Privacy Policy
Independent Cars are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This policy (together with our Terms of Use and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act), the data controller is Independent Cars of Hydra Business Park, Nether Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S35 9ZX.
Information we collect from you
We will collect and process the following data about you:
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Information you give us. This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on https://www.independentcars.co.uk (our site) or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. It includes information you provide when you register to use our site, subscribe to our service, search for a product, place an order on our site, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our site, enter a competition, promotion or survey, and when you report a problem with our site. The information you give us may include your name, address, e-mail address and phone number, financial and credit card information, personal description and photograph, date of birth, employment details, and address history.
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Information we collect about you. With regard to each of your visits to our site we will automatically collect the following information:
- technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
- information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), 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), methods used to browse away from the page, and any phone number used to call our customer service number.
- Information we receive from other sources. This is information we receive about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case we will have informed you when we collected that data if we intend to share those data internally and combine it with data collected on this site. We will also have told you for what purpose we will share and combine your data. We are working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies). We will notify you when we receive information about you from them and the purposes for which we intend to use that information.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie Policy.
Uses made of the information
We use information held about you in the following ways:
- Information you give to us. We will use this information:
- to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;
- to provide you with information about other goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about;
- to provide you with information about goods or services we feel may interest you. We will only contact you by electronic means (email or SMS) if you have consented to this. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us directly at Hydra Business Park, Nether Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S35 9ZX or sales@independentcars.co.uk.
- to notify you about changes to our service;
- to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device.
- Information we collect about you. We will use this information:
- to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
- to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;
- to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
- as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
- to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
- to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.
- Information we receive from other sources. We will combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We will use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).
Disclosure of your information
We may share your personal information with:
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Any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.
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Selected third parties including:
- any of our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors (AQL Text Credits, AutoTrader, Barclays, Bing, Book my Garage, Canddi, Chat Heroes, Click Desk, Codeweavers, Conflux, Contact at Once, CreditPlus, DealTrak, Evolution Funding Ltd, General Insurance Distribution Ltd, Good Garage Scheme, Google, Heart Internet, iVendi, Judge Service, Live Chat Inc, Live Help Now, MailChimp, Mandrill, Mapfre, Motor Marketing, Oodle Finance, PayPal, Review.io, Sage, Stripe, Trello, Trust Pilot, Twilio, UK Fast, Visitor Chat, WorldPay, Xero, Yell) where this is necessary for the performance of any contract we enter into with you;
- analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site;
- credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us or any of our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors entering into a contract with you;
- finance brokers and lenders for the purpose of providing requested finance.
- We will disclose your personal information to third parties:
- In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
- If Independent Cars or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
- If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms of Use or terms and conditions of supply (available from Independent Cars) and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Independent Cars, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
We will not disclose your personal information to third parties to enable them to contact you for marketing purposes unless we have your consent to do so.
Where we store your personal data
All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you 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.
The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") by one of our suppliers. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for one of our suppliers. This includes staff engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Independent Cars will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, 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.
For how long do we retain your personal data?
Unless required to do so by law (eg for the purposes of preventing fraud or tax evasion), we do not retain personal data no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which we originally collected it. Ordinarily, this will be for a period of 7 years if you have purchased a vehicle or services or obtained finance through us, or 6 months if you have not. If you have not objected to our providing you with information about other goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about, or if you have given and not withdrawn your consent for us to use your personal data for other marketing purposes, we will retain the data for as long as we need it for those purposes.
We regularly review the personal data we hold, and delete anything we no longer need. Information that does not need to be accessed regularly, but which still needs to be retained, is safely archived or put offline.
Your rights
You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will ask your consent (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes.
You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by not checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You also have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected and, in some cases (such as where it is no longer necessary for us to retain the data for the purposes for which it was originally collected/processed, where we need your consent and you have withdrawn such consent, or where you object to the processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for us to continue with it) to have your personal data removed from our systems.
Where you have provided your personal data to us and our processing is carried out by automated means based on your consent or for the performance of a contract, you may ask us to provide you with the data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable form or, if this is technically feasible with our systems, to transmit the data directly to another organisation. Machine readable means that the information is structured so that software can extract specific elements of the data.
Unless the decision is necessary for entering into or for the performance of a contract between us, is authorised by law (eg for the purposes of preventing fraud or tax evasion) or you have given your explicit consent for us to do so, you have the right to ask us not to subject you to any decision which produces a legal effect or a similarly significant effect on you on the basis of automated processing. You can exercise any of the above rights at any time by contacting us at Hydra Business Park, Nether Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S35 9ZX or sales@independentcars.co.uk.
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.
Access to information
The Act gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. We will not charge you for providing you with details of the information we hold about you unless your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, particularly if it is repetitive, when we will charge you a reasonable fee, based on the administrative cost of providing the information. We may also charge a reasonable fee to comply with multiple requests for further copies of the same information.
Changes to our privacy policy
Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or change to our privacy policy.
Contact
Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to Hydra Business Park, Nether Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S35 9ZX or sales@independentcars.co.uk.
Complaints
If you have any complaints about how we process your personal data, please contact us at Hydra Business Park, Nether Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S35 9ZX or sales@independentcars.co.uk, and we will do our best to resolve them.
If you remain dissatisfied, you may contact the Information Commissioner's Office by writing to it at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, telephoning 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745, sending a fax to 01625 524510, or by completing the online email message form at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ or the online complaints form at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/. View ICO Registration certification.