This privacy policy explains what information we collect about you, how we may use it, and the steps we take to ensure that it is kept secure. We also explain your rights and how to contact us. Please note that our websites provides links to other websites belonging to other organisations, which are provided for your convenience. We would recommend that you read the Privacy statement for every website that you visit.

What information do we hold on you?

We collect details from you when you request a product, service, offers or news from us from our website, fax, emails, telephone conversations, and written and verbal communication. When you browse our store, we also automatically receive your computer’s internet protocol (IP) address in order to provide us with information that helps us learn about your browser and operating system. 
We may supplement the information that you provide with other information that we obtain from our dealings with you or which we receive from our Partners.

What do we do with the information?

We will use the personal information gathered in our normal course of business primarily to provide the products, services, offers or news you have requested, and also for administration purposes:

• to confirm identification when you contact us 
• to keep you informed of any special offers or promotions that we believe might be of particular interest to you 
• to communicate with you in the event that any products or services you have requested are unavailable 
• for statistical analysis, including automated techniques 
• for record-keeping purposes 
• for market research 
• to track activity on our website 
• to improve and monitor our customer service to you 
• for the prevention of crime and fraud.

We may contact you by post, email, telephone or fax for these purposes.

Disclosure of your information to service providers

In order to provide our products and services, we may need to pass information on to our agents and sub-contractors or appoint other organisations to carry out some of the processing activities on our behalf, such as mailing houses. 
In these circumstances, we will ensure that your information is properly protected and used in accordance with this privacy policy. We may also disclose information to the investigating authorities such as the police, and customs and excise, or if required to do so by law.

Transfer of your information outside the European Union

We may need to transfer your personal data outside of the European Union in order to provide you with the services and products you require. 
Some of these countries may not have laws that protect privacy rights as extensively as in the European Union. If we do transfer your personal information to other territories, we will take proper steps to ensure that your information is properly protected.

The use of cookies

Cookies are small text files which are stored on your computer, mobile phone or device. Cookies may be placed on your device when you visit a website or open a marketing email.

Avocet uses cookies for a variety of reasons, such as to remember your preferences when you visit our sites, tailor your visit, monitor traffic to enable us to improve our sites, or to ensure we remember the contents of your shopping basket when you next visit the site.

We also set third parties cookies to allow you to easily link to third parties you may be subscribed to, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. We do not control these cookies and how your information may be used, so please visit the third parties’ websites for more information on these cookies.

Our partners may also set cookies when they direct you to our site to buy a product. These cookies allow us to pay our partners a referral fee based on the nature of any purchase you make.

Here is a list of cookies that we use. We’ve listed them here so you that you can choose if you want to opt-out of cookies or not.

_session_id, unique token, sessional, Allows Shopify to store information about your session (referrer, landing page, etc).

_shopify_visit, no data held, Persistent for 30 minutes from the last visit, Used by our website provider’s internal stats tracker to record the number of visits.

_shopify_uniq, no data held, expires midnight (relative to the visitor) of the next day, Counts the number of visits to a store by a single customer.

cart, unique token, persistent for 2 weeks, Stores information about the contents of your cart.

_secure_session_id, unique token, sessional

storefront_digest, unique token, indefinite If the shop has a password, this is used to determine if the current visitor has access.

PREF, persistent for a very short period, Set by Google and tracks who visits the store and from where.

Security

To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry best practices to make sure it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored with a AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional generally accepted industry standards.

What to do if you do not wish to receive details of offers from us?

If you do not wish to receive details of offers and promotions from us, you can opt-out at any time by clicking the relevant boxes on the form or screen, by emailing IT@avocet-hardware.co.uk or by ringing Credit Services on 01484 750000.

Please note that you may change your mind at any time by contacting us by any of the above methods or by following the instructions set out with each offer you receive.

Changing your personal information

If you believe that we are storing details relating to you and that these are incorrect or you wish to remove them, please contact us.

Changes to this privacy policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes on this page so that you are aware of the information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we disclose it.

A hard copy of the policy is available from the Tim Hotston Avocet Hardware (UK) Ltd Brookfoot Mills, Elland Rd, Brighouse, West Yorkshire, HD6 2RW. Any revised policy will apply only to data collected after the new policy comes into effect.

Your rights to access your personal information

You have a right to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you.

To obtain a copy of the personal information we hold on you, please write to the above address or alternatively ring Credit Services on 01484 725000 and ask for a Subject Access Request form.