Privacy policy
This Privacy Policy sets out how we use and protect any information that you provide to us when purchasing any of our goods and services, including information that is provided by you through our website www.simms.co.uk (the “Site”). For our cookie policy please click here.
Data Protection definitions
Data protection and privacy measures are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679), the Data Protection Act 2018 any updating or supplemental legislation from time to time (“Data Protection Legislation”).
For the purpose of the Data Protection Legislation, where personal data is provided directly to us through the use of the Site (for example, when a customer sets up a trade account) or where we send marketing communications to our customers, we will be a ‘Data Controller’ of such information. This is because we ultimately determine how personal data will be handled by us or our sub-contractors, who will be our ‘Data Processors’. Where personal data is provided to us by our customers (for example, where a customer places an order with us) and we use the personal data to process and send an order, we provide this service as a ‘Data Processor” (in which case our client is the “Data Controller”).
If we handle your personal data (this means any information that can be used to identify you, for example your name and e-mail address) you are a ‘Data Subject’ and this means you have certain rights under Data Protection Legislation in relation to how your personal data is processed, such rights are set out in this Policy.
Basis for Collection
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity Data includes full name, username or similar identifier.
- Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, e-mail address and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
- Transactional Data includes details about payments and transactions to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
- Usage Data for example where a customer creates a login account, submit an enquiry or query through the Site and includes information about you use our services.
- Marketing and Communications includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us.
- Technical Data includes (IP) addresses, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access the Site.
- Profile Data includes purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
We do not collect any special categories of personal data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you (or our customer for whom you are acting on behalf of) and you fail to provide that personal data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into. In this case, we may have to cancel the services but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
Direct interactions. You may give us your identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, e-mail or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- apply for our products or services;
- create an account;
- use our live chat function;
- subscribe to our service or publications;
- request marketing to be sent to you;
- enter a competition, promotion or survey;
- give us some feedback; or
- engage with or respond to a marketing campaign.
Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
- Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google.
- Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services.
- Identity and Contact Data from data brokers.
- Identity and Contact Data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register.
CCTV. We may also collect personal data about you from use of CCTV which may be in operation externally at our offices. Any personal data collected from the use of CCTV will be used by us for the purposes of ensuring the safety and security of our property, our colleagues or those people coming onto our premises and for the purpose of compliance with the relevant insurance policies.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
Set out below is a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so.
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose/Activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
|---|---|---|
|
To register you as a new customer and verify your identity i.e. when you purchase any of our products |
(a) Identity (b) Contact |
Performance of a contract |
|
To process and deliver our services including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us (c) Contacting you and corresponding about the Services (d) Process and deliver your order(s) |
(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction |
Performance of a contract Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) |
|
To administer the Site and for internal operations, to ensure the Site is presented in the most effective manner and keep the Site safe and secure. |
Technical |
Legitimate interests |
|
To respond to queries and enquiries including queries raised through our live chat function on the Site. |
(a) Identity (b) Contact |
Legitimate Interests |
|
To undertake any marketing to you e.g. newsletters, email campaigns, direct mail, mailshots and campaigns |
(a) Identity (b) Contact |
Legitimate Interests |
|
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey |
(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services) |
|
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical |
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
|
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you. Also to deliver marketing material to you or to provide you with catalogues of our products or details of relevant offers |
(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e)Marketing and Communications (f) Technical |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy) |
|
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you |
(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business) |
How your personal data may be shared
Simms may be required to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
- Service providers acting as processors based who provide IT and system administration services.
- Professional advisers acting as processors controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or controllers who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
- Market researchers, fraud prevention agencies, credit control agencies and debt recovery agencies, email campaign sites and online survey provider sites.
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively we may seek to acquire other business or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this Privacy Policy.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Your legal rights
You have the right to:
Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights above). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. To exercise any of the above rights please e-mail your request to: dataprotection@simms.co.uk
How we store personal data
All personal data is processed within the European Economic Area (“EEA”), we do not transfer your personal data outside of the EEA.
Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Personal Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Children
The Site is not intended for children. We will not knowingly collect any personal data from persons under the age of 18 and will immediately delete any such data subsequently so determined.
Complaints
If you would like to make a complaint in relation to how we may have stored, used or processed your personal data, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Changes to this Privacy Policy and your duty to inform us of changes
As and when necessary, changes to this privacy policy we will posted here. Where changes are significant, we may also email all our registered users with the new details, and where required by law, will we obtain your consent to these changes.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 25 May 2018.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Questions and contact information
For any questions or for further information, please contact: dataprotection@simms.co.uk
Glossary
Lawful basis
Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.