Privacy policy

INTRODUCTION

Last updated on 24 May 2018

This Privacy Policy details the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us, and explains how we store, handle and use that data, how we keep it safe, and informs you about your rights.

Teakunique Limited is the data controller when you use our website (www.teakunique.co.uk) or interact with us by email, telephone, or at our premises and events.

We take your privacy seriously and comply with the new Data Protection effective from 25 May 2018.

DATA PROTECTON LAW

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

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.

Contractual obligations: In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. For example, we will collect your address details and contact number to deliver your purchase and pass them onto third party couriers.

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 Teakunique to law enforcement.

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 will use your purchase history to email you news and offers, up to four times a year only.
  • We combine the shopping history of customers to identify trends and ensure we can keep up with demand, or develop new products/services.
  • We will use your address details to send you direct marketing information by post.

WHEN DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA

  • When you contact us by any means to purchase products and services, or redeem gift vouchers. By any means includes online (using your account or as a guest), telephone, email, or at our premises or events.
  • When you create an account with us.
  • When you engage with us on social media.
  • When you contact us by any means with queries or complaints or request information about a product.
  • When you enter prize draws or competitions.
  • When you book any kind of appointment with us.
  • When you choose to complete any surveys we send you.
  • When you comment on or review our products and services.
  • When you’ve given a third-party permission to share with us the information they hold about you.

WHAT 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. 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, gift card redemptions, products you show interest in, web pages you visit and how and when you contact us.

Details of your visits to our website and which site you came from to ours. Plus information gathered by the use of cookies in your web browser.

Your comments and product reviews

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

Personal details to help us recommend items of interest. For example, you might tell us the size of your garden terrace space, which we’ll use to guide our suggested items.

We do not store payment card information.

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.

HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We aim to give you the best possible customer experience, and share updates on our products, offers and events. The data privacy law allows us to contact you as part of our legitimate interest in understanding our customers and providing the highest levels of service. If you wish to change how we use your data, you’ll find details in the ‘What are your rights?’ section below.

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

  • To process any orders that you make by any means. If we don’t collect your personal data, we won’t be able to process your order and comply with our legal obligations. For example, your details may need to be passed onto a third party to deliver the product 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 website. We’ll do all of this as part of our legitimate interest.
  • 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 and criminal activity.
  • To keep you informed by email, web, text, or telephone about relevant products and services including special offers, discounts, promotions, events, competitions and so on. We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interest. You are free to opt out of hearing from us by any of these channels at any time.
  • To send you relevant communications by post in relation to updates, offers, services and products. We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interest. You are free to opt out of hearing from us by post 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 Notice, 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 website, we’ll use data we hold about your favourite products. We do so on the basis of your consent 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 updating your preferences.
  • To process your appointment requests.

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.

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 website using ‘https’ technology. Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data (such as payment card information) is not held by us. Online and card payment transactions are handled by Stripe and/or iZettle.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. Our website is created and managed by Indigo Concept.

Customer data is held on Capsule, a secure online CRM system, and MailChimp.

You can look at their strict privacy policies here:

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP 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:

  • Orders: When you place an order, we’ll keep the personal data you give us for 15 years so we can comply with our legal and contractual obligations, and for legitimate interest purposes.
  • Enquiries: When you contact us to express an interest in our products or services, we’ll keep the personal data you give us for up to 2 years for legitimate interest purposes.

WHO DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. 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, online CRM and other business systems.
  • Operational companies such as delivery couriers.
  • Direct marketing companies who help us manage our electronic communications with you.
  • Mailing Fulfilment houses who manage our brochure mail-out
  • Google/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter 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.
  • 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.
  • We may expand, reduce or sell Teakunique Limited and this may involve the transfer of divisions or the whole business to new owners. If this happens, your personal data will, where relevant, be transferred to the new owner or controlling party, under the terms of this Privacy Notice.

For further information please contact our Data Protection Officer.

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS OVER YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

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.

You have the right to request a copy of any information about you that we hold at any time, and also to have that information corrected if it is inaccurate. To ask for your information, please contact Data Protection Officer, Teakunique Ltd, Oakacres, GU29 0JT or email us at hello@teakunique.co.uk. To ask for your information to be amended, please update your online account, or contact us on the above email address. If we choose not to action your request we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

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.

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 Notice. 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.

HOW TO STOP THE USE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA FOR 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.

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, but continue sending confirmation of your order and despatch emails.
  • If you have an account, log in into your Teakunique account, visit the ‘My Account’ area and change your preferences.
  • Contact the Data Protection Officer via email – hello@teakunique.co.uk

Please note that you may continue to receive communications for a short period after changing your preferences while our systems are fully updated.

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

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.

ANY QUESTIONS

We hope this Privacy Notice 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 our Data Protection Officer who will be pleased to help you: