6. 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 best 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.
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comes back into stock, we can’t do that if you’ve withdrawn your general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,
email, through an MIS employee, telephone contact 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
log-ins from unexpected locations.
- To protect our customers, premises, assets and businesses from
crime, we operate CCTV systems in our branches and car parks 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 our sales representatives 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 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.
- 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 informing us
- 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. 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 stores.
- To process your booking/appointment requests (for example with a
locksmith or service engineer). Sometimes, we’ll need to share your
details with a third party who is providing a service (such as delivery
couriers or a fitter visiting your home). We do so to maintain our
appointment with you. Without sharing your personal data, we’d be unable
to fulfil your request.