Privacy

This Privacy Notice explains in detail the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we’ll store and handle that data, and keep it safe.

We know that there’s a lot of information here, but we want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how City Hire uses your data.

We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

It’s likely that we’ll need to update this Privacy Notice from time to time. We’ll notify you of any significant changes, but you’re welcome to come back and check it whenever you wish.

When you are using the City Hire website, City Tool Hire Ltd is the data controller.

The law on data protection 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.

When collecting your personal data, we’ll always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.

Contractual obligations

In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations.

For example, if you order an item from us for home delivery, we’ll collect your address details to deliver your purchase, and pass them to our courier.

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 City Hire 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 send you or make available personalised offers.

We also combine the shopping history of many customers to identify trends and ensure we can keep up with demand, or develop new products/services.

We will also use your address details to send you direct marketing information by post, telling you about products and services that we think might interest you.

• When you visit our website, and use your account to buy products and services from City Hire on the phone, in a shop or online.
• When you create an account with us.
• When you purchase a product or service in store or by phone but don’t have (or don’t use) an account.
• When you engage with us on social media.
• When you download or install one of our apps.
• When you contact us by any means with queries, complaints etc.
• When you ask one of our staff to email you information about a product or service.
• When you enter prize draws or competitions.
• When you book any kind of appointment with us or book to attend an event.
• 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 the staff member 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, a staff member 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 park which has CCTV systems operated for the security of both customers and staff. These systems may record your image during your visit.

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 through contact centres, in store, online or by using one of our apps.

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, voucher redemptions, brands you show interest in, web pages you visit and how and when you contact us.

Copies of documents you provide to prove your age or identity where the law requires this. (including your passport and driver's licence). This will include details of your full name, address, date of birth and facial image. If you provide a passport, the data will also include your place of birth, gender and nationality.

Details of your shopping preferences.

Details of your visits to our websites or apps, and which site you came from to ours.

Information gathered by the use of cookies in your web browser.

Personal details which help us to recommend items of interest.

We’ll only ask for and use your personal data collected for recommending items of interest and to tailor your shopping experience with us. Of course, it’s always your choice whether you share such details with us.

Payment card information.

Your comments and product reviews.

Your image may be recorded on CCTV when you visit our premises.

Your car number plate may be recorded at some of our car parks to manage parking restrictions.

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.

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

To process any orders that you make by using our website, apps, 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 staff from crime, we operate CCTV systems in our premises 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 is 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 contact centre 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 or apps, 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 receive app notifications and/or 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 in your online account.

To process your booking/appointment requests. Sometimes, we’ll need to share your details with a third party who is providing a service. We do so to maintain our appointment with you. Without sharing your personal data, we’d be unable to fulfil your request.

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 websites and apps using ‘https’ technology.

Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data such as payment card information) is secured and tokenised to ensure it is protected.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we carry out penetration testing to identify ways to further strengthen security.

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 five years so we can comply with our legal and contractual obligations. In the case of certain products, such as electrical and nursery items, we’ll keep the data for 10 years.

Warranties

If your order included a warranty, the associated personal data will be kept until the end of the warranty period.

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties.

For example, delivery couriers, technicians visiting your home, for fraud management, to handle complaints, to help us personalise our offers to you and so on.

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.

If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

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 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.

Data insight companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate.

Sharing your data with third parties for their own purposes:

We will only do this in very specific circumstances, for example:

With your consent, given at the time you supply your personal data, we may pass that data to a third party for their direct marketing purposes.

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, from time to time, expand, reduce or sell the Partnership 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.

We currently use the following companies, who will process your personal data as part of their contracts with us:

• Google
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Communigator
• HotJar
• Usersnap
• LinkedIn

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.
• The deletion of the data we hold about you, in specific circumstances; for example, when you withdraw consent or object, and we have no legitimate overriding interest, or once the purpose for which we hold the data has come to an end (such as the end of a warranty).
• A computer file in a common format (CSV or similar) containing the personal data that you have previously provided to us, and the right to have your information transferred to another entity where this is technically possible.
• Restriction of the use of your personal data, in specific circumstances, generally while we are deciding on an objection you have made.
• That we stop processing your personal data, in specific circumstances; for example, when you have withdrawn consent, or object for reasons related to your individual circumstances.
• 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.
• Review by a Partner of any decision made based solely on automatic processing of your data (so where no human has yet reviewed the outcome and criteria for the decision).
• You can contact us to request to exercise these rights at any time by completing an online form.
• If we choose not to action your request, we will explain the reasons for our refusal.

Your right to withdraw consent

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, such as administration of an extended warranty.

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.

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.

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.
• If you have an account, log in into your City Hire account, visit the ‘My Account’ area and change your preferences.
• In our apps, you can manage your preferences and opt out from one or all of the different push notifications by selecting or deselecting the relevant options in the ‘Settings’ section.
• Write to City Tool Hire Ltd, 5&6 Boeing Way, Southall, Middlesex, UB2 5LB

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

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

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 5&6 Boeing Way, International Trading Estate, Southall, Middlesex, UB2 5LB

This notice was last updated on 05/06/2018