Privacy Policy
This privacy policy ('Privacy Policy') explains our approach to any personal information that we might collect from you or which we have obtained about you from a third party and the purposes for which we process your personal information. This Privacy Policy also sets out your rights in respect of our processing of your personal information.This Privacy Policy will inform you of the nature of the personal information about you that is processed by us and how you can request that we delete, update, transfer it and/or provide you with access to it.This Privacy Policy is intended to assist you in making informed decisions when using the Sites and our Services. Please take a moment to read and understand it. Please note that it should be read in conjunction with our
Please also note that this Privacy Policy only applies to the use of your personal information obtained by us, it does not apply to your personal information collected during your communications with third parties.
We may collect the following types of personal data from you, all depending on how you interact with us:name and contact information (such as email address, postal address and telephone number)order and payment informationWaterstones online account username/display name and passwordIP address and information about your browsing habitssocial media handlesrequests, reviews and opinionspreferred shopimage recordings on our CCTV systemsany other personal data you may submit to us.Our primary goal in collecting personal information from you is to:verify your identity;help us improve our products and services and develop and market new products and services;carry out requests made by you on the Sites;investigate or settle inquiries or disputes;comply with any applicable law, court order, other judicial process, or the requirements of a regulator;enforce our agreements with you;protect the rights, property or safety of us or third parties, including our other customers and users of the Sites and at our shops;provide support for the provision of our Services; anduse as otherwise required or permitted by law.In particular, we use your personal information for the following purposes:
We collect and maintain personal information that you voluntarily submit to us during your use of the Sites and/or our Services, including registering on our Sites.We use the contact and payment details you have provided to us so that we can fulfil the supply of products and services you have ordered from our Sites, or in our shops. This includes your purchase of products, your attendance at events hosted by us or our third party partners and the processing of returns and refunds.
Who do we share your personal information with for this purpose?
We will share your personal information with the following categories of third parties:To verify card payments and process refunds - credit card companies and other payment providers;To deliver products and process returns - delivery and courier companies;To provide our free in-store wi-fi service (our service provider is DoubleEdge);Events - any applicable third party hosting the event; and third party ticketing companies such as Eventbrite.Competitions and prize draws - any applicable third party co-promoter (for example, a book publisher), prize supplier, facilitator or publicity platform.
What is our legal basis?
It is necessary for us to use your personal information to perform our obligations in accordance with any contract that we may have with you.
Our Sites and our shops use various user interfaces to allow you to request information about our products and services: these include printed and electronic enquiry forms and a telephone enquiry service. Your contact information may be requested in each case, together with details of other personal information that is relevant to your customer service enquiry. This information is used in order to enable us to respond to your requests.
Who do we share your personal information with for this purpose?
We do not share your personal information for this purpose.
What is our legal basis?
It is in our legitimate interest to use your personal information in such a way to ensure that we provide the very best customer service we can to you.
We analyse your contact details and other personal information that we collect about you such as your interests and demographic information together with personal information that we obtain from observing your interactions with our Sites, our email communications to you and/or with our products and services in our shops, such as the products and services you have purchased or viewed, or from your use of the wifi in our shops.Where we have your consent to do so, we will also use your location data collected by us via our mobile application.Where you have given your consent (where lawfully required), we use cookies, log files and other similar technologies to collect personal information from the computer hardware and software you use to access the Sites, or from your mobile. This includes the following:an IP address to monitor Sites traffic and volume;a session ID to track usage statistics on our Sites;information regarding your personal or professional interests, demographics, buying habits, experiences with our products and contact preferences.Our web pages and e-mails contain cookies or pixel tags ("Tags"). Tags allow us to track receipt of an e-mail to you, to count users that have visited a web page, opened an e-mail and to collect other types of aggregate information. Once you click on an e-mail that contains a Tag, your contact information may subsequently be cross-referenced to the source e-mail and the relevant Tag.In some of our e-mail messages, we use a click-through URL linked to certain websites administered by us (or on our behalf) and/or to certain third party websites (including certain event partner websites). If you decide to click through to the relevant URL, we or the relevant third party website operator (as applicable) may through the use of a Cookie track click-through data to assist in determining interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of these communications. Please note that to the extent that you click through to a third party website from our email, use of your data by the relevant third party will be subject to their own rules and policies.Please note that any emails you receive from us may contain Cookies to help us to see if recipients have opened an email and understand how recipients have interacted with it. If you have enabled images, Cookies may also be set on your computer or mobile device.If you do not wish to accept Cookies from any one of our emails, simply close the email before downloading any images or refrain from clicking on any URL links. You can also set your browser to restrict Cookies or to reject them entirely. These settings will apply to all Cookies whether included on websites or in emails.In some instances, depending on your email or browser settings, Cookies in an email may be automatically accepted (for example, when you've added an email address to your address book or safe senders list). Please refer to your email browser or device instructions for more information on this.What is our legal basis?
Where your personal information is completely anonymised, we do not require a legal basis to use it as the information will no longer constitute personal information that is regulated under data protection laws. However, our collection and use of such anonymised personal information may be subject to other laws where your consent is required. Please see our Cookie Policy for further details.Where your personal information is not in an anonymous form, it is in our legitimate interest to use your personal information in such a way to ensure that we provide the very best products and services to you and our other customers.We will only use location data collected by us via our mobile application where we have your consent to do so.Marketing communications