Privacy Policy
Privacy policy
Ruffingtons is committed to safeguarding, protecting and respecting your privacy and in compliance with The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This privacy policy explains how we use any personal information we collect about you when you use this website or that you provide to Ruffingtons voluntarily when you contact us directly via email, telephone or via our social media platforms.
Ruffingtons is a trade division of Fold Hill Foods Limited. Fold Hill Foods Ltd is the data controller (registered in England and Wales with company number 07087314) with its registered office at Fold Hill Foods Ltd, Old Leake, Boston, Lincs, PE22 9RJ. Tel: 0800 0988057 Email: [email protected].
At Ruffingtons we are dedicated to safeguarding and preserving your privacy when visiting our site or communicating electronically with us. We do update this Privacy Policy from time to time so please do return and review this document regularly. This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Cookie Policy.
If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide personal information to our site. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.
1. What information do we collect about you, what is the lawful basis for processing it and how will we use it?
Information you provide to us:
Placing an order with Ruffingtons:
We collect information about you when you register online with us to create an account and/or place an order for products via our website (we will collect your name, address, telephone number, email and payment card details, as well as your password if you choose to register an account with us). Collecting and processing this information allows us to fulfill your order and therefore our legal obligation (and contract) with you.
Processing your order: when you place an order with us via our website or over the telephone, your order details (as well as your personal details and payment details) are securely uploaded to our website. This enables us to process and fulfill your order. While your personal details (name, address, email, telephone) are securely stored so that you can easily re-order if you wish to register an account with us, we don’t store your credit card details. We use software called Stripe to process and take your payment – your personal details are processed by Stripe simply to enable us to complete the transaction with you (see below for details). Your name, address, telephone and delivery instructions will be transferred to a third party courier company called DPD. This is so that we can deliver your order to you and update you with estimated delivery slots as part of our service to you (see below for details). If you do not want DPD to use your telephone number, please let us know when you place your order.
If you choose to register with Ruffingtons when purchasing via our website, your personal details will be held in a secure database so that when you log in to our website you can see your previous order details. You can choose to delete your account at any time. If you choose to shop as a ‘guest’ your personal details will not be stored. If you choose to register with us online we will send you a welcome email, to verify your account when you register with our site and other emails in relation to account management or system maintenance.
Once you have placed an order with us we send you two emails to confirm your order status – the first is to confirm that your order has been placed, the second is to confirm that it has been despatched. We send these emails simply to fulfil our legal obligation to send your order out to you in a timely manner. Under this same legal obligation, we may email you to notify you of any changes to our service or delays with your order.
We will not pass on your personal information to any other brands within the Fold Hill Foods Ltd group.
We may send your details to, and also use information from, credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies. We will only do this in cases where we are authorised by the law (e.g. for the purposes of fraud prevention).
Please note we will not use any financial or credit card information for any purpose other than to discharge our legal / regulatory duties and to process payments made by you for our products and services or due to you by agreement (e.g. refunds).
Newsletter:
You can sign up to our Ruffingtons newsletter by giving your consent via the sign up box on our website. You can unsubscribe from these mailings at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe button in the footer of the newsletter.
Complaints and reviews:
We also collect personal information when you voluntarily provide feedback via email, social media or telephone (for example, if your product was faulty and you wish to raise a complaint ). We will only process this information for the purpose of fulfilling our contract with you i.e. to replace a faulty item, to enable our technical team to investigate a problem with the product. After this time, all information will be removed from our system. If you have contacted us to make a complaint regarding a food product, an investigation is launched by our technical team. By law our technical team have to record the details of the complaint and your name and address as part of their due diligence to appropriate food safety laws. This information is stored securely and has to be held by law for 5 years.
Contact form via our website and via email:
We collect your name, email and telephone number when you fill out a contact form via our website as well as information (including details about your pet(s)) that you supply when you contact us by telephone or email. We will only use this information to respond to your enquiry. Once this is dealt with, we will delete your details.
Meeting us at a show or event (consumer or trade):
If you provide us with personal details at an event or show so that we can send you a sample of our food or for further information we will simply take this information so that we can respond to your request. This information will not be stored once your enquiry has been dealt with by our sales team.
Information we collect about you:
Information we collect about you with regard to each of your visits to our site:
Technical information, including your website login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser types and versions, operating system and platform; and information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site; products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.
We collect this information so that we can improve and test our website and to help in our efforts to keep it safe and secure. Please see our Cookie Policy for details.
To opt in and out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Information we collect about you with regards to your orders:
- to research and improve our products and services
- to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you, and to deliver relevant advertising to our customers.
2. Using your information in accordance with data protection laws
Data protection laws require that we meet certain conditions before we are allowed to use your data in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. We take our responsibilities under data protection laws extremely seriously, including meeting these conditions. To use your personal data, we will rely on the following conditions, depending on the activities we are carrying out:
As an entity established under the laws of England and Wales, Ruffingtons is obliged to comply with UK laws and guidance provided by UK regulatory bodies. In particular, we will need to process your personal information to verify your identity, your source of funds for anti-money laundering and fraud purposes, and to establish whether you have been barred from using our site due to objectionable behaviour. You will not be able to object to processing or ask for the deletion of your personal information insofar as it falls under this category.
Necessary for the entry into / performance of a contract: When you enter into a transaction with us, a contract between you and us will have been entered into. In order for us to fulfil our obligations under that contract (e.g. to allow you to purchase goods from us), we will need to collect and process your personal information. Failure to provide the requisite personal information on sign-up and financial information on entering into the transaction or objecting to this type of processing / exercising your deletion rights will unfortunately mean we cannot provide our goods / services to you.
Consent: We may send you marketing emails in the future in the form of our newsletter about us and our goods, services, news and events where you have consented to sign up to our emails.
Legitimate interests: To use your personal data for any other purpose described in this Privacy Policy, we will rely on a condition known as “legitimate interests”. This requires us to carry out a balancing test of our interests in using your personal data (for example, in order to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us), against the interests you have as a citizen and the rights you have under data protection laws (for example, to not have your data sold to third party marketing companies without your knowledge, or not store your personal data in insecure or unstable countries or regions). The outcome of this balancing test will determine whether we can use your personal data in the ways described in this Privacy Policy (except in relation to certain marketing activities, where we will always rely on your explicit consent). We will always act reasonably and give full and proper consideration to your interests in carrying out this balancing test.
3. Data storage & transfers:
All information that you provide to use are stored on our secure servers – the Ruffingtons website is hosted in the UK by Nimbus Hosting. Click here to read their GDPR compliancy statement. In the case of payment information, these details are held with our secure payment provider, Stripe (click here for their privacy policy).
Where you have chosen a password to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
Although we will do our absolute utmost to protect your personal data and are continually working to improve our website, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.
4. Disclosure of your information
We will not share your personal details with any other groups within Fold Hill Foods Ltd. We will only share your personal information with third party service providers if it is necessary or reasonably required for any of the purposes listed below.
We will only disclose your information to:
Suppliers for the performance of any contract we enter into with you (DPD and Stripe as detailed above)
third party suppliers and service providers to the extent they assist the group with its legal / regulatory obligations e.g. providers of services in respect of anti-money laundering, fraud, verification etc.;
Google Analytics to help us in the improvement, service and optimisation of our site (please see our Cookie Policy. To opt in and out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.)
law enforcement agencies if we consider your behaviour to be unlawful, offensive, inappropriate or objectionable on our site.
We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation;
In the event that we consider selling or buying any business or assets or merge or enter into a joint venture with another business entity in which case we will disclose your personal data to any prospective sellers or buyers of such business or assets;
In the event of an insolvency situation;
To protect our rights, our property, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
5. Data portability:
Under the GDPR you have the right to request your personal data that we hold in a commonly used and machine readable form e.g via CSV files. This information will be sent free of charge.
6. Access to your information and correction
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please email or write to us at the following address. There is no charge for this service. Information will be provided without delay and at the latest within one month of receipt. If you make the request electronically we will provide this information in a commonly used electronic format.
Under the GDPR you have the right to obtain:
Confirmation that your data is being processed
Access to your personal data – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate. We will respond within one month.
The right to erasure (known as the ‘right to be forgotten’): subject access requests – under the new GDPR regulations which come into force in May 2018, you can request for us to delete any personal data that we hold about you if there is no reason for its continued processing. We will do this within one month and there will be no charge for this.
We can refuse or charge for requests that are manifestly unfounded or excessive. If we refuse a request we will tell you why. You will have the right to complain to the supervisory authority and to a judicial remedy. You must do this without undue delay and at the latest within one month.
We would provide data electronically and in a commonly used format e.g. csv file.
7. Other websites
Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for their policies whatsoever as we have no control over them.
8. Safeguarding of your personal data
Ruffingtons complies with processing legislation to ensure that all data is processed in accordance with data protection laws and in a manner that ensures appropriate security of all personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. We regularly review our processes to ensure that all the appropriate measures are used.
9. Changes to our privacy policy
We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page as well as communicating to you via email. This privacy policy was updated 19.07.2024
10. How to contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you: by email to [email protected] by post to Ruffingtons, Old Leake, Boston, Lincs, PE22 9RJ or via phone on 0800 098 8057.
