We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your information will be:

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;
• Accurate and kept up to date;
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about; and
• Kept securely.

We collect your personal information through different methods including:

• When you visit any of our websites, whether or not you buy products.

• When you purchase a product or service in store or by phone.

• When you engage with us on social media.

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

• When you ask one of our Employees to email you information about a product or service.

• When you enter prize draws or 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. So if your comment or review includes information about an Employee who provided that service, it may be passed on to them if requested.

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

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

• We collect data from publicly-available sources (such as Land Registry) when you have given your consent to share information or where the information is made public as a matter of law.

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

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 then use this to offer you promotions, products and services that are most likely to interest you. 

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.

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

To process any orders that you make by using our websites 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 automated monitoring of IP addresses to identify possible fraudulent log-ins from unexpected locations.

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

We manage some of our car parks in conjunction with Total Parking Solutions Limited (www.totalparking.co.uk  please note we can’t be responsible for the content of external websites)

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 is to protect the individuals we interact with from criminal activities.

To keep you informed by email, web, text, telephone 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 relevant, personalised 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 websites, 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 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 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 across the Company, 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.

To process your booking/appointment requests

Sometimes, we’ll need to share your details with a third party who is providing a service (such as delivery couriers or fitter or technician visiting your home). Without sharing your personal data, we’d be unable to fulfil your request.

Hotjar

We use Hotjar to understand how you use our website through their services that include heatmaps, page usage recordings and feedback polls and surveys. The Hotjar privacy policy explains more about how they collect data and keep it safe.

Through the Hotjar tracking code embedded on our website, the information collected includes:

Device-specific data

• The following information may be collected through your device and browser:
• your device's IP address (collected and stored in an anonymised format)
• device screen size
• device type (unique device identifiers) and browser information
• geographic location (country only)
• preferred language used to display the webpage.

Log data

Our servers automatically record information which is created upon using Hotjar. Data includes:

• referring domain
• pages visited
• geographic location (country only)
• preferred language used to display the webpage
• date and time when website pages were accessed.

Cookies set by Hotjar

Opt out of Hotjar tracking

You can opt out of Hotjar tracking by turning on the Do Not Track header in your web browser.

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 have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.  In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.  They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. 

Examples of our security provisions include: 

• We secure access to all transactional areas of our websites using ‘https’ technology.
• Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data (such as payment card information) is secured by SSL encryption.
• We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we carry out penetration testing to identify ways to further strengthen security.

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.  For example, delivery couriers, technicians visiting your home, for fraud management, to handle complaints, to help us personalise our offers to you.  

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/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. See our Cookies Notice for details.
• Data insight companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate. 
• Law enforcement bodies 

We may, from time to time, expand, reduce or sell the Company 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.

Any third parties will be bound by contractual provisions with us and only have access to personal data to perform the described purposes, and may not use it for other purposes.  Further, they must process the personal data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and as permitted by GDPE, the Data Protection Act 1998 and subsequently the Data Protection Act 2018 (subject to royal assent), the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and the E-Privacy Regulations when it comes into effect. 

For further information, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your business relationship with us. 

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information    we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party. 

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact Data Protection Officer, Stokers Limited 277 Wennington Road Southport PR9 7TW or email [email protected].  Please note, there are some specific circumstances where these rights do not apply and we can refuse to deal with your request.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

When you apply for a product or service from one of our chosen providers, your data will be collected and used by them under the terms of their own separate privacy policies.

These are our chosen providers’ privacy policies (all links open in a new window; please note we can’t be responsible for the content of external websites):

V12 Retail Finance - https://v12retailfinance.com

Staingard - https://staingard.co.uk

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:

Email us at [email protected]

Or write to us at Data Protection Officer, Stokers Limited 277 Wennington Road Southport PR9 7TW