Homerads Privacy Policy - Last updated April 2023

Personal information is any information relating to an individual who can be identified directly or indirectly, often by name, account number, location, an online identifier or other factors specific to their identity.

Personal information may include “special category data” relating to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, membership of a trade union, physical or mental health and criminal records and allegations.

As a rule, we do not collect “special category data” about visitors to our website or our customers or suppliers. The exception is where we identify suspected criminal activity such as fraudulent claims or the use of stolen payment card details. In this case we will record details of the suspected criminal activity and may take appropriate action, including refusing to accept orders, make payments or give refunds. We may also report the incident to the relevant bank or payment card issuer or to the police or other appropriate authorities.

See below for details of how we may use your personal information:

Website Visitors: The personal information we collect about you and how we use it.

You can visit and browse our website without providing your name or contact details.
Like many websites, our server logs capture details of your operating system, browser software, IP address and Uniform Resource Locator (URL), including the date and time of your visit.
We use cookies to analyse how our site is used by visitors and to provide some of the functionality.
You may choose to provide your contact details (name, address, business, job title, email address, telephone number) if you do any of these things:
Shop online (either as a guest or using your account)
Enter a competition
Sign up for news and offers
Request a brochure or make an enquiry
When you enter a competition or promotional feature.

Separate terms and conditions may apply when you open an account or if you decide to participate in a competition so please make sure that you read them at the relevant time.

Customers: The personal information we collect about you and how we use it

If you purchase products or services from us, we may use your personal information in the following ways.

Enquiries and Information:

To answer your questions or provide you with information you have requested
To keep track of sales and enquiries
To keep you informed about our products and services
To notify you about important changes or developments to our site or services
To provide a more personalised experience by showing you the most relevant products and offers online, and sending you the most relevant information about our products and services

Orders and Account Management:

To process your order
To help with any questions if you have started an order but not completed it
To manage deliveries, returns and refunds
To manage your account, including carrying out identity checks (if applicable)
To manage your credit account (if applicable) including carrying out credit checks

Customer Relationship:

To monitor how our customers transact with us online, for example by checking who has redeemed vouchers
To contact you (under Legitimate Interests) for your views on our products and services
Trustpilot: To invite our customers via email to submit a review of our products or services. You can email us to unsubscribe from receiving such messages at any time
To publish trends and/or to improve usefulness and content of our website
To track activity on our site to provide a more personalised online experience and to send you the most relevant information about our products and services
To link with social media sites and services, for example, for advertising purposes
For market research purposes, by tracking activity on our site or in store (on an anonymous basis) to identify trends and/or to improve usefulness and content
To measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns using email analytics to track emails sent, how many were opened and whether links were followed

Other:

For product liability purposes
To deal with enquiries and complaints
For claims management and insurance purposes
For general record keeping purposes
Understanding Our Customers

So that we can provide a better service, we want to understand the shopping patterns of our customers, how customers select the products and services they ultimately buy, which apps and technology customers prefer to use, and how successful our advertising and promotional campaigns have been. We may use a number of different techniques to do this:

We never see or store your payment card details. We do use a unique encrypted token that can tell the same payment card is used in different places
We monitor which customers redeem vouchers using a code that makes the offer personal to you
We use email analytics to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. Marketing emails contain a pixel which tracks how many emails were sent, how many were opened, whether emails were forwarded and whether links in the email were followed
We may connect with social media sites so that we can better target our advertising while you are using these services and improve the relevance of what you see
We also use cookies to track online activity. The information collected by cookies does not in itself identify a visitor to our site but if you are a customer or account holder we may be able to identify you from both sets of information combined

Keeping You Informed

If you sign up to receive updates or have bought or enquired about our products or services, we may use the information we collect to let you know about our other products and services which may be of interest to you and to keep you updated with information about promotional offers and what is coming soon.
If you leave items in your shopping basket on our website without completing a purchase, we may send you an email to follow up and ask if you need any help with your order.
We review the products and services you buy and we also analyse your use of our website and the searches you make on this and other websites. We use this information to tailor the marketing you receive from us so it is as relevant as possible. This may include serving you with adverts on social media and other third party websites. If you agree, we may pass your information to suppliers and manufacturers who are interested in getting in touch with you about their products and services. You can opt out of receiving marketing communications from us at any time by contacting our team on admin@homerads.com See Your Rights below for more details.
Call Recording

Some telephone calls may be recorded or monitored, for example calls to our customer services teams. Call recording and monitoring may be carried out for the following purposes:

Training and quality control
As evidence of conversations
For the prevention or detection of crime (e.g. fraudulent claims)

Retention

We will retain your personal information for as long as needed for the legitimate business purposes described above.

If you are a visitor to the website, we will retain your information for a limited period in order to respond to your query, provide you with the information you require or to send you updates on our products and services for as long as you indicate that you are happy for us to do so.

If you make a one-off purchase, we normally keep records of the transaction for 7 years. If you are an account customer or a supplier, we normally keep records for 7 years after the closure of your account or the last purchase or sale you made. In all cases, this is for accounting, tax and product liability purposes.

Your information may be retained for longer than this if there are valid legal grounds for us to do so, for example if required by law or court order, or as needed to defend or pursue legal claims.

Working with Service Providers

Like most organisations, we engage service providers to run our website and IT systems, to help us administer accounts, to conduct credit checks and fraud screening, and to handle marketing campaigns. We also work with a large number of suppliers who provide products and delivery services to us.

We will only provide these companies with the information they need to deliver the service we have engaged them for and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose. Whenever we share personal information about our customers or visitors to our website with our service providers, we will put in place contracts which require the service provider to protect the information and keep it secure. See also Transferring information to other countries below.

Other Disclosures

We may also disclose your personal information if we believe that the disclosure is necessary to enforce or apply our terms and conditions or otherwise protect and defend our rights, property or the safety of our customers and other users of the website.

We may disclose and/or transfer your personal information in connection with a reorganisation of all or part of our business, if the majority of our shares are bought by another company or if we transfer all or some of our assets to another company.

Security

We are committed to safeguarding the personal information you provide to us. We use appropriate measures to protect the information that you submit through our website. We restrict access to personal information. Only employees who need the information in order to do their jobs have access to it.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via our website and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will take appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal data against loss, theft and unauthorised use, access or modification.

If you have created an account or registered to use any online services, your account details may be password protected. It is your responsibility to keep your password confidential and to sign out once you have finished browsing.

Changes to this policy

This privacy policy was last updated in April 2023. Any changes to this privacy policy will be posted here. Please refer back to this page regularly.

Links to other websites

Links may be provided on our website to other websites that are not operated by us. If you use these links, you will leave our website. You should note that we are not responsible for the contents of any third party website. External sites will have their own privacy policies which you should read carefully.

Your Rights

You can opt out of receiving marketing at any time by emailing our team on admin@homerads.com or by contacting our customer service team.

If you prefer not to receive marketing which is tailored to suit your customer profile, please contact our customer service team on admin@homerads.com

If you opt out of receiving marketing emails from HomeRads, you will no longer receive any of the tracking pixels that are associated with them.

Access and Correction

If you would like to correct or update any of your other personal information, or if you would like a copy of the personal information we hold, please contact us on admin@homerads.com. We may need to ask for proof of your identity before we can respond to your request.

We are committed to ensuring that all customers can exercise their data privacy rights without barriers. Therefore if you require any reasonable adjustments to be made in order to access and/or receive your personal data in a way which meets your individual needs, please inform us either in an email or over the phone and we will work with you to carry out your request in the most suitable way possible.

Other Rights

You may also have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

In certain circumstances, the right to restrict or object to the processing of your personal information (including profiling), or request that your personal information is deleted

Where you have provided personal information voluntarily, or otherwise consented to its use, the right to withdraw your consent

In certain circumstances, the right to receive a copy of the personal information which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or to request that we transfer that information to another party (known as “data portability”)

The right to complain to a Data Protection Authority (see further below)

If you have a query about this privacy policy or wish to exercise your rights, please contact the Group’s Data Protection Officer by writing to them - admin@homesupply.com

Legal Basis for Processing

Some of the information we collect is provided by you voluntarily (and therefore with your permission), for example when you sign up to join a mailing list or submit a query.

If you purchase items from us, or if you supply products or services to us, most of the information we collect is necessary so that we can fulfill the contract between us.

The remainder of the information is collected for our legitimate business purposes, which include:

To keep in touch with current, past and prospective customers
To provide online account management and related services
To gain an understanding of how our customers interact with us so we can provide the most relevant products and services
To monitor the use of our website and improve its facilities
To identify suspected criminal activity and take appropriate action
To manage our supply chain and the relationship with our suppliers
To protect and defend our rights
When we collect personal information from you we will indicate whether it is mandatory or voluntary – this is done on the website by using asterisks to mark mandatory fields.