Privacy Policy

At Shawcity Ltd, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may update this Policy from time to time; as and when we do, we will announce that a new version has been published. When this happens, please check this page to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to marketing@shawcity.co.uk or in writing to Marketing Department, Shawcity Ltd, 91-92 Shrivenham Hundred Business Park, Watchfield, Oxfordshire SN6 8TY. Alternatively, you can telephone 01793 780622.

Who are we?

We’re Shawcity Limited, the UK and Ireland’s largest independent supplier of health and safety, occupational hygiene and environmental monitoring instruments to hire or buy. We also have an in-house service centre where we calibrate, service and repair instruments for our customers. Shawcity Ltd is a company limited by guarantee (no. 1273269). The registered address is 91-92 Shrivenham Hundred Business Park, Watchfield, Oxfordshire SN6 8TY. Shawcity’s parent company is Ion Science Ltd, The Hive, Butts Lane, Fowlmere, Royston, SG8 7SL, which also has subsidiaries in the USA, Germany, Italy, France and China. We distribute products from a range of manufacturers based around the world, including the UK, Europe, America and Asia and we ship products predominantly within the EMEA region but occasionally to the ROW.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you contact us to make an enquiry about products and services, create a website account with us, make a purchase via the website or if you register to receive our newsletter.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your title, name, address, company name, telephone number, email address, IP address and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. These details will be held on our system until such time as we receive a request from an individual to remove this data.

If you purchase a product online from us, the payment process is handled by the secure payments system Paypal Website Payments Pro. Our website is built in Business Catalyst, which is a website software platform owned by Adobe. Adobe will store your customer details and basic payment details (not CCV or the full card number) which are all covered under PCI-DSS compliance; Adobe are tier 1 in this compliance scheme.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

Respond to enquiries you have sent us;
Process orders that you have submitted;
Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
Let you know about important updates regarding products or services you have ordered;
Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
Notify you of changes to our services;
Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include news and event updates or information about other products or services;
Process a job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example financial transactions). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process specialist servicing or repairs that need to be sent to manufacturers). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the required service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure. Please be assured that we will not release any of your information to any third parties for them to use for their own direct purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with: We work closely with a range of third party product manufacturers to bring you a range of quality and reliable products and services designed to meet the needs of those using instruments in health and safety, occupational hygiene and environmental monitoring applications. When you enquire about or purchase one or more of these products and, for example, register your product with the manufacturer for warranty purposes, the relevant third party product manufacturer may use your details to provide you with relevant product information and carry out their obligations arising from any contracts you have entered into with them. In some cases, they will be acting as a data controller of your information and therefore we advise you to read their Privacy Policy. These third party product providers may share your information with us which we will use in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

When you are purchasing products online via our website, your payment is processed by a third party payment processor, Paypal Website Payments Pro, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any further questions or would like more details regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers. In any such situation, we will ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Your choices

You have a choice as to whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about our products and services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. You have the right to make a written request to ask for a copy of the information Shawcity Ltd holds about you.

If you would like to view or correct the information that we hold about you, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please write to us at: marketing@shawcity.co.uk or Marketing Department, 91-92 Shrivenham Hundred Business Park, Watchfield, Oxfordshire SN6 8TY.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is protected and fully encrypted with 256-SHA TLS 1.2 (256bit). When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. To minimise any risk your non-sensitive details are transmitted securely via HTTPS/SSL. However, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot 100% guarantee the security of information and you should consider this before you give it to us. If you choose to supply us with personal details, you do so at your own risk. You have the option of sending any enquiries or making any purchases over the phone or by post if you prefer: Tel: 01793 780622, email: info@shawcity.co.uk or by post to: Shawcity Ltd, 91-92 Shrivenham Hundred Business Park, Watchfield, Oxfordshire SN6 8TY.

Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Profiling

We may analyse your personal information and, for example, your order history with us, to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you, if you have given us permission to do so. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. These sources may include, for example, your company web site or professional social media accounts such as LinkedIn. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Use of 'Cookies'

Like the majority of business websites, the Shawcity Ltd website uses cookies. 'Cookies' are small data files that a web site can transfer to a visitor's hard drive to keep records of the visits to that site. A cookie contains information such as your username and password for the site that helps us to recognise the pages you have visited and improve future visits, but the only personal information a cookie can contain is the information that you provide yourself. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites. Information stored in cookies may be encrypted, however, your credit card details are not stored in cookies. If you prefer not to accept cookies, you can set your web browser (i.e. Microsoft Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) to warn you before accepting cookies or you can refuse cookies altogether by turning them off completely in your web browser. However, access to some of our secure areas may require the use of cookies, where you must enable cookies that get back to the originating server. Otherwise, you can still freely access most of the features on our web site without accepting cookies.

Website visitor tracking

Our web site also uses the CANDDi web site monitoring service. CANDDi is a product that has been developed by Campaign and Digital Intelligence Ltd, who are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). CANDDi may record web activities by visitors including links clicked on from marketing emails to take you to our web site, page views, products, downloads, videos viewed and data entered into forms. The information collected does not include bank details or any sensitive personal data. Data collected by CANDDi from our website is for Shawcity Ltd’s internal use only. The information collected is used to improve our website usability and engagement and is shared with our sales team to provide an insight into online engagement and customer interests. The information is stored and used for aggregated and statistical reporting. Once you visit our web site, CANDDi will start to build a profile of you as a visitor, but will only be able to identify you individually if you choose to give us your contact information, for example if you fill out our ‘Contact Us’ web form.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on other websites if you choose to visit them. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third-party site.

Under 18s

Although we are a B2B company and the nature of our business means we tend to deal with adults aged 18 or over, we are still concerned about protecting the privacy of those aged under 18. If you are aged under 18‚ we ask that a parent/guardian who is 18 or over enters their information on your behalf if, for example, you are making a technical enquiry for a school or college project.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are located in a country outside of the EU for any period of time, or if you use our services while you are outside the EU. Countries outside the EU may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.