Hackney Carpet Cleaners Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains how Hackney Carpet Cleaners collects, uses, stores and protects personal data belonging to customers and prospective customers in our service area. It also explains the legal bases we rely on under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the EU General Data Protection Regulation, and describes the rights you have in relation to your personal data.
By using our services, contacting us, or otherwise interacting with Hackney Carpet Cleaners, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.
Scope of this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to all Hackney Carpet Cleaners customers, and potential customers who make enquiries, within the areas in which we provide carpet, upholstery and related cleaning services. It covers personal data collected through our website, by telephone, by post, in person, and via any other communication channels we may use to provide quotations, carry out bookings and deliver our services.
Data Controller
For the purposes of data protection law, Hackney Carpet Cleaners is the data controller of the personal data described in this policy. This means we determine the purposes and means of processing your personal data.
Personal Data We Collect
We may collect and process the following categories of personal data:
Identification and contact details, such as your name, title, billing address, service address, and preferred contact details.
Communication details, such as your communication preferences and the content of your communications with us, including enquiries, complaints, feedback and service instructions.
Service and booking information, such as dates and times of appointments, records of services provided, notes about the property areas to be cleaned, and any special instructions you provide.
Payment and transaction data, such as the amount paid, payment method used and related billing information. We do not store full card details when payment is processed via third party payment providers.
Website and technical data, such as your IP address, browser type, approximate location based on IP, and information collected through cookies or similar technologies where applicable and permitted by law.
Any other information you choose to provide to us, for example in free text enquiry forms, emails or during telephone conversations.
How We Collect Your Data
We may collect personal data directly from you when you contact us to request a quotation, make a booking or ask a question, when you use our website or online forms, when you interact with our staff on site, or when you provide feedback or make a complaint.
We may also receive limited personal data indirectly from third parties, such as payment service providers that confirm payments, digital advertising partners that inform us that you interacted with one of our advertisements, or referral partners that pass on your details after you have given them permission to do so.
Purposes and Lawful Bases for Processing
We only process your personal data when we have a lawful basis to do so under data protection legislation. Depending on the context, we may rely on the following lawful bases:
To perform a contract: We process your personal data in order to provide quotations, confirm bookings, deliver cleaning services, manage payments, and communicate with you about the performance of our services. Without this information, we would be unable to enter into or fulfil our contract with you.
To comply with legal obligations: We process certain personal data to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, such as maintaining appropriate business records and complying with tax and accounting rules.
Legitimate interests: We may process personal data for our legitimate interests, provided that these interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. These interests include managing and improving our services, maintaining adequate business and financial records, handling customer queries, ensuring the security of our systems and staff, and promoting our services to existing customers where allowed by law.
Consent: In limited situations, we may rely on your consent, for example for certain types of direct marketing or non-essential cookies if and where used. When processing is based on consent, you are free to withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before withdrawal.
How We Use Your Personal Data
We may use your personal data for the following purposes:
To provide you with quotations, respond to your enquiries and manage your requests.
To schedule, manage and deliver carpet, upholstery and related cleaning services.
To process payments and maintain accurate financial and transaction records.
To communicate with you about your bookings, including confirmations, reminders, updates and feedback requests.
To handle complaints, queries or disputes and to provide customer service.
To keep internal records about our operations, including job history and service performance.
To improve our services, website and customer experience through analysis and internal reporting.
To send you information about similar services that we think may interest you, where we are permitted to do so and you have not opted out.
To protect our business, our staff and our customers, for example by preventing fraud or misuse of our services.
Data Sharing and Processors
We do not sell your personal data. However, we may share your personal data with trusted third parties who act as data processors on our behalf. These processors only process your data in accordance with our instructions and for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
Examples of such processors may include providers of booking or customer management software, payment processing services, secure data storage or cloud hosting providers, providers of email or communication services, and professional advisers such as accountants who handle financial records.
Where we engage processors, we put in place written agreements requiring them to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data and to process it only as necessary to provide their services to us.
We may also share limited personal data with other third parties where required by law, such as regulatory authorities, law enforcement bodies, or government agencies, or where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
International Data Transfers
If any of our processors or service providers are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws. These safeguards may include the use of standard contractual clauses approved by relevant authorities or ensuring the recipient is in a country that has been granted an adequacy decision.
Data Retention
We keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.
In general, we retain customer records, including booking and transaction information, for as long as you remain an active customer and for a period after your last interaction with us, in line with applicable limitation periods for legal claims and statutory retention obligations. Communication records and enquiry details may be kept for shorter periods, depending on their content and relevance.
When personal data is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected, we will either securely delete it, anonymise it so that it can no longer be associated with you, or, where this is not possible, securely store it and restrict access until deletion is feasible.
Data Security
We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff training, and regular review of our security practices. While we take reasonable steps to safeguard your data, no system can be completely secure and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Your Data Protection Rights
Under data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. These rights may be subject to certain conditions and legal exemptions, but generally include the following:
Right of access: You have the right to request confirmation of whether we process your personal data and, if so, to request a copy of that personal data and certain related information.
Right to rectification: You have the right to request that inaccurate or incomplete personal data about you is corrected or updated.
Right to erasure: In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that we delete your personal data, for example where it is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or where you withdraw consent and there is no other legal basis for processing.
Right to restriction of processing: You may request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as where you contest its accuracy or object to our processing.
Right to data portability: Where processing is based on consent or on a contract and is carried out by automated means, you may have the right to receive the personal data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to request that we transmit it to another controller where technically feasible.
Right to object: You have the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including profiling, and the absolute right to object at any time to your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes.
Rights related to consent: Where we rely on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing before consent was withdrawn.
Exercising Your Rights
You can exercise your data protection rights by contacting us using the contact details provided on our website or in our customer communications. We may need to verify your identity before responding to your request. We aim to respond to all valid requests within one month, although this may be extended in complex cases in line with applicable law.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your personal data, we encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve your concerns. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection supervisory authority in the country where you live or work, or where you believe an infringement has occurred.
Updates to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements or other factors. When we make changes, we will revise the date of the update and, where appropriate, notify you of significant changes through our website or by other means. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we handle your personal data.