PRIVACY & COOKIES
Introduction New GDPR
The website is operated by Merit Flooring and we are a controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679. This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, the personal information you provide to us when using this website in accordance with this privacy policy.
Merit Flooring understand that customers care about the use and storage of their personal information and we value your trust in allowing us to do this in a careful and sensible manner. We have created this privacy policy statement to demonstrate our commitment to the privacy of our customers.
By using Merit Flooring, our website (including our mobile site), our social media pages, and any other Merit Flooring service, you are acknowledging that we are processing your personal information and, where necessary consenting to such practices, as outlined in this statement.
Personal information which we collect
We collect personal information about you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) when you:
(a) make an enquiry either personally or for someone else;
(b) request information;
(c) speak to one of our representatives or members of our customer services or PR team;
The personal information collected in the above manner may include the following about you (and others if their personal information is provided by you):
(a) full name;
(b) email address;
Personal information provided by third parties
We do not collect data from third parties, all data we receive is either through our website or by requesting directly to you.
How we use your information
We will collect personal information:
1) to take the necessary steps in preparation of, or to fulfil our obligations under, a service contract:
a) Contact Form– provide communications about services being provided to you (and others if their personal information is provided by you);
b) To help in completing services – send reminder emails to continue with a service.
c) Maintain your Merit Flooring accounts – create a profile about you in relation to your service, to update our records, create and maintain your account.
2) with your consent:
a) Simplify payment process – use saved payment cards within your Merit Flooring account so that, upon making future services request, you have the convenient option of selecting a previously saved details. This information is only used / accessed when we use your allocated account to pay for services.
b) Marketing communications – create a profile about you for marketing purposes to tailor our communications to you. We may use automated processes to do this;
c) Promotional offers – inform you about promotional offers and other products or services that may be of interest (in line with Marketing communications above);
d) Maintain records indicating your consent to status – to ensure we accurately reflect your wishes when communicating to you;
3) in our legitimate interest* improve our services:
a) Market research – to contact you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) to ask about the experience using our services as part of a continual programme of customer service improvement. This is not marketing communication and is separate to Marketing communications above. We may use third parties for example Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to provide such market research communications to you on our behalf;
b) Website customisation – to customise our website and its content to your preferences in accordance with the Cookies and Tracking section below;
c) Customer support – monitor calls and help train staff in relation to our customer support and helpdesk function;
d) Product and service improvement – to improve our product and services;
e) Service analysis – to conduct research, statistical analysis and behavioral analysis. This may include providing aggregate statistical information relating to customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third parties.
4) in our legitimate interest* to protect against fraud:
a) Website improvement and fraud prevention – improve our websites, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our websites and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf;
b) Security – carry out security checks when allowing you access to our services and to block fraudulent or suspected fraudulent activity.
5) to meet our legal obligations:
Marketing
We may periodically send promotional material to you about new products, exclusive offers or other information which we think you may find interesting based on the profile we have created about you to the email addresses and phone numbers which you have provided.
If these are like products and services previously supplied by us to you, we will assume, under our legitimate interests to promote related products and services, that you are willing to receive this information unless you tell us otherwise. Please note that we do not want to send you information that you do not want to receive, and you can opt out at any time (please see ‘The right to ask us to stop contacting you with direct marketing’ below for further information).
We will always ask your permission before sending you email marketing information. We do this by asking for your positive confirmation by email or phone (we will make notes of the time and person we speak to indicating that you wish to receive marketing and you can opt out at any time by contacting us directly. This ensures you only receive information that you have given us permission to send and are willing to receive.
We may use your information to create a profile about you in order to tailor, by automated means, our communication and marketing to you. You can object to such profiling, please see ‘The right to object to automated decision making / profiling’ below).
From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for research purposes and / or to ask about your experience using our services as part of a continual programme of customer service improvement. We may contact you by email, telephone, text, social media and / or mail. We may also use the information to customise the website according to your interests.
How long we will keep your personal information
We retain your information for a range of purposes which determine the period for which we need to keep such information. For example (listis not exclusive):
Data - Email Conversations – Retention Period - 3 years from day of mail or call received.
Data - For the purposes of marketing - Retention Period – 3 years from the point of last contact with you, this may include use of websites.
Data - Retention Period – For compliance with legal obligations arising from contracts entered with you – For compliance with legal obligations arising from contracts entered with you.
We will remove your data from our systems at the end of the applicable data retention periods, unless we are required by current or future law to retain your personal information for a longer period.
Our approach to information security
To protect your information, Merit Flooring has policies and procedures in place to make sure that only authorised personnel can access the information, that information is handled and stored in a secure and sensible manner and all systems that can access the information have proportionate and reasonable security measures in place. To achieve this only employees of Merit Flooring access to your data with defined roles and responsibilities.
While we take commercially reasonable measures to ensure the safety and security of your data, due to the inherent risks with the Internet, we are unable to warranty the absolute security of your data when using our services.
Transfers of your information out of the EEA
We do not share your data with anyone others.
Your rights
To process any of the requests listed below, we may need to verify your identity for your security. In such cases your response will be necessary for you to exercise this right.
The right to access information we hold about you
At any point you can contact us to request details concerning the information we hold about you, why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we got the information. In most cases you may be entitled to copies of the information we hold concerning you. Once we have received your request we will respond within 30 days.
The right to correct and update the information we hold about you
If the data we hold about you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us, and we will ensure that it is updated.
The right to have your information erased
If you feel that we should no longer be using your data or that we are illegally using your data, you can request that we erase the data we hold. When we receive your request, we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or tell you the reason why it cannot be deleted.
The right to object to processing of your data
You have the right to request that Merit Flooring stops processing your data. Upon receiving the request, we will contact you to tell you if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue. If data is no longer processed, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights.
The right to ask us to stop contacting you with direct marketing
You have the right to request that we stop contacting you with direct marketing by contacting us directly or emailing us.
Please note it is not possible to ‘opt-out’ of receiving communication from us which relates to your services. This ensures that we can always contact you because of circumstances that may affect your services with us and for us to improve our services going forward.
The right to data portability
You have the right to request that we transfer your data to another controller. Once we have received your request, we will comply where it is feasible to do so.
The right to object to automated decision making / profiling
You have the right to request that we stop profiling you in relation to our direct marketing practice. You can inform us, and we will deal with your request accordingly.
The right to complain
You can make a complaint to us by contacting us via or to the data protection supervisory authority – in the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office, at https://ico.org.uk/.
Consent
In those cases where we need your consent to process your information, we will ask you by phone or email and we will make note of whom we spoke to and time. By actively providing us with your consent, you are stating that you have been informed as to the type of personal information that will be processed, the reasons for such processing, how it will be used, for how long it will be kept, who else will have access to it and what your rights are as a data subject and that you have read and understood this privacy policy.
Sharing your information
The information and data we collect is important for Merit Flooring and we understand that you care about the use and storage of your personal information we value your trust in allowing us to do this. We would not want to share this with anyone else unless we have your express consent, we will never disclose, rent, trade or sell your personal information to any third parties for their marketing purposes.
We do disclose or transfer your data or personal information to other companies, data processors or agents employed by us to perform any necessary functions on our behalf (such as hosting and maintaining our website, providing us with data management systems, market research, customer satisfaction surveys and support services), but they are bound by similar terms to those set out in our privacy policy and may not use this information for their own purposes.
If Merit Flooring or any part of its business is sold to or integrated with another business, Merit Flooring may disclose your personal information to the new owners (and their professional advisers on the transaction) to be used by the new owners and their group of companies in the same ways as set out in this privacy policy, including to continue providing you with the same services and marketing information services as are currently provided by Merit Flooring.
We may also provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third parties to better understand our services, website and overall customer satisfaction which may include personally identifying information.
Use of cookies
The Merit Flooring websites and mobile use cookies and tags. A cookie is a small text file that can be stored by your browser on the device you use to access internet and allows the browser to pass small amounts of information about user behavior on the given website to a web server. Tags are pieces of code that exist on web pages and collect information about usage of the web pages.
At Merit Flooring we use our own cookies and tags as well as those from third parties to enable the smooth operation of the websites. We also use cookies/tags to monitor visits to our website and continuously look for places to improve your website experience. Our marketing partners also use cookies and tags to monitor the performance of our advertising and to serve appropriate Merit Flooring advertisements to you on other websites. We will never share any personal information about you with these third parties and the cookies and tags used maintain your anonymity.
Cookie Consent
The first time you access a Merit Flooring website, you will be informed about our use of cookies (if applicable) to improve your site experience. By continuing to browse our website you consent to our use of cookies.
Description of cookies
Cookie Type - Analytics – Example - Google Analytics – Details - These cookies give us critical information about various pages on the websites and how our users interact with them. We use this information to improve the performance of our website and the information presented to users.
Cookie Type - Authentication – Merit Flooring – Details - When you created a contact us form with Merit Flooring, these cookies allow the website to remember you in order present you with information that is directly relevant to you.
Cookie Type – Marketing – Example – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin – Details – We use a number of third parties to promote Merit Flooring to new and existing customers these cookies allow us to identify users sent to Merit Flooring site by individual third parties and meet our contractual obligations to them.
Cookie Type – Functional – Example – Merit Flooring – A set of cookies designed to deliver smooth services for you. We use these cookies to remember selected services etc. So you do not have to enter information more than once. We also use these cookies to identify areas of improvement in the browsing experience.
How to reject and delete cookies
Should you wish to reject or block the use of cookies, you can do so at any time, usually by clicking ‘Help’ on your browser. Cookies are specific to individual browsers so if you use more than one browser, you will need to delete cookies on each browser. Please be aware though that by rejecting cookies you may not receive the optimum website experience.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Contact details
If you have any queries about this policy, need further information or wish to lodge a complaint you can use the details below to contact us.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may change this policy from time to time. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure that you are aware of the most recent version that will apply each time you access the website.