Privacy & Cookie Policy

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on the 1st of August 2023.

Introduction

Tong Garden Centre is committed to protecting the privacy of all our customers, employees and suppliers. We take our duty to process your personal data very seriously. We would never sell your data to a third party. This privacy policy tells you how and why we collect information, how we use it and what controls we have in place to protect your personal data.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.

We are Tong Garden Centre / TGC (2015) Limited, a company registered in England under number 09409991. Our registered office is Tong Lane, Bradford BD4 0RY. We are registered under the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration reference ZA136522

Tong Garden Centre is the Data Controller. Get in touch by contacting the Data Protection Officer in writing at the above address, emailing us at privacy@tonggardencentre.co.uk or you can contact the centre on 0113 285 3506 to ask any questions you may have.

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.

Contractual obligations: In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligation, for example we’ll collect your address details to deliver a purchase for home delivery 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 pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting Tong Garden Centre 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.

• When you join our mailing list ‘Grow With Us’
• When you sign up for an Evergreens card
• When you visit our website to buy products online and browse our content
• When you contact us by any means with queries, complaints etc.
• When you order a product in store or by phone
• When you engage with us on social media
• When you ask us to contact you with information about a product or service.
• When you enter prize draws or competitions
• When you book to attend an event, for example the grotto or afternoon tea
• When you sign in to Grass Hoppers
• When you choose to complete any surveys we send you
• When you comment on or review our products and services
• When you fill in any forms For example, if an accident happens in store, we may collect your personal data
• When you use our carpark and centre, we have a CCTV system

• The information you provide us with when signing up for an Evergreens card or to join our mailing list ‘Grow With Us’. This includes contact details including name, address, email and telephone number, gender, date of birth and any preferences you tell us about
• The information you provide us with in store or online when you order a product or book to attend an event including contact details, payment information and IP address
• The information you provide when entering a competition or prize draw
  • Your comments and feedback including complaints, surveys and product reviews
  • The information you provide when completing any form – for example an accident report
  • Your image may be recorded on CCTV when you visit the garden centre or use our carpark
  • Your social media username, if you interact with us through those channels, to help us respond to your comments, questions or feedback
  • Information gathered by the use of cookies in your web browser. Learn more about how we use cookies and similar technologies here
  • To deliver the best possible web experience, we look at your browsing history and habits by collecting technical information about your internet connection and browser as well as the country where your computer is located, the web pages viewed during your visit, the advertisements you clicked on, and any search terms you entered.

We primarily use data to keep in touch with you, process any orders you place with us and to improve our customer experience. The data privacy law allows this as part of our legitimate interest in understanding our customers and providing the highest levels of service. You are in control of the data you share with us on this basis so you can manage your preferences at any time, choose not to share your personal data with us and you can opt out at any time.

• To action any orders that you make on our website or in store in order to process your order and comply with our legal obligations
• 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 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.
• To protect our customers, premises, assets and team from crime, we operate CCTV systems in store and car parks which record images for security. We do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests.
• 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 or post about relevant products and services including special offers, discounts, promotions, events, competitions and so on. You are free to update your preferences or opt out 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.
• To display the most relevant content to you on our websites, we’ll use data and browsing history. We do so on the basis of your consent for our website to place cookies or similar technology on your device.
• 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.
• To comply with our contractual or legal obligations to share data with law enforcement.
• 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.
• To process your booking/appointment requests (for example a grotto visit or afternoon tea booking). Sometimes, we’ll need to share your details with a third party who is providing a service (such as delivery couriers or guest presenter). 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 have processes in place to ensure personal data stored digitally or physically onsite is protected and handled securely by the relevant people
• We use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protocol to transfer data between your browser and our website in order to ensure all communications including transactions are encrypted.
• Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data such as payment card information is secured and encrypted to ensure it is protected.
• We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and 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.

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties, for example delivery couriers, complaint handling or for fraud management. When working with any third party, we will take all the necessary steps 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 be requested to be deleted or rendered anonymous.
• Examples of the kind of third parties we work with are:
  • Operational companies such as delivery couriers
  • IT companies who support our website and other business systems
  • Direct marketing companies who help us to manage our 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. See our Cookies Policy for details.
  • Data insight companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate
• 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 example to receive a free photographic sitting when you book a child’s party at Grass Hoppers
• 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 business 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.

In order to help improve our customer experience or fulfil our contractual obligation, we may share your data with the following companies, who will process your personal data as part of their contracts with us:

• Google https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Twitter https://twitter.com/en/privacy#update
• Instagram https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875?helpref=page_content
• YouTube https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801895?hl=en&ref_topic=2803240
• Facebook https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update
• Tainted Media https://www.taintedmedia.co.uk/cookies
• Duologi Finance https://duologi.com/privacy-policy/
• Shawbrook Bank https://www.shawbrook.co.uk/privacy-notice/
• Globalpayments https://www.globalpayments.com/en-gb/privacy-statement
• Paypal https://www.paypal.com/va/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full
• Digitickets http://www.digitickets.co.uk/privacy-policy
• Mailjet https://www.mailjet.com/security-privacy/
• Lakeland Computers https://www.lccs.co.uk/privacy-policy
• Man-sys https://www.man-sys.co.uk/privacy-policy/
• Sage http://www.sage.com/company/privacy-notice-and-cookies
• APC https://www.apc-direct.co.uk/content/privacy-policy
• Pink Link https://www.thepinklink.co.uk/privacy-policy/

You have a number of rights in relation to your information, and can make a number of choices about how we collect and use it. For example, you can decide not to receive marketing material from us, tell us how you want to receive marketing communications from us, and object to some of the ways in which we use your information.

Note that some of the choices or changes you make may impact our ability to communicate with you in the way you may expect or process an order, complaint or request you have made

• The right to be informed – This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us
• The right of access – If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month
• The right to rectification – If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it
• The right to erase – You can ask us to remove your personal details from our records
• The right to restrict processing – You can ask us to stop using your personal data
• The right to data portability – You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes
• The right to object – You can ask to be excluded from marketing activity
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing

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.

For more information on your individual rights, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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 have right of access to your personal information. If you wish to make a subject access request,

please write to: The Data Protection Officer, Tong Garden Centre, Tong Lane, Bradford BD4 0RY.

Any personal data captured, processed and stored for our existing and potential employees is detailed in our HR and Employment Privacy Policy. To request a copy of our HR and Employment Privacy Policy, please email hello@tonggardencentre.co.uk

Cookies are small text files that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive to enable our systems to recognise your browser and help us to track visitors to our websites and digital services so we can better understand what portions of the website to best serve you. It may not be possible to place orders and purchase goods and services using the Website or Digital Services unless you have cookies turned on and we suggest that you leave them turned on for this purpose.

Our cookies enable us to provide features such as the ability to store items in your Shopping Basket between visits.

To find out more about the types of cookies we use on the websites and digital services, how we use them and how you can change your cookies settings, please read our Cookies Policy.