What information does GG Sofas collect?

When you place an order with GG Sofas via our telesales department or on our website, the information that we collect and store relating to you is primarily used to enable us to provide our products and services to you.

This is to ensure that we can carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us. Your name, address and contact details may be shared with our furniture suppliers and delivery contractors to ensure that we can fulfil our contractual arrangement with you to deliver the products and services you purchase from us. GG Sofas hold this information for the full period of the furniture guarantee to allow us to commit to the guarantee and send out our service managers if required. Furniture suppliers who deliver to you directly will be passed your full contact details, that you provide us, to allow them to fulfill this requirement. In some cases, where they are responsible for the furniture guarantee, this information may be stored for the full period of the guarantee to allow them to fulfill this. If you choose to contact us using the chat functions enabled on our websites, these are supported by selected third party providers who will store details of the chat securely on their own servers for 12 weeks. If you request a service or a repair from us this will normally be completed by a third party company, at which point we will share your name and address details with our service team who will use this only for providing you with the repair service. If you provide information to us about any person other than yourself, you must ensure that they understand how their information will be used and that they have given their permission for you to disclose it to us and for you to allow us to use it for the purposes discussed with you e.g. to arrange for delivery of the furniture. If you use our website to register an account, participate in discussion boards, enter a competition, complete a survey, or report a problem with our products and services the information you provide to us will be stored and may be used to facilitate that request or service

Why do we collect information and how do we use it?

Under the GDPR we must have a lawful reason for using (or ‘processing’) your personal information. One of the lawful reasons is ‘legitimate interests’. Legitimate Interests means that we can process your personal information if we have a genuine and legitimate reason and we are not harming any of your rights and interests in doing so.So, what does this mean? When you provide your personal details to us, we use your information for our legitimate business interests to ensure we can provide you with the best service possible and help us ensure you only receive relevant information from us. Before doing this, though, we will also carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights. Some typical examples of when we might use this approach are for preventing fraud, direct marketing, maintaining the security of our system, data analytics, enhancing, modifying or improving our services, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our advertising.We will process the personal information you have supplied to us to conduct and manage our business to enable us to give you the most appropriate marketing, information, service and products and provide the best and most secure experience. These are what we consider our ‘Legitimate Interests’.

Our interests

The following are when and why we would use this approach: Direct Marketing: If you purchased from us prior to the 9th May 2018 and have not unsubscribed from receiving marketing information, we will send you emails, SMS and postal marketing, which relates to relevant promotions and offers that we feel will be of interest to you.If you purchased from us after the 9th May 2018 we will only send you emails, and SMS marketing which relates to relevant promotions and offers that we feel will be of interest to you if you have actively consented to receiving it.This information will be shared with partners, suppliers, and agencies so they can process your personal information on our behalf. We only share information that allows them to provide their services to us or to facilitate them providing their services to you. For example, some of our service providers place advertising for us online, about our products and services. As a result, where you have indicated you are happy to receive marketing from us, you might see online advertising that we have placed on the web sites you visit, or the interactive services you use.We will continue to process your information in this way until you advise otherwise. You can opt out of this processing activity at any point using the unsubscribe link on all emails and included within SMS, and by using the contact us function on our website.We will never sell your details to other companies so that they can market to you.Add items to your basket: If you create an account on our websites and add items to your basket but the sale is not completed, we may contact you by telephone or email to ensure that there were no technical issues that meant that you were unable to complete the purchase. This information will be stored for 30 days before being deleted.Analytics: We process your personal information, collected as part of your furniture purchases for the purposes of customer analysis, assessment, profiling and direct marketing, on a personalised or aggregated basis, to help us with our activities and to provide you with the most relevant information as long as this does not harm any of your rights and interests.This information will be used to administer our websites and telephone services, and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes. It allows us to improve our websites and telephone services to ensure that information is provided in the most effective manner for you (and for your device). It allows you to participate in the interactive features of our service if you choose to do so. It will also allow us to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you.The personal information collected in this way is held on file for as long as necessary to provide the products and fulfil the transactions you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes and enforcing our agreements.

Your interests

When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

How do we store your data?

Any personal data that is provided to us is stored on our secure servers and/or those of the service provider hosting our site on our behalf. Any download of information relating to any transactions entered into on our site that will be encrypted to help ensure its safety. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share passwords with anyone.GG Sofas will only retain personal data for as long as is necessary to provide the products and fulfil the transactions you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations. If you have any questions relating to our retention or destruction of your data, please contact us using the details set out in the Contact Us section. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (EU 2016/679), we employ strict physical, electronic and administrative security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage both on-line and off-line. The transmission of information via the internet is, however, not secure and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of data sent to us electronically by you. Any transmission of such data is therefore entirely at your own risk. If you have any questions relating to security of your data, please contact us using the details set out in the Contact Us section.

Legal Obligations

You should be aware that if we are requested by the police or any other regulatory or government authority investigating suspected illegal activities to provide your personal information, we may be obliged to do so. Where we sell part or all of our business to a third party, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective or actual seller or buyer of such business or assets. Where we are legally required to disclose your information or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions or other agreements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety or those of our customers or other third parties.

Third Party Links

You may find links to third party websites on our site. The operators of those websites will apply their own privacy policies and you should check them before you use them or submit any data to them. Access to information and other rights. You have the right to access information we hold about you. If you wish to exercise your right of access, you must submit a written request and provide proof of your identity before we supply the information to you.

You also have the right to:

Ask us to prevent processing that is causing – or is likely to cause – you substantial damage or distress; Require us not to make certain decisions automatically if they significantly affect you; Ask us to make any necessary changes to the personal data we hold about you in order to ensure that it is accurate and up to date; Ask us to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing in specific circumstances: Where the personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was originally collected/processed. When the individual withdraws consent. When the individual objects to the processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for continuing the processing. The personal data was unlawfully processed (i.e. otherwise in breach of the GDPR). The personal data has to be erased in order to comply with a legal obligation. The personal data is processed in relation to the offer of information society services to a child. We may refuse to comply with a request for erasure when personal data is processed for the following reasons; To exercise the right of freedom of expression and information; To comply with a legal obligation for the performance of a public interest task or exercise of official authority. For public health purposes in the public interest; Archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific research historical research or statistical purposes; or The exercise or defence of legal claims.

Intellectual property

You acknowledge and agree that all copyright, trademarks and all other intellectual property rights in all materials and/or content made available as part of your use of this website shall remain at all times with us or licensors. You are permitted to use this material only as expressly authorised by GG Sofas. You acknowledge and agree that the material and content contained within this website is made available for your personal non-commercial use only and that you may only download such material and content for the purpose of using this website. You further acknowledge that any other use of the material and content of this website is strictly prohibited and you agree not to (and agree not to assist or facilitate any third party to) copy, reproduce, transmit, publish, display, distribute, commercially exploit or create derivative works of such material and content.

Information collected

GG Sofas collects the details provided by you on registration, together with information we learn about you from your use of our service and your visits to our web site and other sites accessible from them. We also collect information about the transactions you undertake including details of payment cards used.We may collect additional information in connection with your participation in any promotions or competitions offered by us and information you provide when giving us feedback or completing profile forms. We also monitor customer traffic patterns and site use, which enables us to improve the service we provide.We do not store credit card details and we do not share customer details with any 3rd parties.

Use of your information and your preferences

We will use your information to provide and personalise our service and to detect and prevent fraud. We will also use your contact details to communicate with you. We may use your information to send you offers and news about GG Sofas group products and services or those services of other carefully selected companies which be of interest to you. We may contact you by post, email or telephone for these purposes.We like to hear your views to help us improve our service. From time to time, we may contact you by post, email, or telephone to ask your opinions. Again, if you do not want to be contacted for this purpose, please inform us at the point of sale.We may use your information to verify your identity and prevent or detect fraud. In performing these checks your information may be disclosed to credit reference agencies, who may keep a record of that information. This is not a credit check and your credit rating will be unaffected.Please note that there may be instances where it may be necessary for us to communicate with you, in any event, for administrative or operational reasons relating to our service.

Disclosures of your information

Your information may be passed to any third party companies who have involvement with your order. We will never pass your personal information to anyone else, except where we are required or permitted to do so by law, for any successors in title to our business and suppliers that process information on our behalf both in the UK and abroad. We may also use and disclose information in aggregate (so that no individual customers are identified) for marketing and strategic development purposes.

Other websites

Our web site may contain links to other web sites, which are outside our control and are not covered by this Privacy Policy. If you access other sites using the links provided, the operators of these sites may collect information from you, which will be used by them in accordance with their privacy policy, which may differ from ours.

Cookies

“Cookies” are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enables the server to collect information from the browser. You can find out more about the way cookies work on http://www.cookiecentral.com. GG Sofas uses cookies for a number of purposes, for instance to enable us to simplify the logging on process for registered users, to help ensure the security and authenticity of registered users, to provide the mechanisms for online shopping and to enable traffic monitoring.Non-registered visitors of the site are sent anonymous cookies to keep track of their browsing patterns and build up a demographic profile. In addition, any visitor who has clicked on a GG Sofas advertisement on another site that links to GG Sofas will be sent anonymous cookies that will allow us to analyse advertising effectiveness and manage our relationship with affiliate sites.Whilst you do not need to allow your browser to accept cookies in order to browse much of our web site or to access many of our services, you must have cookies enabled if you wish to shop online at any of our stores or access any areas reserved for registered users.Most browsers allow you to turn off the cookie function. If you want to know how to do this please look at the help menu on your browser. As described above this will restrict the online simply stylish sofas services you can use.

Miscellaneous provisions

The contract between us shall be governed by the laws of England and any dispute between us will be resolved exclusively in the courts of England. English is the only language offered for the conclusion of the contract. Our products are chosen on the basis that they will be used for domestic use. If you are planning to use them for business purposes please make sure that you are covered by the appropriate insurance. Where you decide to use the products in the course of a business, we exclude (to the fullest extent permitted by law) those warranties and conditions relating to fitness for a particular purpose. Our maximum liability to business users arising out of or in connection with the products shall be limited to the replacement value of the product in question (except in the case of death or personal injury caused by our negligence or in respect of fraud). In relation to business users, we do not accept liability for the fitness of goods for business purposes, nor do we accept liability for loss of use of the item nor any loss over and above the cost of the item in the event of a claim for breach of warranty or condition.GG Sofas shall be under no liability for any delay or failure to deliver products or otherwise perform any obligation as specified in these terms and conditions if the same is wholly or partly caused whether directly or indirectly by circumstances beyond its reasonable control.You may not assign or sub-contract any of your rights or obligations under these terms and conditions or any related order for products to any third party. If any portion of these terms and conditions is held by any competent authority to be invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part, the validity or enforceability of the other sections of these terms and conditions shall not be affected.