General Privacy Policy


This privacy notice only applies to those contacting the Buy With Confidence Central Administration/Operations Group, leaving feedback, references or complaints Via The BuyWithConfidence.gov.uk Website, or searching for businesses

If you are a business applying to or already a member of Buy With Confidence, please refer to the relevant Privacy Policy by clicking here

Please note this privacy policy only applies to contact, feedback, references and complaints that are routed through the Buy With Confidence Central Administration/Operations Group. The ways to contact the Central Administration are by email at admin@buywithconfidence.gov.uk; telephone on 01392 383430; by post at Buy With Confidence, c/o Trading Standards, County Hall, Topsham Road, Exeter, EX2 4QD; or via any of the forms on the BuyWithConfidence.gov.uk website. If you contact Buy With Confidence in any other way – such as via a Scheme Operator directly or through the Citizens Advice Consumer Service – you should consult their Privacy Policy.

Who is collecting and using your personal data?
The Buy With Confidence Partnership* and the Scheme Operator for your area or the business your contact refers to [hereafter referred to collectively as Buy With Confidence] will act as a “co-data controllers” for any personal data that you provide to us. All Scheme Operators are local authorities and you may also wish to refer to their policies as to how they deal with data, as in some circumstances (mainly uses of data for Public Protection or Criminal Investigation), their policies will supersede this privacy notice. If you are not sure who your local Scheme Operator is, please email admin@buywithconfidence.gov.uk to find out. We will ensure that the data given to us is processed in line with your rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulations and associated data protection laws currently applicable in the UK.

Please note that failure to provide your personal data means we will be unable to publish your feedback or deal with your complaint, as it is essential we have a means, if necessary, of verifying that feedback is legitimate (e.g. it has not been left by a business rival), while complaint handling relies on us being able to liaise with both parties.

Why are we collecting your personal data?
We are collecting your personal data for the following purposes;

Feedback/References: Any personal data you provide will be only be used for the purpose of potentially verifying you really are a customer of that business and to ensure a record is kept of who left the feedback/reference and when in case of later dispute. None of your personal data will be published publicly. When you leave feedback you may choose whether you wish your comments and ratings to be published on the website or the business told what you have said – Buy With Confidence will abide by whatever permissions you indicate. Your personal data will be held securely within our systems, available only to the Buy With Confidence Operations Group and the Scheme Operator for the business the feedback relates to.

Complaints: Any personal data you provide in an initial complaint submitted through the Buy With Confidence website will only be used for the purpose of following up your complaint and potentially offering help or mediation. None of your personal data will be published publicly, and you may choose whether your complaint is shared with the business it is about (although if we cannot, it may limit the amount of help we can offer). Your personal details will be held securely within our systems, available only to the Buy With Confidence Operations Group and the Scheme Operator for the business the complaint relates to. After we have received your initial complaint via the website or any other means, any further communication or follow-up concerning that complaint will be handled by the Scheme Operator for that business, and will follow the applicable Privacy Policies for their organisation. Please refer to them for further information. We are aware that complaints may contain sensitive personal information and so will handle the data accordingly.

Contact Form/Email/Telephone: Buy With Confidence will hold your data in order to fulfil whatever purpose we reasonably believe you would wish for us to use it for in order to follow-up your request. This may involve sharing it with the Scheme Operator for a particular area or business. Your details will not be shared with anyone else without your explicit consent. A record may be kept of the contact afterwards in case there is need for further follow-up in the future and to help monitor member businesses.

Search: If you input your postcode in order to search for a business, this will be recorded and retained by Buy With Confidence for statistical purposes. The information will only be accessible to the Operations Group and the Scheme Operator for that postcode area, and will not be passed to any other body. It will solely be used to help us better understand what people are searching for and where, in order to try and provide a better service.

As Buy With Confidence is designed to protect the public from rogue traders, our basis for holding and gathering personal data about people leaving feedback and complaints is the execution of a Public Task.

Please note this website, like most others, includes Cookies, most notably ones from Google, which helps us to monitor how many people have come to the site and which pages they have visited. This includes storing the ip addresses of the computers that visit the site and which pages they have visited for a period of up to 12 months. This ip and any associated data is for internal use only and will never be shared publicly.

Who we will share your personal data with?
To deliver services to you it may be necessary for us to share your personal data with the following organisations / partners;

Your Buy With Confidence website data will be held in the UK on servers controlled by our data processor, Siteon Limited, registered at Leofric House, Binley Road, Coventry, CV3 1JN. Siteon may only access and process data controlled by Buy With Confidence under permission from the Buy With Confidence Partnership.

Data held directly by the Buy With Confidence Partnership will be held securely by Devon, Somerset & Torbay Trading Standards, who can be contacted at Devon County Council, County Hall, Topsham Road, Exeter, EX2 4QD.

Data held by the local Scheme Operator will be held on their systems and may be passed to their partners. For further details please contact the Scheme Operator and/or look up their privacy policies.

 

How long will we hold your personal data?
Once feedback or a complaint is received, Buy With Confidence reserves the right to hold relevant data for up to six years. While any request for deletion of personal data before that time will be handled on a case-by-case basis, Buy With Confidence may reject this request if it will undermine the Scheme’s Public Task objectives, or make it impossible to continue the business’ membership. If personal data related to a particular piece of feedback is deleted, it will also result in the deletion of the comments and star ratings for that feedback (i.e. the feedback cannot remain live on the website if there is no record of who left it).

Exercising your rights
Under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulations you have the following rights;

Should you wish to exercise any of your rights, you should contact us here: admin@buywithconfidence.gov.uk (Please note, this contacts the Buy With Confidence Partnership, who may pass the request to the local Scheme Operator, if appropriate).

Please note these rights are not absolute and each request will be treated individually in accordance with the applicable laws.

Your right to complain
If you wish to complain about the way that your personal data has been handled by Buy With Confidence, you should contact us here: admin@buywithconfidence.gov.uk. Your complaint will then be investigated in accordance with our Customer Feedback/Complaints Procedure.  If you remain dissatisfied with the way your personal data has been handled, you may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details are below.

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Email: casework@ico.org.uk

*The Buy With Confidence Partnership consists of the equal partners Devon, Somerset & Torbay Trading Standards Services, Hampshire County Council Trading Standards Service and Trading Standards South West Community Interest Company (which is wholly and jointly owned by 14 local authority Trading Standards Services).

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