Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains in detail the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we store and handle that data, and keep it safe.

We know that there’s a lot of information here but we want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how we use your data.

We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

It’s likely that we’ll need to update this Privacy Policy from time to time so please come back and check it whenever you wish.

2. Explaining the legal principles we rely on.

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which a company may collect and process your personal data, including:

a. Consent.
In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you tick a box to receive email newsletters.

b. Contractual obligations.
In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. For example, if you order an item from us for home delivery, we’ll collect your address details to deliver your purchase, and pass them to our courier.

c. Legal compliance.
If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting us to law enforcement.

d. Legitimate interest.
In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. For example, we may use your purchase history to send you or make available personalised offers.

We may also combine the shopping history of many customers to identify trends and ensure we can keep up with demand, or develop new products/services.

We may also use your address details to send you direct marketing information by post, telling you about products and services that we think might interest you.

3. When might we collect your personal data?

When you visit any of our websites, and use your account to buy products and services, or redeem vouchers in a shop or online.

When you make an online purchase and check out as a guest (in which case we just collect transaction-based data).

When you create an account with us.

When you purchase a product or service in store or by phone but don’t have (or don’t use) an account.

When you engage with us on social media.

When you join a loyalty programme.

When you contact us by any means with queries, complaints etc.

When you ask us to email you information about a product or service.

When you enter competitions.

When you choose to complete any surveys we send you.

When you comment on or review our products and services. Any individual may access personal data related to them, including opinions.

When you fill in any forms. For example, if an accident happens in store, we may collect your personal data.

When you’ve given a third party permission to share with us the information they hold about you.

When you use our cafes and shops which usually have CCTV systems operated for the security of both customers and staff. These systems may record your image during your visit.

4. What sort of personal data do we collect?

If you have a web account with us: your name, gender, date of birth, billing/delivery address, orders and receipts, email and telephone number. For your security, we’ll also keep an encrypted record of your login password.

Details of your interactions with us through contact methods, in store, online or by using one an app. For example, we collect notes from our conversations with you, details of any complaints or comments you make, details of purchases you made, items viewed or added to your basket, gift list and wish list choices, voucher redemptions, brands you show interest in, web pages you visit and how and when you contact us.

Details of your shopping preferences. For example, which of our shops you prefer to visit and where you redeem your vouchers. Details of your visits to our websites or app, and which site you came from to ours. Information gathered by the use of cookies in your web browser. Personal details which help us to recommend items of interest.

We’ll only ask for and use your personal data collected for recommending items of interest and to tailor your shopping experience with us. Of course, it’s always your choice whether you share such details with us.

Payment card information.

Your comments and product reviews.

Your image may be recorded on CCTV when you visit a shop or cafe.

To deliver the best possible web experience, we collect technical information about your internet connection and browser as well as the country and telephone code where your computer is located, the web pages viewed during your visit, the advertisements you clicked on, and any search terms you entered.

Your social media username, if you interact with us through those channels, to help us respond to your comments, questions or feedback.

5. How and why do we use your personal data?

We want to give you the best possible customer experience. One way to achieve that is to get the richest picture we can of who you are by combining the data we have about you.

We may then use this to offer you promotions, products and services that are most likely to interest you. In the case of loyalty scheme members, we’ll also offer you relevant rewards.

The data privacy law allows this as part of our legitimate interest in understanding our customers and providing the highest levels of service.

Of course, if you wish to change how we use your data, you’ll find details in the ‘What are my rights?’ section below.

Remember, if you choose not to share your personal data with us, or refuse certain contact permissions, we might not be able to provide some services you’ve asked for. For example, if you’ve asked us to let you know when an item comes back into stock, we can’t do that if you’ve withdrawn your general consent to hear from us.

Here’s how we’ll use your personal data and why:

To process any orders that you make by using our websites, apps or in store. If we don’t collect your personal data during checkout, we won’t be able to process your order and comply with our legal obligations. For example, your details may need to be passed to a third party to supply or deliver the product or service that you ordered and we may keep your details for a reasonable period afterwards in order to fulfil any contractual obligations such as refunds, guarantees and so on.

To respond to your queries, refund requests and complaints. Handling the information you sent enables us to respond. We may also keep a record of these to inform any future communication with us and to demonstrate how we communicated with you throughout. We do this on the basis of our contractual obligations to you, our legal obligations and our legitimate interests in providing you with the best service and understanding how we can improve our service based on your experience.

To protect our business and your account from fraud and other illegal activities. This includes using your personal data to maintain, update and safeguard your account. We’ll also monitor your browsing activity with us to quickly identify and resolve any problems and protect the integrity of our websites. We’ll do all of this as part of our legitimate interest. For example, by checking your password when you login and using automated monitoring of IP addresses to identify possible fraudulent logins from unexpected locations.

To protect our customers and staff from crime, we operate CCTV systems in our stores and cafes which record images for security. We do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests.

To process payments and to prevent fraudulent transactions. We do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests. This also helps to protect our customers from fraud.

If we discover any criminal activity or alleged criminal activity through our use of CCTV, fraud monitoring and suspicious transaction monitoring, we will process this data for the purposes of preventing or detecting unlawful acts. We aim to protect the individuals we interact with from criminal activities.

With your consent, we will use your personal data, preferences and details of your transactions to keep you informed by email, web, text, telephone and through contact methods about relevant products and services including tailored special offers, discounts, promotions, events, competitions and so on. Of course, you are free to opt out of hearing from us by any of these channels at any time.

To send you communications required by law or which are necessary to inform you about our changes to the services we provide you. For example, updates to this Privacy Policy, product recall notices, and legally required information relating to your orders. These service messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent when sent by email or text message. If we do not use your personal data for these purposes, we would be unable to comply with our legal obligations.

To display the most interesting content to you on our websites or apps, we’ll use data we hold about your favourite brands or products and so on. We do so on the basis of your consent to receive app notifications and / or for our website to place cookies or similar technology on your device. For example, we might display a list of items you’ve recently looked at, or offer you recommendations based on your purchase history and any other data you’ve shared with us.

To administer any of our prize draws or competitions which you enter, based on your consent given at the time of entering.

To develop, test and improve the systems, services and products we provide to you. We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests. For example, we’ll record your browser’s Session ID to help us understand more when you leave us online feedback about any problems you’re having.

To comply with our contractual or legal obligations to share data with law enforcement. For example, when a court order is submitted to share data with law enforcement agencies or a court of law.

To send you survey and feedback requests to help improve our services. These messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent when sent by email or text message. We have a legitimate interest to do so as this helps make our products or services more relevant to you. Of course, you are free to opt out of receiving these requests from us at any time by by updating your preferences in your online account.

To build a rich picture of who you are and what you like, and to inform our business decisions, we’ll combine data captured from third parties and data from publicly-available lists as we have described in the section What Sort of Personal Data do we collect? We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interest. For example, by combining this data, this will help us personalise your experience and decide which inspiration or content to share with you. We also use anonymised data from customer purchase histories to identify trends in different areas of the country. This may then guide which products we display in particular shops or cafes.

6. How we protect your personal data.

We know how much data security matters to all our customers. With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. We secure access to all transactional areas of our websites and apps using ‘https’ technology. Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data (such as payment card information) is secured to ensure it is protected. We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks.

7. How long will we keep your personal data?

Whenever we collect or process your personal data, we’ll only keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. At the end of that retention period, your data will either be deleted completely or anonymised, for example by aggregation with other data so that it can be used in a non-identifiable way for statistical analysis and business planning.

Some examples of customer data retention periods:

a. Orders:
When you place an order, we’ll keep the personal data you give us for five years so we can comply with our legal and contractual obligations.

b. Inactive accounts:
If you’ve not used your account for more than five years, it will be flagged as inactive or deleted.

8. Who do we share your personal data with?

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. For example, delivery couriers, technicians visiting your premises, for fraud management, to handle complaints, to help us personalise our offers to you and so on.

Here’s the policy we apply to those organisations to keep your data safe and protect your privacy:

We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.
They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.
We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.

Examples of the kind of third parties we work with are:

IT companies who support our website and other business systems.
Operational companies such as delivery couriers.
Direct marketing companies who help us manage our electronic communications with you.
Google/Facebook to show you products that might interest you while you’re browsing the internet. This is based on either your marketing consent or your acceptance of cookies on our websites. See our Cookies policy for details.
Data insight companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate.

Sharing your data with third parties for their own purposes: we will only do this in very specific circumstances, for example:

For fraud management, we may share information about fraudulent or potentially fraudulent activity in our premises or systems. This may include sharing data about individuals with law enforcement bodies.
We may also be required to disclose your personal data to the police or other enforcement, regulatory or Government body, in your country of origin or elsewhere, upon a valid request to do so. These requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis and take the privacy of our customers into consideration.

To help personalise your journey through our websites we may use the following companies who will process your personal data as part of their contracts with us:

Google
Twitter
Google Analytics
Instagram
YouTube
Facebook
WooCommerce
Mailchimp
Hotjar

9. Where your personal data may be processed.

Sometimes we will need to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA includes all EU Member countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. We may transfer personal data that we collect from you to third-party data processors in countries that are outside the EEA such as Australia or the USA. For example, this might be required in order to fulfil your order, process your payment details or provide support services. Any transfer of your personal data will follow applicable laws and we will treat the information under the guiding principles of this Privacy Policy.

10. What are your rights regarding your personal data?

An overview of your different rights:

You have the right to request:
Access to the personal data we hold about you, free of charge in most cases.
The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.
That we stop using your personal data for direct marketing (either through specific channels, or all channels).
That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.
Review of any decision made based solely on automatic processing of your data (i.e. where no human has yet reviewed the outcome and criteria for the decision).

Your right to withdraw consent. Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

Where we rely on our legitimate interest. In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Direct marketing.
You have the right to stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing activity through all channels, or selected channels. We must always comply with your request.

Checking your identity.
To protect the confidentiality of your information, we will ask you to verify your identity before proceeding with any request you make under this Privacy Policy.

If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act.

11. How can you stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing?

There are several ways you can stop direct marketing communications from us:
Click the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email communication that we send you. We will then stop any further emails from that particular division.
If you have an account, log in into it and change your preferences.
Write to us at 12 China Street, Lancaster, Lancs. LA1 1EX. Please note that you may continue to receive communications for a short period after changing your preferences while our systems are fully updated.

12. Contacting the Regulator.

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113 or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites). If you are based outside the UK, you have the right to lodge your complaint with the relevant data protection regulator in your country of residence. Details can be found in Section 16.

13. If you live outside the U.K.

By using our services or providing your personal data to us, you expressly consent to the processing of your personal data by us or on our behalf. Of course, you still have the right to ask us not to process your data in certain ways, and if you do so, we will respect your wishes. Sometimes we’ll need to transfer your personal data between countries to enable us to supply the goods or services you’ve requested. In the ordinary course of business, we may transfer your personal data from your country of residence to ourselves and to third parties located in the UK.

By dealing with us, you are giving your consent to this overseas use, transfer and disclosure of your personal data outside your country of residence for our ordinary business purposes. This may occur because our information technology storage facilities and servers are located outside your country of residence, and could include storage of your personal data on servers in the UK.

We’ll ensure that reasonable steps are taken to prevent third parties outside your country of residence using your personal data in any way that’s not set out in this Privacy Policy. We’ll also make sure we adequately protect the confidentiality and privacy of your personal data.

We’ll ensure that any third parties process your personal data only in accordance with their legitimate interests. These third parties may be subject to different laws from those which apply in your country of residence. Please note that we do not take active steps to ensure that any overseas recipient of your personal data complies with the laws which apply in your country.

14. Any questions?

We hope this Privacy policy has been helpful in setting out the way we handle your personal data and your rights to control it. If you have any questions that haven’t been covered, please contact us and we will be pleased to help you:

Email us using the Contact link at the foot of our website or write to us at:
Data Protection Officer
J Atkinson & Co
12 China Street
Lancaster
Lancs
LA1 1EX