Our Privacy Statement

Information We Collect

To be able to order from us we have to collect certain information from you. As part of this, you are required to give your contact information. We use the information given to us by you to provide the service you request from us in the way that is set out in this privacy policy.

Username and password – if we collect a username and password, this is so we can keep your information safe and so that we can have your information to hand each time you visit us.

Name, address and postcode – without this, we won’t know where to send your order or to whom. We also use postcodes to quickly get your full address to save you typing it out, and in some cases to identify whether we deliver or offer services in your area.

Age/date of birth – we may need to collect your age or date of birth in order to be able to sell you certain products, such as insurance, financial services products or alcohol, and we may also use this to send you age or birthday related offers if you agree.

Email address – we send a confirmation of your orders via email.

Telephone numbers – if there are any problems with your order or we need to check anything, we need to be able to contact you quickly.

Payment card number, expiry date, issue no and the name of card holder – when you purchase a product or service we need these details so we can collect payment in the same way as when we take payment in a store via chip and pin.

Where you heard about us – we may ask you this to help make our marketing more efficient.

Correspondence – if you contact us we may keep a record of that correspondence.

Sensitive personal data – sensitive personal data includes, for example, information related to your health, race or ethnic origin or religion. We may need sensitive personal data from you for certain products and services, and in some cases, we may be able to assume sensitive personal data about you from the information you provide. By letting us have any sensitive personal data, you expressly consent to us using and telling others about any of your sensitive personal data so we can provide you with the goods or services requested by you in the way set out in this Privacy Policy.

Third-party information – if you give us information about another person, (for example if you are booking a consultation for somebody else) you confirm that you have identified ACORN to them and told them what we will use their information for, as set out in this Privacy Policy and that they have given permission for us to be able to use their personal information in the manner described.

IP addresses – when you visit our site, we will automatically receive your IP address, a unique identifier for your computer or other access devices.

How We Use The Information We Collect

Our main uses of your information are explained above which in general is to process your orders, as well as to help us understand your needs and provide you with a better service. Your account may be used to store information about your previous purchases, personal preferences and shopping lists. But you should also be aware of the following uses –

Marketing – we (including our group companies and partners) and carefully selected third parties may use the information we collect to inform you, by letter, phone, SMS, push notification or equivalent, or email, about offers, products and services that we think may be of interest to you and we may tell you about other organisations’ products and services. We will tell you about this when we collect your information and if you do not wish to receive these communications, please let us know.

Customer care and correspondence – as part of our customer care procedures, we may follow-up, either by letter, phone, SMS or email, customers who have purchased services from our website or who have posted comments about ACORN on the internet, for example, to resolve a complaint or to ask for a testimonial.

Market research – from time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by letter, phone, SMS or email.

Website improvement – to help us design our website and improve your experience, we may collect information about the way you use and access our website. Our web system collects information about each visitor, including IP address, the length of time spent on the website and the order in which pages are visited. We may employ third party experts to help us look at this information. However, we make sure that anyone we employ treats all information with the same sensitivity and security that we treat it. This is explained in more detail in the cookies section below.

Fraud Prevention – in order to protect our customers and us from fraud and theft, we may look at the information that we get from making identity checks and other information in our customer records, including how you conduct your account and may pass this to other group companies, other retailers and to financial and other organizations (including law enforcement agencies) involved in fraud prevention and detection, to use in the same way. When you apply for products or services through our website you may also be required to go through a more detailed credit check on terms which will tell you about you first.

We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that may be placed on your device when you visit our sites. When you next visit our sites the cookie allows us to distinguish you from other users.

There are two broad categories of cookies:

1. Persistent cookies: Persistent cookies remain on your device until deleted manually or automatically.
2. Session cookies: Session cookies remain on your device until you close your browser when they are automatically deleted.

Cookies we use and why we use them

1. Essential cookies: Essential cookies are technical cookies that are required for the operation of our sites. Without essential cookies, our sites can’t operate properly. Essential cookies include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas.
2. Performance cookies: Performance cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors to our sites and to see how visitors move around them. This helps us to improve the way our sites work by enabling us to tailor our sites to the way visitors use them. The information we collect from performance cookies is aggregated which means that we cannot identify you from it.
3. Experience cookies: Experience cookies allow our sites to remember the choices you make. Our sites use experience cookies to provide you with enhanced and personalised features. For example, we use information collected through what are known as “web-analytic” cookies to compare the choices you make to those of our other customers so that we can learn from those choices. Information collected by experience cookies cannot track your browsing activity when you leave our sites to browse other sites.
4. Marketing cookies: Marketing cookies record your visits to our sites, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We use this information to make our sites and the advertising displayed on them more relevant to your interests. For example, sometimes we use marketing cookies to limit the number of times that you see an advert. Sometimes we share information about your browsing activity, (which we have collected from cookies), with our advertising partners. They may use this information to advertise products, which may interest you, on other sites.
You can refuse cookies by activating the relevant setting on your browser. However, if you do so you may not be able to access all or parts of our sites. If you carry on using our sites and do not change your browser settings we will assume you consent to us using cookies as described above.

Who We Share The Information With

We will not sell your personal information to third unless you say we can (for example for carefully selected third parties to contact you) or are required by law. We may share your information with third parties to process and fulfil your order, to provide services you request, for business analysis purposes, for the purposes of fraud prevention or if ACORN itself, or any of our business is bought or sold.

Market Research – we may provide information at an aggregated statistical level about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to third-parties, but this information will not identify individuals.

International transfers – in order to carry out the steps set out above we may send your personal information outside of the European Economic Area and, if necessary, across international borders. The data protection laws in these countries may not be as comprehensive as in the European Economic Area.

However, we have taken appropriate steps to make sure the same level of protection for the processing carried out in these countries as within the European Economic Area.

Storage of Data

We will not store your personal information for any longer than we need to, however, we may be obliged by law to store your communications and personal information including activity logs and we may need to show details of these to the government or authorized officials upon request. Like many websites, we use log files to monitor the effectiveness of our online marketing programmes.

Access RightsYou have a right to access the personal information that is held about you. To obtain a copy of the personal information ACORN holds about you, please get in touch with us. Please note that there is a charge for this (£10) which is required by law. Security – at ACORN, information security is very important and we have taken many steps to make sure your online experience with us is secure. Information about you will be kept safe and secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure of your information, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to protect and secure information that is collected online.

Keeping your information secure – to help us keep your information confidential you should:

1. Keep your password secret.
2. Never distribute the website addresses for pages that you have looked at while logged in as a registered customer.
Password – you should choose a password that is not obvious or known to anyone else. You should never give a third party your password, as you will be responsible for all activity and charges incurred through use of your password whether authorized by you or not.

If you forget your password, you can request a new password, which will be emailed to the address we hold for you. You can change your password anytime through the account facilities on the website. Should we think that there is likely to be, or has been any breach of security, we may change your password and notify you of the change by email.

Payment Card Security – we use the latest SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology to make sure that the details you provide when placing an order are kept private and secure, making shopping on our website safe. Our secure server encrypts your credit or debit card number details along with your personal information and changes them into bits of code that are then securely sent over the internet. Your browser will show when you are in a secure environment by displaying either a locked padlock or an image of a key in the grey bar at the bottom of the page; it may also warn you when you are entering a secured environment as you go to place your order. Once your payment information is received by us, your payment card is processed through the same systems that handle our store sales – so they’re tried and tested over many years of secure operation.

Security in our offices – access to your information is restricted in our stores and offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. The servers that store this information are kept in a secure environment.

Links

Our website may contain links to let you visit other websites of interest easily. Once you have used these links to leave our website, you should be aware that we do not have any control over that other website. As such we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting these websites, and they are not governed by this Privacy Policy. ACORN is not responsible for any products and/or services featured on any third party website. You should exercise caution and look at the Privacy Policy applicable to the website in question.

Notification of Changes to This Policy

If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post these changes on this website so you know what information we collect and how we use it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will tell you. You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your information in this different manner.