Your privacy. Your choices.
Privacy policy.
What we know about you, why we need it, and how you stay in control.
Effective October 18, 2026
Who we are
Advocate is operated by Pelham Enterprises LLC ("we," "us"). This policy covers the Advocate website, its accounts and our car-buying service. It does not cover unrelated pages on the same domain or another company’s website.
We find real dealerships through Google Maps. When you start a live search, we email the dealerships you choose to ask for a written price (or use a dealership’s own website contact form when it has no email address we can use), as Asking dealers for a price explains. Finding or selecting a dealership doesn’t contact it; only your Send does. We don’t take financing applications or trade-in referrals.
What we collect and why
- Account information. Your email address, account identifier, any account profile fields, and account timestamps let us sign you in, keep your searches together and send the email updates you choose for your searches. Sign-in records can include an IP address and browser information to maintain and protect sessions.
- Your search. Car requirements, build links you paste, ZIP code and optional financing or current-car preferences let us save your plans. We also store search status, operator notes, dealer-search settings and selected Google place identifiers, prepared outreach plans and dealer selections, private routing identifiers, the requests we email to dealerships for a live search (their words, when we sent them and whether our email provider accepted them) and those we send through a dealership’s website form (their words and what happened when we submitted them), the replies dealerships send to its relay addresses (the full message, kept with your search until you delete your account; received replies aren’t in your data download), the offers we show you, progress, your selections or pause requests, and when you last opened each search and the best price it showed, so update emails skip what you’ve already seen. Preparing outreach doesn’t send a message; only your Send does.
- Email updates. Unless you turn them off, we email you about your own searches at the moments you choose (Best prices by default): when your first price comes in, when offers are in, when your best price drops, when you have your final price, if no offers come in, and about pickup. Update emails don’t contain prices, offer amounts or dealer names. You can change them on any search page or with the links in every update email. Emails about a new dealer message continue when your other updates are off, and each one has its own link to stop them. We don’t use open-tracking pixels or click-tracking redirects in these emails, and their links go straight to Advocate.
- Requests before sign-in. When you submit an email with a search, we save that draft so you can finish signing in and return to it. A draft can be saved even if email delivery fails.
- Early access requests. If you ask to join from our early-access page, we save the email address you enter, when you asked and how many times, the Advocate page you were opening, the name of the website that sent you (if your browser shares it) and, if you tell us, when you’re hoping to buy, how you’re paying and whether you’re selling or trading in a car, so we can tell you when there’s room and decide who we invite first. Those answers stay with us; we never share them with a dealer. We don’t save your network address with it. To limit abuse of that page, we keep a salted one-way hash of your network address (never the address itself) with a count of recent attempts, for up to a day. To have your request removed, contact us at support@chooseadvocate.com.
- Dealer conversations. We save a dealer conversation’s messages with your search, with any paperwork details you share there (your and any co-buyer’s legal names, the home address for registration, how you’re paying, and the exact message you approved and when you sent it), include them in your data download and remove them when you delete your account.
- Questions you ask us. You can ask us questions on your search. We save each question, our answer and when each was sent, your ticks on the checklist there, and which help emails we sent you and whether our email provider accepted them (not their words). They’re in your data download and are removed when you delete your account. We email you when we answer, and send the checklist when you ask for it, even when your update emails are off. Please don’t include identity documents, Social Security numbers or account numbers in a question.
- Technical information. Our hosting, database and email providers process information needed to serve pages, deliver sign-in links and update emails, diagnose errors and prevent abuse. This can include network and browser information, request times and email delivery records.
- Information you send us. If you contact us for help, we use that correspondence to respond.
Please keep car details focused on the purchase. Advocate does not need identity documents, Social Security numbers, payment-card details or financial account numbers. If you put personal information in a free-text field or build link, it becomes part of the information you submit.
Asking dealers for a price
When you start a live search, we email each dealership you chose and ask for its best written out-the-door price. The first request carries:
- your car description as you saved it, on one line, with any carmaker build link you pasted on a line of its own (a phrase that only introduces that link, like “something like this:”, is left out);
- your ZIP code and the city it belongs to, so the dealership can include local taxes and fees;
- a buyer reference, a short random code for that search that doesn’t identify you.
It never carries your name, email address or phone number. The dealers screen shows you the exact email before you send it. Before anything is sent, we check your car description for an email address, a phone number, a street address, a name, an order or account number, a link that isn’t a carmaker’s, or a price target, and ask you to change what we find.
We sign the email as Kirk at Advocate, for the buyer. Each dealership gets its own private Advocate relay address as the sender and reply address, so its replies come to us, not to you. We send through Mailgun, with open and click tracking off. We keep the words of each email we send with your search, and we keep each dealership’s business email address in our dealer records, apart from your account.
When a dealership has no email address we can use, we send the same request through the contact form on its own website instead, shortened only when the form’s message box is too small, with the exact words an Advocate team member approved. We enter the dealership’s private relay address as the email, Kirk (Advocate) as the name and Advocate’s phone number, (213) 279-9351, which takes voicemail only; never your name, email or phone. When a dealership’s form requires agreeing to its terms or privacy policy, to marketing, texts or calls, or to sharing or selling the form’s details, such as with other dealers, we agree, because the only contact details on the form are Advocate’s relay address and voicemail number; we never agree to wording on the form that asks for a credit check, a purchase, a deposit or payment, or arbitration, and skip a form whose words require one, and we never offer a trade-in. What the dealership’s website or its providers do with a form is covered by their own practices.
Dealers’ replies come to us through Mailgun. We store each one with your search, and a copy also goes to our operations mailbox. We read each one, with help from an AI assistant, and add the prices we can confirm in writing to your search. If a reply leaves out part of the price, we may ask that dealership for it in the same email thread. If a dealership doesn’t answer, we may send it up to two short reminders in the same thread. When you stop asking dealers, we send each dealership we emailed a short thank-you saying you’ve made your decision. Any dealership can reply STOP, and we stop emailing it.
What a dealership does with an email it received is covered by its own practices. A dealership can’t reach you through the relay address: its replies come only to us.
How we use AI
Two automated steps that handle your information can use AI. We can turn each one off in our server settings. Both send their request through Vercel AI Gateway to OpenAI, where it runs on our own OpenAI account, and we set every request to use only OpenAI. If that connection fails, AI Gateway can retry the same request through Vercel’s own access to OpenAI. We don’t add your account email, name or sign-in details to either request. Each step below lists exactly what its request carries.
- A clearer car description. When you open a search’s dealer step, we can send the car description saved with that search, and nothing else about you, to suggest corrected spelling and the maker’s own naming, so dealerships read your request as you meant it. A build link you pasted is part of that description. Your ZIP code is not sent. The suggestion changes your search only if you choose to use it. We don’t save a suggestion you don’t use, although the server may briefly keep a recent one in memory so reopening the step doesn’t ask again. When this step is on, it runs for every signed-in buyer.
- Reading dealer replies. AI reads each dealer reply on a live search to tell our team what it means and whether it needs an answer, and drafts that answer for a person on our team to review and send. When our team adds a reply as an offer, AI can also propose the offer’s details, such as the price, fees, taxes, conditions and delivery timing, for our checks and review. These requests carry the dealer’s reply, that search’s car description, build link and buying ZIP code, and a short summary of our earlier emails with that dealership on that search. To write the way our team does, a request can also include a few of our team’s past edits to its drafts, with references, links, email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses taken out. A dealership’s reply can include its own staff’s names and contact details. Our team reviews every proposed detail and every draft before anything becomes an offer or goes to a dealership. What AI proposes is saved with that reply in the search’s records, included in your data download and removed when you delete your account.
Our team also works with an AI assistant, Anthropic’s Claude, under human supervision. It helps us find dealership contacts, read dealer replies, record the prices we publish and send reminders, follow-up questions and thank-you notes to dealerships. To do that, it can see what our operations pages show for a live search, including your car description, ZIP code, buyer reference, dealer replies, questions you ask us with our answers, and account email. A person on our team, not the assistant, handles any introduction to a dealership.
We don’t use your information to train AI models. OpenAI doesn’t train its models on data sent through its API unless the customer opts in, and we haven’t. If AI Gateway retries a request through Vercel’s access, our request allows it only where the provider has agreed with Vercel not to train on prompts. Vercel, OpenAI and Anthropic may keep request records under their own retention terms, so we can’t promise that every copy is deleted right away.
Cookies and information on your device
We use cookies to keep you signed in, to remember for 90 days that you entered an early-access code (that cookie doesn’t identify you), to remember for 30 minutes which page you were opening when the early-access page appeared, and to remember for 30 minutes that you just joined the waitlist (it holds the email you entered), so you can tell us when you’re hoping to buy. Hosting security may also use storage needed to protect access. The site saves your unfinished car description, ZIP code and Financing or Trade-in choices in your browser so they survive a refresh, and remembers your light or dark setting there.
We haven’t added advertising pixels or cross-site tracking to Advocate. We do not change our behavior in response to a browser’s Do Not Track signal; the no-sale and no-targeted-advertising practices above apply either way.
You can clear the saved car draft from Manage your data, or clear site data in your browser. Clearing browser data alone does not delete your account or saved searches. Blocking necessary cookies can prevent sign-in.
What stays, and what deletion removes
Account and saved-search records remain available so you can return to them. We don’t automatically delete an account just because it is inactive. Sign-in credentials and unfinished server drafts have expiry limits; expiry and removal from storage are separate steps.
Archiving hides a search from your search lists; it keeps running until you end it, and you can restore it. Removing an archived search hides it from your search lists but retains its records and action history for your account and auditing. Removed searches remain included in Manage data and your download. These actions do not delete your personal data.
Deleting your account removes its active account record, saved searches (including archived and removed searches), search action history, dealer-search settings and selections, prepared outreach plans and routing identifiers, offer history, purchase preferences, email-update settings, the record of update emails sent and live-search records with the requests we sent, the replies dealerships sent back, the questions you asked us with our answers and your checklist ticks, along with associated pending drafts and sign-in sessions. It signs you out. The confirmation screen explains the scope before you delete.
Account deletion does not immediately erase infrastructure logs, database backups or email-delivery records held by providers. Those copies are subject to separate retention and deletion processes. We have not set a single deletion deadline covering all of them. Deletion also doesn’t remove the copies of dealer replies in our operations mailbox, or our introduction emails with you and the dealership; ask us at support@chooseadvocate.com and we’ll delete our copies. We may need to retain limited information where law requires it or to address a security incident or dispute.
We also cannot remove email already delivered to your inbox or to a dealership, or browser drafts saved on another device. You can remove those copies yourself. Any information you send independently to another company is covered by that company’s practices.
Your choices and requests
Use Manage your data to review your saved information, download a copy or delete your account. Sign-in protects those actions from someone pretending to be you. You can correct car details from Searches, skip optional preferences, and pause a search without deleting it.
Depending on where you live and which laws apply, you may have additional rights to access, correct or delete personal information, receive a copy, or object to certain uses. We will not penalize you for exercising applicable privacy rights. We may need to verify a request or an authorized agent’s authority before acting.
Security and age requirements
We use authenticated accounts, access controls and encrypted connections for the hosted service. No online service can promise absolute security. Keep your email account and sign-in links private.
Advocate is intended for adults aged 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has submitted information, contact support@chooseadvocate.com so we can investigate and remove it.
Changes and contact
We will update the effective date when this policy changes. If a change materially affects how your information is used or shared, we will provide a prominent notice in the product or contact affected account holders before it takes effect, and obtain consent where required.
For privacy questions or requests you cannot complete through Manage your data, contact Pelham Enterprises LLC at support@chooseadvocate.com. You can also use this address if you cannot access your account or need help correcting information.