Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Notice explains in detail the types of personal data Veronica Decorations may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we’ll use, store and handle that data, and how we keep it safe.
We know that there’s a lot of information here, but we want you to be fully informed about your rights and how you can control the manner in which we use the data we collect from you and how you can check it, amend it, and delete it if you wish. 
We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.
We will update this Privacy Notice from time to time so if you have any concerns about the data we ask you for you can always check the latest version which will be available on our website. The date of the last update will always be shown at the beginning of the notice.

2. Who are Veronica Decorations?

Veronica Decorations is a limited company in Uganda formed for the purposes of selling party goods and associated products to members of the public in the Uganda or overseas. Our head office and fulfilment centre is at the following address:

Hanifah Tower- Luwum Street
First Floor, Shop No. F-31

Tel: +256 778 866 306
Email: info@veronicadecorations.com

3. Explaining the legal bases we rely on

The law on data protection requires us to explain the legal justification we have for collecting and processing your personal data. Veronica Decorations relies on the following four bases:

• Consent – An example of this is when you opt-in to receive email newsletters or special offers. You can easily withdraw this consent at any time either by contacting us or by “unsubscribing” from any of the email messages we send you.

• Contractual obligations – When you order from us, you are asked to accept our Terms and Conditions and these establish a contract between you and Veronica Decorations. Our part of the deal is to pack and deliver the goods you have ordered, and for this we need a delivery address, a means of communicating with you electronically (phone or email or both), and payment for the goods.

• Legal compliance – For example, when we make a sale we have to raise a VAT invoice for the transaction which will have the name and address of our customer on it. We have to keep this accounting information for up to six years after the date of the sale. Please note however, we are not required to hold any credit card (or Paypal) details and neither do we want to. When you place your order this information goes directly to the payment services provider (PSP) we use (Flutterwave) who arrange the transfer of money from your account to ours. We never see this information ourselves except when you place your order by telephone and in this case we send the information to our PSP on your behalf and destroy the information immediately afterwards.

• Legitimate interest – Under certain circumstances businesses may send marketing information or offers to previous customers provided the goods being promoted are similar in nature to those previously purchased and that such communications do not materially impact the rights, freedom or interests of the recipients.

In the case of marketing sent electronically (email marketing), businesses also have to give customers the opportunity to opt-out of any such marketing activity. Therefore, when you place an order with Veronuca Decorations and we ask you for an email address, you will see a tick box and an explanation that if you tick the box we won’t send you marketing newsletters and/or offers. If the experience of ordering from us is entirely satisfactory (we are sure it will be!) and you want to place a further order a few months later, you may decide you do want to receive newsletters and special offers from us by email. If on this occasion you do not tick the “opt-out” box your original choice will be updated and we will start to send you email marketing communications. We will make a record of your marketing email preference each time you place an order.

4. When do we collect your personal data?

We only collect personal data from you when you give it to us by interacting with our website (www.veronicadecorations.com), when you engage with us on social media or by speaking to us on the telephone.

Here are some examples of when we might collect personal data from you. The legal basis we rely on when doing this is shown in brackets:-

• When you create an online account with us (consent).
• When placing an order online using an account or as a guest (contractual obligation, legal compliance and legitimate interest).
• When you request a catalogue (consent).
• When you sign up for our newsletter (consent).
• When you sign up for our blog (consent).
• When you contact us by any means (including our Chat Line) with queries, complaints etc (contractual obligation and/or consent).
• When you enter prize draws or competitions (consent and you may have to give further consent for your personal information to be passed on to the company offering the prize for the competition).
• When you comment on or review our products and services (consent and legitimate interest).

We do collect other information from or about you but it is not personal information and on its own cannot easily be traced back to you. Examples are:-
• Your computer’s IP address
• Tracking your movements on our website

5. What sort of personal data do we ask you for?

• Your name & address details
• Your email address.
• Your payment card information to pay for your order. This information goes straight to our Payment Service Providers (Flutterwave). We do not see this information and neither do we store it.
• Optionally, your landline or mobile phone number if you choose to give it to us.
• Optionally, the dates of birth of your children if you choose to give us this data.

6. What sort additional data do we collect from you?

• We collect technical information about your internet connection and the browser you use, the pages you visited while on our site and the search terms you used. This helps us to improve our site in order to give the best possible online experience to all our users.
• Your social media username if you interact with us through those channels and this allows us to respond to your comments, questions and feedback.
• Tracking your movements when using our website and how you react to our marketing emails.
• Buying information such as order value and products purchased.

7. How do we use your personal data?

The personal data we ask you for is primarily used to fulfill our contract with you so we can deliver the goods you have ordered from us.

We ask you for your name and home address so we can:-

• • deliver your order to you or to your delivery address if different
  • check the viability of the payment method you have used and to prevent fraudulent transactions.
  • create an record for you in our order management system and account for the sale of goods to you for tax and VAT purposes.
  • once or twice a year send you a copy of our latest party catalogue unless you ask us to cease.

emailing sales@veronicadecorations.com

We ask you for your email address so we can:

• get in touch with you about your order where necessary
• acknowledge receipt of your order and advise you when it has left us giving you details of the shipment allowing you to track its progress.
• ask the delivery service to advise you when your order will be delivered.
• tell you when any refund you have asked for has been actioned.
• stay in touch with you after subscribing to our newsletter or placing an order unless you ask us not to. These emails usually take the form of:-

• • advise of free offers or periods of free delivery
  • arrival of new product ranges
  • arrival of seasonal ranges such as Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Summer etc
  • issue of a new edition of our catalogue

8. How we protect your personal data

We know how much data security matters to all our customers. With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. 

We secure access to all transactional areas of our website using ‘https’ technology.

Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data such as payment card information is secured by SSL encryption when it is sent to our Payment Service Providers.

Our network partners regularly monitor our IT systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks

9. How long will we keep your personal data?

Whenever we collect or process your personal data, we’ll only keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. 
At the end of that retention period, your data will either be deleted completely or rendered anonymous so that it can be used in a non-identifiable way for statistical analysis and business planning.
By way of example, when you place an order we’ll keep the personal data you give us for up to six years so we can comply with tax and VAT obligations. Email addresses will cease to be used for marketing purposes two years after your last interaction with us or earlier if you choose to unsubscribe. If you unsubscribe your email address will go onto a suppression list so we can comply with your requirements. Email addresses on suppression lists will be kept for the life of the business.

10. Who do we share your personal data with?

We often have to pass your personal data to trusted third parties but only for the purposes of processing your order (fulfilling our contract with you) keeping in touch with you by direct marketing or providing you with additional facilities on our website. 

We never sell, rent or pass your data to other companies for their marketing purposes. The only exception to this rule is if you enter a competition organised by us and the prize is offered by another company that company may expect to have access to your information for marketing purposes and to fulfill the prize. In this case you will be specifically informed at the time you enter the competition 

Where we need to share your data with other companies we only provide them with the personal information they need to carry out specific services. We will have an agreement with them to ensure:-

• they too comply with the requirements or equivalent standards of the General Data Protection Regulations even if they are operating outside Europe.
• they only use your data for the purposes we specify in our agreement with them.
• they only retain your data for as long as is necessary after which it will be deleted.

Obvious examples of the kind of third parties we work with are:-

• Operational companies such as delivery couriers who need your name and address to deliver your order and your email address to inform you when the delivery is due.
• Payment Service Providers (PSPs) who receive the credit card or Paypal details you provide when placing an order. Veronica Decorations never see these details but the PSPs will use them to transfer payment from your account to ours and to perform credit checking against lists of known fraudulently used cards.
• IT companies who support our website and other business systems. Our customer lists and records are usually held within the systems to which they have access.
• Direct marketing companies who help us manage our electronic and postal communications with you and keep records of your email preferences.
• Address management companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate and that you haven’t listed with any suppression service.

Less obvious examples of how your personal data might be passed to other companies:-

• When you use our Chat Line the email address you use for the chat gets passed to a chat software provider company which we use to manage this service. While the “chat” itself is directly with our own Customer Service staff the transcript of it alongside your name and email address is made by the software provider who will send the copy of the transcript to you if you request it. The chat software provider is not allowed to use any of this data for any other purpose.
• If another business were to buy or otherwise acquire part or all of the assets of Veronica Decorations then the personal data held by Veronica Decorations about its customers could be transferred as one of the assets. If this were to happen, your personal data would be transferred to the new owner under the terms of this Privacy Notice. During the process of purchase or acquisition Veronica Decorations customer data might be shared with the interested party under the terms of this Privacy Notice for the purposes of the evaluation of the customer data as a whole.
• We may be required to disclose your personal data to the police or other enforcement or regulatory body. These requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis and if faced with them we will take the privacy of our customers into consideration. This may include exchanging information with other companies or organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction

11. Where your personal data might be processed

At Veronica Decorations we keep a schedule of all the customer personal data we hold showing where it is held and how it is transferred from one area to another. By far the majority of such data is held on our own servers in the US or on the servers of our IT partners also in the US. 

Sometimes we will need to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside Uganda. An obvious example of this are when you place an order with us and you live in the USA. Your name and delivery information will have to be passed at some stage to a courier in the USA to deliver your order. A less obvious example is the one given in Section 9 (above) concerning the use of our Chat Line.
The GDPR covers the processing of data within the EEC but where the data goes outside the EEC we ask our service partners in those countries to apply the same standards to the processing of that data as is required by the GDPR.

12. What rights do you have over your personal data held by Veronica Decorations?

You have the right to request:

• access to the personal data we hold about you.
• the correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.
• the deletion of any personal data we hold about you provided we do not need it for other legitimate purpose eg. the invoices we raise to you for tax and VAT purposes and our marketing suppression lists.
• the withdrawal of any consent you may have previously given us to use or process your personal data