Privacy Notice

To help us provide the best possible service, we capture personal information about you, but we respect and protect your privacy and do all we can to honour the trust you place in us by being transparent about what personal information we collect and how we use it, vowing to handle your data fairly and lawfully at all times.

We are The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited of Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT, United Kingdom and we are a Data Controller registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number Z5617669.

Our Data Protection Officer is contactable via dpo@aurumholdings.co.uk.

This notice is to inform you about how we collect and protect any personal information you provide to us and how you can control what personal information we collect from you and what we do with it. It sets out how we intend to use your information, who we will share it with and what rights you have about use of your information.

This notice applies to all our activities under the above brands and however you provide personal information to us, whether you visit us online at any of our websites or visit our stores or contact us via social media or whether you telephone, email, write to or text us.

Here we provide you with details about:

what personal information we collect;
how we use your personal information;
information about cookies;
who we share your personal information with;
the legal basis for using personal information provided to us;
how we aim to protect your privacy;
how long we will keep your personal information;
international transfers of your information;
your legal rights relating to your personal information.

WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT?

We may collect the following information about you:

your name, age/date of birth and gender;
your contact details: postal address including billing and delivery addresses, telephone numbers (including mobile numbers) and e-mail address;
purchases and orders made by you;
your social media handles;
your online browsing activities on any of our websites including what items you store in your shopping bag;
your password(s);
information about the device you use to browse our websites including the IP address and the device type;
when you make a purchase or place an order with us, your payment card details;
your communication and marketing preferences;
your interests, preferences, feedback and competition and survey responses;
your location;
your correspondence and communications with us; and
other publicly available personal data, including any which you have shared via a public platform (such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or public Facebook page).

This list is not exhaustive and, in specific instances, we may need to collect additional data for the purposes set out in this Notice. Some personal data are collected directly, for example when you set up an online account on our websites, or send an email to our Customer Relations team. Other personal data are collected indirectly, for example, when you browse our websites or undertake online shopping activity. We may also collect personal data from third parties who have your consent to pass your details to us, or from publicly available sources.

We may anonymise and aggregate personal data for insight and research but this will not identify anyone.

Our websites are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

HOW WE USE YOUR DATA

General

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited (and trusted partners acting on our behalf) use your personal data:

to provide goods and services to you;
to make a tailored website available to you;
to manage any account(s) you hold with us;
to verify your identity;
for crime and fraud prevention, detection and related purposes;
to contact you electronically about promotional offers, events, products and services which we think may interest you;
for analysis, insight and market research purposes to better understand your needs and ensure we are giving you what you like;
to administer competitions and identify and contact competition winners;
to enable us to manage customer service interactions with you; and
where we have a legal right or duty to use or disclose your information (for example in relation to an investigation by a public authority or in a legal dispute).

Marketing

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited use your personal data for marketing purposes and may send you postal mail, texts and/or emails to update you on our latest offers and events.

We aim to update you about products and services of interest and relevance to you as an individual.

You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time, by:

contacting our Customer Relations team via email customer.relations@aurumholdings.co.uk or by telephone on 0800 8495051 or post to Customer Relations, The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited, Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT United Kingdom; or
making use of the simple “unsubscribe” link in our emails or the “STOP” number for texts; and/or
contacting our Data Protection Officer to indicate that you wish to change your marketing preferences by emailing dpo@aurumholdings.co.uk or by post to The Data Protection Officer, The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited Limited, Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT, United Kingdom;

This may not stop service messages such as order updates.

Personalisation and Automated Decision Making

In order to improve your shopping experience with us, when you visit any of our websites, you may receive personalised banner advertisements whilst browsing websites of other companies. Any banner advertisements you see will relate to your browsing activity on our websites from your computer or other devices.

These advertisements are provided by us via external market leading specialist providers using ‘cookies’ placed on your computer or other devices (see further information on the use of cookies in our Cookie Policy). You can remove or disable cookies at any time - see [ LINK] for further information

We may collect data directly from you, as well as analysing your browsing and purchasing activity, both online and in store, and your responses to marketing communications. The results of this analysis, together with other demographic data, allow us to ensure that we contact you with information on products, services, events and offers that are relevant to you. To do so, we use software and other technology (automated decision-making including profiling).

We may do this to decide what marketing communications are suitable for you and this activity is based on our legitimate interests to develop and improve our products and services for you.

You have the right to opt out of any automated decision-making processes including profiling at any time by:

contacting our Customer Relations team via email customer.relations@aurumholdings.co.uk or by telephone on 0800 8495051 or post to Customer Relations, The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited, Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT United Kingdom; or
contacting our Data Protection Officer to indicate that you wish to change your marketing preferences by emailing dpo@aurumholdings.co.uk or by post to The Data Protection Officer, The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited Limited, Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT, United Kingdom;

In order to provide more personalised services and experiences, we may also ask your permission to review third party data about you, for example, your Twitter or Facebook feeds, to get to know you better and to provide more effective personalisation. Some of our services enable you to sign-in via a third party service, such as Facebook. If you choose to sign-in via a third party app, you will be presented with a dialog box which will ask your permission to allow us to access your personal information (e.g. your full name, date of birth, email address and any other information you have made publicly accessible).

COOKIES

Our websites use cookies to collect information. This includes information about browsing and purchasing behaviour by people who access our websites including pages viewed, products purchased and the customer journey around our websites.

Detailed information is set out in our Cookie Policy and is provided to ensure you are fully aware of the cookies we use, allowing you to make an informed choice about your continued acceptance of cookies.

Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

Like most websites, our websites use cookies to collect information. Cookies are small data files which are placed on your computer or other devices (such as smart ‘phones or ‘tablets’) as you browse our websites. They are used to ‘remember’ when your computer or device accesses our websites. They allow us to remember whether you are logged in to the site and to remember what items you had in your shopping bag. Cookies are essential for the effective operation of our websites and to help you shop with us online. They are also used to tailor the products and services offered and advertised to you, both on our websites and elsewhere.

Information collected

Some cookies collect information about browsing and purchasing behaviour when you access our websites via the same computer or device. This includes information about pages viewed, products purchased and your journey around a website. All data passed by cookies is anonymous and will never contain individual detail such as your name, address, telephone number or payment details. For more detailed information about how cookies work, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

How are cookies managed

The cookies stored on your computer or other device when you access our websites are designed by:

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited or on our behalf, and are necessary to enable you to make purchases on our websites;
third parties who participate with us in marketing programmes; and
third parties who publish web banner advertisements for us.

What are cookies used for?

Cookies are used with our marketing partners to present you with appropriate offers and advertising as you browse other sites on the internet, based on your browsing activity while on our sites. Cookies also allow us to work alongside our web analytics partners to see how you like to use our website, which pages or special functions you prefer and help us to promote them and make them better. This helps us to continually improve the relevance of our promotional communications, your shopping experience and our products and services.

The main purposes for which cookies are used are:

For technical purposes essential to the effective operation of our websites, particularly in relation to online transactions and site navigation.
For us to market to you, particularly web banner advertisements and targeted updates.
To enable us to collect information about your browsing and shopping patterns, including to monitor the success of campaigns, competitions etc.
To enable us to meet our contractual obligations to make payments to third parties when a product is purchased by someone who has visited our website from a site operated by those parties.

What cookies do we use?

There are two types of cookie that may be used during your visit to our site:

1. Session Cookies
Session cookies are deleted after each visit to our site. For example, when you are browsing our site, it will remember you for the duration of your visit, but the cookie will be removed from your computer as soon as you close down your internet browser. Session cookies allow you to add an item to the basket and then move through the checkout. Disallowing these cookies via your web browser will mean you are unable to place an order on the site.

2. Persistent Cookies
Persistent cookies remember you for a set period of time allowing wishlist products and/or previously viewed products to be displayed the next time you visit our site and whether you logged into or out of your account while browsing.

3. Marketing Cookies
The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited work with several partners who serve advertisements or present online offers on our behalf. Most of these marketing partners use both session and persistent cookies. These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. All data collected by third party cookies is anonymous and will never contain your name, address, telephone number, email address or payment details.

First Party cookies used on our websites

CART The association with your shopping cart.
CATEGORY_INFO Stores the category info on the page, that allows to display pages more quickly.
COMPARE The items that you have in the Compare Products list.
CURRENCY Your preferred currency.
CUSTOMER An encrypted version of your customer id with the store.
CUSTOMER_AUTH An indicator if you are currently logged into the store.
CUSTOMER_INFO An encrypted version of the customer group you belong to.
CUSTOMER_SEGMENT_IDS Stores the Customer Segment.
ID EXTERNAL_NO_CACHE A flag, which indicates whether caching is disabled or not.
FRONTEND You session ID on the server.
GUEST-VIEW Allows guests to edit their orders.
LAST_CATEGORY The last category you visited.
LAST_PRODUCT The most recent product you have viewed.
NEWMESSAGE Indicates whether a new message has been received.
NO_CACHE Indicates whether it is allowed to use cache.
PERSISTENT_SHOPPING_CART A link to information about your cart and viewing history if you have asked the site.
POLL The ID of any polls you have recently voted in.
POLLN Information on what polls you have voted on.
RECENTLYCOMPARED The items that you have recently compared.
STF Information on products you have emailed to friends.
STORE The store view or language you have selected.
USER_ALLOWED_SAVE_COOKIE Indicates whether a customer allowed to use cookies.
VIEWED_PRODUCT_IDS The products that you have recently viewed.
WISHLIST An encrypted list of products added to your Wishlist.
WISHLIST_CNT The number of items in your Wishlist. comment_author News/reviews last comment name comment_author_email News/reviews last comment email comment_author_url News/reviews last comment web address.

Third Party cookies

__utma Google Analytics
__utmb Google Analytics
__utmc Google Analytics

Turning off and deleting cookies

Most web browsers will provide the option to turn off or disallow cookies. How you do this depends on the web browser you're using. Instructions for disallowing cookies can usually be found in the browser's 'Help' menu. Note that in common with most other transactional websites, if you only disable third party cookies, you will not be prevented from making purchases on our websites but refusing the cookies we have used via your web browser will mean that you are unable to make a transactional purchase on our website. You may also find that the functionality of many other websites and services will be affected. Cookies can be deleted using your web browser. However, unless they are disallowed they will be re-applied the next time you visit a website.

If you want to disable cookies you need to change your website browser settings to reject cookies. How you can do this will depend on the browser you use. Further details on how to disable cookies for the most popular browsers are set out here:

For Microsoft Internet Explorer:

Choose the menu “tools” then “Internet Options”.
Click on the “privacy” tab.
Select the setting the appropriate setting.

For Google Chrome:

Choose Settings > Advanced.
Under “Privacy and security”, click “Content settings”.
Click “Cookies”

For Safari:

Choose Preferences > Privacy.
Click on “Remove all Website Data”.

For Mozilla Firefox:

Choose the menu “tools” then “Options”.
Click on the icon “privacy”.
Find the menu “cookie” and select the relevant options.

For Opera 6.0 and further:

Choose the menu “Files” > “Preferences”.
Privacy.

SHARING DATA WITH THIRD PARTIES

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations for marketing purposes.

We will not disclose your personal information to any third party, except for those referred to below. We may share your data with:

other companies within our group;
purchasers, investors, funders and advisers if we sell our business or assets or restructure whether by merger, re-organisation or otherwise;
our legal and other professional advisers, including our auditors;
credit reference agencies where necessary for card payments;
governmental bodies, regulators, law enforcement agencies, courts/tribunals and insurers where we are required to do so:
- to comply with our legal obligations and/or the administration of justice;
- to exercise our legal rights (for example in court cases);
- for the prevention, detection, investigation of crime or prosecution of offenders; and
- for the protection of our employees and customers.
our service providers and suppliers.

In order to make certain services available to you, we have partnered with certain trusted third parties including IT, mailing, payment services, delivery and marketing service providers. We may need to share your personal information with some of our service partners. We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information when they have confirmed that they apply appropriate data protection and security controls. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to data protection and security, which mean they can only use your information to provide services to us and to you, and for no other purposes.

Please see here for the types of service providers with whom we share personal data:

Type of external service provider	Reason for sharing your information
Database Administrators	Administration of our Marketing database
Mailing house	Delivery of postal mailings
Electronic mail administrators	Delivery of email campaigns including electronic newsletters and administration of on-line competitions
Couriers and logistics service providers	Goods delivery
Software providers	Administration of sales and returns
Marketing consultancies and advertising services providers	Analysis of marketing data and customer insight for the development and administration of marketing campaigns. Delivery of offers, promotions and other marketing campaigns Website tracking to assist with personalising your online buying experience. Facilitate customer product and service reviews
Insurers	Provision of insurance cover on products purchased from us
Finance companies	Provision of interest free and interest bearing credit for our customers
Watch manufacturers	Administration of Guarantees and repairs
Call recording providers	Call recording to facilitate Customer Care, administration of enquiries and complaints and facilitate telephone orders and order fulfilment for the WatchShop website
Insurance claims and repair handlers	Facilitate certain types of insurance claim administration
Electronic platform providers	To create on-line accounts to fulfil website orders and electronic newsletter distribution
Email administrators	Provision of email system
Live engagement platform providers	Delivery of Live Chat environment
App developer	Delivery of customer chat application called Akin
Payment service providers	Website payment services
Website hosting service providers	Administration of our websites, fulfilment of online orders and electronic marketing campaigns
Order fulfilment providers	Facilitate fulfilment of orders on websites and customer care
Electronic repair administrators	Repair processing and workshop administration. Facilitating watch repairs by post Facilitating communications with our repair services
Document disposal managers	Document disposal

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited has partnered with certain trusted third parties to make additional products and services available to you online through the relevant third party's “microsite”. These websites, and others linked to from our websites are owned and operated by a third party and they are responsible for processing personal data in accordance with their own privacy policies. These are:

LEGAL BASIS FOR USING DATA

We are required to set out the legal basis for our ‘processing’ of your personal data. We collect and use customers’ personal data:

As necessary to perform our contract with you.
- for the purposes of complying with our duties and exercising our rights under contracts for the sale of goods or services to customers; or
As necessary for the pursuit of our legitimate interests including: -- selling and supplying goods and services to our customers;
- promoting, marketing and advertising our products and services;
- sending promotional communications which are relevant and tailored to individual customers (including administering loyalty schemes);
- to administer competitions and promotions and identify and contact competition winners;
- understanding our customers’ behaviour, activities, preferences, and needs;
- improving existing products and services and developing new products and services;
- protecting customers, employees and other individuals and maintaining their safety, health and welfare;
- good governance, accounting and managing and our operations and complying with our legal obligations;
- preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour and prosecuting offenders, including working with law enforcement agencies;
- handling customer contacts, queries, complaints or disputes;
- managing insurance claims by customers;
- protecting our company, its employees and customers, by taking appropriate legal action against third parties who have committed criminal acts or are in breach of legal obligations to us;
- handling any legal claims or regulatory enforcement actions taken against us; and
- fulfilling our duties to our customers, colleagues, shareholders and other stakeholders or
As necessary for complying with our legal obligations including where you exercise your rights under data protection laws;
- for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements; or
- to establish or defend our legal rights; or
Based on your consent you have the right to withdraw consent at any time. Where consent is the only legal basis for processing your personal data, we will cease to process your personal data for that purpose after consent is withdrawn.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR DATA

Our Controls

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited is committed to keeping your personal data safe and secure.

Our security measures include:

encryption of data;
regular cyber security assessments of all service providers who may handle your personal data;
regular planning to ensure we are ready to respond to cyber security attacks and data security incidents;
daily penetration testing of systems;
security controls which protect our IT systems infrastructure and our premises from external attack and unauthorised access; and
internal policies setting out our data security rules for our personnel
regular training for our employees.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP PROTECT YOUR DATA

You should always be cautious when sharing your personal data. No one from our company will ever ask you to confirm any bank account or credit card details via email. If you receive an email claiming to be from The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited asking you to do so, please ignore it and do not respond.

If you are using a computing device in a public location, we recommend that you always log out and close the website browser when you complete an online session.

In addition, we recommend that you take the following security measures to enhance your online safety:

keep your account passwords private because anyone who knows your password may access your account or be compromised if your account is accessed without authority.
when creating a password, use a difficult word/number combination of at least 8 characters and something that is not easily guessed by hackers such as dictionary words, your name, email address, or other personal data that can be easily obtained. Also, frequently change your password. You can do this accessing your account, clicking ‘your account’, clicking ‘your data’ and selecting ‘change password’.
avoid using the same password for different online accounts.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR DATA

We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this Notice. Different retention periods apply for different types of information, and our Data Retention Policy sets out the length of time we will usually retain personal data and where these default periods might be changed.

In summary, various laws, accounting and regulatory requirements applicable to us require us to retain certain records for specific amounts of time. In relation to your personal data, we will hold this only for so long as we require that personal data for legal or regulatory reasons or for legitimate organisational purposes and we will not keep your data for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which we collect them.

For more detail on typical retention periods please below;

Record Retention Periods

Record	Type of Personal Data	Retention Period
Contracts with suppliers	Names	10 years after expiry
Supplier details	Names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers	Permanently
Rental and hire purchase agreements	Names	10 years after expiry
Payment services agreements	Names	10 years after expiry
Cookies	Webtracking information including IP addresses	5 years
Customer deposits	Names	Permanently
Contracts with customers	Names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers	10 years from date of transaction. For “by appointment” - permanently
Contracts with customers – bank transfers	Names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers	14 days
Contracts with customers – waiting lists	Names and products	Until purchase or as long as the customer requires
Contracts with customers – Pre-Owned watchs	Names, addresses, age and product	3 years
Contracts with customers	Email addresses	Website emails – 7 years Customer care emails – 7 years Store support emails – 2 years
Customer complaints	Names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers	7 years
Interest Free Credit applications	Customer emails, names, addresses, date of birth, marital status, employment details, financial details (such as income and major outgoings), bank account details	14 days
Interest bearing credit applications	Customer emails, names, addresses, date of birth, marital status, employment details, financial details (such as income and major outgoings), bank account details	14 days
Promotional materials	Names and customer images	3 years
Customer listings for promotional communications	Names, addresses, email addresses	30 days
Marketing databases	Names, addresses, email addresses	15 years
Social media communications	Names, addresses, email addresses, transactional data, hobbies, interests, payment reference	Permanently
Product and service reviews by customers	Names, emails and products / services purchased	Personal data – 12 months Review content permanently
Records of administration of watch and jewelry insurance claims and insurance companies	Names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, insurance policy number, item claimed for, call recordings, bank sort code details	Permanently
Mappin & Webb Care, Goldsmiths Care and Watches of Switzerland Protection	Names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, insurance policy number, item claimed for, call recordings	Permanently
Call recordings	Telephone numbers, call recordings	28 days
Repair records with Watches of Switzerland, Goldsmiths and Mappin & Webb	Names, addresses and watch and damage / repair details, watch photo, contact details, repair reference number and guarantee number	Permanently
Repairs records with Watchlab	Names, addresses and watch and damage / repair details	7 years
Customer Live Chat forum	Voice recordings, images and messaging
Mobile App - Akin	Names, mobile phone numbers
CCTV	Images of attendees at our premises	As long as required for security
Visitor records	Names and images of attendees at our premises	As long as required for security purposes
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system	Vehicle registration plates of visitors, suppliers and other attendees at our HQ	As long as required for security purposes

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

To deliver products and services to you, it is sometimes necessary to share your personal information outside of the European Economic Area (the EEA). This will typically occur when service providers are located outside the EEA or if you are based outside the EEA. These transfers are subject to special rules under data protection laws.

If we transfer your personal information outside the EEA, we will ensure that the transfer will be compliant with data protection law and all personal data will be secure. Our standard practice is to assess the laws and practises of the destination country and relevant service provider and the security measures that are to be taken as regards the data in the overseas location; Alternatively, we use standard data protection clauses.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the following rights:

the right to be informed about our processing of your personal data which is the aim of this Notice;
the right to request access to personal data that we hold about you at any time;
the right to ask us to update and correct any out-of-date or incorrect personal data that we hold about you;
the right to object to processing of your personal data and/or to withdraw any consent you have given us and to opt out of any marketing communications that we may send you.
the right to prevent processing that is likely to cause damage or distress to you or anyone else;
the certain rights in relation to automated decision-making processes including the right to object to profiling;
the right to request that we erase or destroy your personal data in certain circumstances (the right to be forgotten) for example when the data are no longer necessary for the purpose for which we collected them;
the right to have your personal data provided to you by us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and the right to have that data transmitted to another data controller. This is known as the right to data portability.

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, you can always:

call our Customer Relations Team on telephone 0800 8495051 but we will ask you to put your request in writing;
email us at either customer.relations@aurumholdings.co.uk or dpo@aurumholdings.co.uk or;
contact us by post to either Customer Relations or the Data Protection Officer, The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited, Aurum House, 2, Elland Road, Braunstone, Leicester LE3 1TT, United Kingdom.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow SK9 5AF, United Kingdom if you believe we have not handled your personal data in accordance with the law. Further information, including contact details, is available at https://ico.org.uk.

The Watches of Switzerland Group Limited
Aurum House
2, Elland Road
Braunstone
Leicester
LE3 1TT
United Kingdom