our system as set out in the privacy notice, and we will notify you when we find a personal data breach that poses a high risk to you.

4. Suspension or closure of an account by us

We may suspend use of an account or close an account when there are reasonable grounds to believe that any of the following has happened:

• seats were booked and then repeatedly left to run past the payment deadline, to the point where it is evident that the aim was to hold seats so that others could not buy them;
• another person's personal data or payment method was used without permission;
• our system or another person's account was accessed, or access was attempted, without the right to do so, or something was done that made the system malfunction or stop working.

When we suspend or close an account, we will send the reason to the verified email address on the account, or by SMS if there is no verified email address. If the account has no verified contact at all, we cannot send the notice; you can ask us for the reason through the contact channels in section 1 of the privacy notice. You may dispute the suspension or closure through the same channels. While the account is suspended, you may dispute at any time; for a closure, please send any dispute within 60 days of being notified, or of the closure date if we could not send the notice. We will consider your dispute and tell you the outcome within 7 days of receiving it. If there are no grounds under this item, we will reopen the account immediately. If we do not reply in time, you can remind us and complain to the Office of the Consumer Protection Board.

Closure by us under this item is not the same as closing your account yourself under item 5: we keep the account's data for 90 days from the closure so that a dispute can be considered and the account reopened. If the account has not been reopened within that time, we delete or blank (replace with a value that does not identify you) its data as under item 5, and it can no longer be reopened. If a dispute is still being considered when the 90 days end, we will not delete the account's data until we have told you the outcome. While your account is suspended or closed under this item, you can still ask us to close it under item 5 through the contact channels in section 1 of the privacy notice.

Suspending or closing an account does not cancel tickets that have been paid for. You can still use such a ticket to travel, change it, or cancel it for a refund under these terms, at a sales office or through the contact channels in section 1 of the privacy notice, except a ticket paid for with another person's payment method without permission, which we may cancel and refund to the original payment method, or by transfer to the bank account of the owner of that payment method where the original method cannot be refunded. The time we receive your request through those contact channels counts as the time of the transaction for the time limits and refund rates.

5. Closing your account yourself

You can close your account yourself at any time while you can sign in, on the My Account page, and the system will ask you to verify your identity again before closing it; or you can ask us through the contact channels in section 1 of the privacy notice, in which case we will act within 30 days of receiving a request with complete information. Once the account is closed:

• you can no longer sign in with this account, and this account cannot be reopened;
• tickets that have been paid for are not cancelled and can still be used to travel. In bookings that are not yet finished under section 6 of the privacy notice, we will keep the name, telephone number and email address until the booking is finished, so that we can tell you about changes to your bus departure and contact you about refunds, and only then blank those details. You can view your bookings on the Find booking page with the booking number and the telephone number used for the booking;
• we will delete or blank the data that identifies you under section 6 of the privacy notice. Some types of data are still kept for the periods stated in that section, such as accounting records of payments, which are kept for 5 years from the end of the accounting year in which the transaction occurred, or longer if the law or a government authority orders them to be kept, and the record of your acknowledgement of the notice, which is kept for 3 years after the account is closed.

6. Changes to these account terms

If we amend this section in a way that takes away any of your rights or places a greater burden on you, we will publish the new version, together with the date it takes effect, on this page at least 30 days before that date. If you do not wish to be bound by the new version, you may close your account under item 5.