1. About us

We are Healthy Start Ltd T/A Electronic Cigarette Co, an online retail business specialising in vaping hardware and e-liquids, and protecting your personal data is important to us. We comply with all relevant data protection legislation and the following privacy notice is intended to provide transparency about how we handle your personal information.

As an essential part of our business, we collect and manage our customer data. This notice explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

Our services are not intended for anyone under the age of 18 as we deal with age restricted products.

2. Personal data and the provision of services

When you order products via our website, we only ask for information that is essential to deliver our products to you, or for invoicing purposes. This information is limited to names, addresses, dates of birth in some instances, and email and telephone contact data. We don't hold or have access to any of your financial details.

3. Use of your personal data

Some of your personal data we need for processing your order and that is the only purpose we use it for.

We will not and do not share your information with third parties as a general rule. However, we do share it with contracted parties such as Royal Mail for the purposes of delivery and delivery notifications. In addition, there may instances of us having to share information as directed by law with entities such as providers of identity verification (for the purposes of verifying over 18 years of age), or any disclosure required by law or regulation such as the prevention of financial crime or terrorism.

Please also be advised that when you visit our website, cookies will be used to collect and log information about you such as your IP (Internet Protocol) address which connects your computer or mobile device to the Internet, and activity information about your visit such as the pages you view or searched for, pages response times, and download errors. We do this so that we can measure our website’s performance. Cookies are also used to enhance our website’s functionality and personalisation, which includes sharing data with third party organisations (only Google Analytics). You can control this by adjusting your cookies settings.

4. Why do we need this information?

The primary reason for asking you to provide us with your personal data is to allow us to carry out your requests/instructions, which will usually be to provide you with goods, or to replace damaged or faulty goods. This information is also necessary for these reasons:

• So we can communicate with you, for example if we're short on stock or we have a query about your order
• To keep financial records of your transactions
• To be able to respond to any complaint or claim made against us
• To obtain payment
• To be able to verify your identity for the purposes of being over 18
• To market our services and provide details of promotions that may interest you (with your consent), although currently we do not market our services, instead relying on your kind recommendations and word of mouth

5. Your Rights

In accordance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements, your personal data is protected by legal rights which include:

• Right of access – to request access to your personal information and information about how we process it
• Right to rectification – to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed
• Right to erasure (also known as the Right to be Forgotten) – to have your personal information erased
• Right to restriction of processing – to restrict processing of your personal information
• Right to data portability – to electronically move, copy or transfer your personal information in a standard form
• Right to object – to object to processing of your personal information
• Rights with regards to automated individual decision making, including profiling rights relating to automated decision making, including profiling

6. How Do We Protect Your Personal Data?

We take all reasonable measures to protect personal data held by us. We have high standards of technology and operational security in order to protect personally identifiable data from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. We also adopt a secure approach to confidentiality obligations both internally and externally to ensure all personal data is handled and processed confidentially. We will only ever use your personal information to complete transactions. We may use personalisation to collect analytics to inform marketing and produce relevant content for the marketing strategy, to enable it to enhance and personalise the customer experience. We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption and other industry standard security approaches. Our staff are well informed with regard to data protection best practices and GDPR minimums.

7. How long do we keep your data?

Your personal information (names, addresses, dates of birth in some instances, and email and telephone contact data) will be retained on our website server/s for as long as is necessary to either fulfill the purposes for which the information was supplied (ie to supply goods), or for as long as you're happy to maintain an account with us. We would not delete your purchase history without your prior consent, and deleting it would mean we hold no record of your purchase should you need to get back in touch with us. Your personal information may be retained as required by law, or for as long as is necessary under any relevant contractual obligations on our part or matters affecting your consumer rights. Put another way, for as long as necessary to carry out your transactional requests and in line with your rights as a consumer, but also bearing in mind that during warranty period there needs to be a record of a transaction. HMRC also requires that sales invoices are retained for a minimum of 7 years. Your data will be held indefinitely where you have consented to hold an account with us for the purpose of buying goods therefore providing you with access to your full purchase history.

8. Collecting your personal data

We collect your personal data in a number of ways, including but not limited to:

• Submitting an online enquiry
• Following/liking or subscribing to our social media channels
• Taking part in any competition or promotion run on our website of through our social media channels
• By completing a questionnaire or survey via our website
• Asking a question, or submitting your query or complaint via our website, email or social media channels
• Posting information on our website or social media channels, for example, commenting or joining in discussions
• When you leave a review about us on Trusted Shops, Google Reviews or other media platform

9. How we may use your details

The following are examples, although not exhaustive, of how we may use your personal information for our legitimate business interests:

• Fraud prevention
• Direct marketing (with your consent)
• System security
• To monitor and record information relating to the use of our services, to include our website
• Identifying usage trends
• Enable business development including sending legal updates, publications and details of events (with your consent)
• Determining the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising

With your consent, we may use your personal information for legitimate interests such as direct marketing or under reasonable expectation to provide you with information you would expect to receive or that would benefit or enhance our relationship with you. This information helps us review and improve our service.

10. Marketing communications

We may contact you for the purpose of direct marketing. This means that we may use personal data collected in line with this privacy notice, to contact you about our products and services. These communications may be delivered by email or social media platforms. We will not send marketing communications via SMS or call you without your specific consent, and we would never pass or sell your details to a third party for marketing purposes.

11. Complaints

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, please get in touch. 

Our Data Protection officer is Benita Clark and you can contact her at:

Healthy Start Ltd, PO Box 7270, Stourbridge, DY8 9GH

Email:  info@electronic-cigarettesco.co.uk

Telephone: 01384 878545

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Telephone: 0303 123 1113. Website: www.ico.org.uk

Credit card security

Our website uses Paypal to process payments which is a worldwide e-commerce businesses allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet enabling you to shop without sharing financial information with the company you are buying from.

Once you have been through our checkout process and provided your name and address and contact details so that we can process your order, you will arrive at the Paypal page and thereafter the information you enter is known only to the Paypal encrypted system.

Your privacy is safeguarded with their data encryption which works seamlessly with your credit/debit card and current account. They state that your personal information is stored on their servers and heavily guarded, both physically and electronically.

To further shield your credit card and bank numbers, they do not directly connect their firewall-protected servers to the internet. Please go to www.paypal.com for further details about their security measures.

When you place an order on our website, none of your financial details will be known by us, they will only be known by Paypal's encrypted system as described above. We do not know, have access to or hold any financial details whatsoever.

In addition, when you order with us over the phone, (we no longer offer this service) we do not record, write down, store or share your financial details.

Our website also uses Sagepay to process payments which is also a very well known e-commerce businesses allowing payments and money transfers to be made via the Internet, enabling you to shop without sharing financial information with the company you are buying from. Your privacy is safeguarded in the same way as it is for Paypal.

Secure checkout

Our web server uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL creates a secure 'layer' between your browser program and your Internet connection.

When you reach the checkout page on our site you can see a small padlock in your browser's window or to the right of the address bar (where your current web address is displayed). By clicking on this padlock you can see our digital certificate information guaranteeing the identity of the page. This SSL will soon be on all pages.

SSL also encrypts data and verifies that it was not altered between your computer and our server.

The SSL security is protecting your personal details held by us in order to send you goods, remember, when you use our website we will not see or know your card or payment details.

Our version of this SSL was not affected or vulnerable to the Heartbleed security threat which came to light in the media in April 2014.

Third Party Links

Links to third party websites Links on this site may let you leave our website. The linked sites are not under our control and we are not responsible for the content of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site or those to which links are provided.

We are providing these links to you only as a convenience and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by us of the site, the information, products or services described therein.

Cookies

Our website places cookies, which are small data files, on your computer or handheld device. This is standard practice for all websites. Cookies are essential for helping us deliver a high quality website and online shopping experience for our customers, and some cookies collect information about browsing and buying behaviour.

For more information about cookies, including how we use them and how to disable them, please read our full Cookie Policy below. By using and browsing our website, you consent to cookies being used in accordance with our policy. If you do not consent, you must disable cookies or refrain from using the site.

Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

This website uses cookies to collect information. Cookies are small data files which are placed on your computer or other mobile or handheld device (such as smart phones or ‘tablets’) as you browse this website. They are used to ‘remember’ when your computer or device accesses this website. The cookies are essential to the effective operation of our website and to enable to you shop with us online. Cookies are also used to tailor the products and services offered and advertised to our customers, both on this website and elsewhere.

Information collected

Some cookies collect information about browsing and purchasing behaviour by people who access this website via the same computer or device. This includes information about pages viewed, products purchased and the customer journey around a website. We do not, however, use cookies to collect or record information about users’ names, addresses or other personal details. Healthy Start is able to use cookies to monitor individual customer browsing and purchasing behaviour but third parties are not able to identify customers using cookies.

Who sets the cookies?

The cookies stored on your computer or other device when you access this website are set by the standard parameters within our website software. Some cookies are set by or on behalf Healthy Start and are necessary to enable customers to a make purchases on our website. Cookies may also be set by third parties (although this isn’t currently the case) who participate with us in affiliate marketing programmes. Third parties cannot collect any personal data from which they would be able to identify individual customers.

What are cookies used for?

The main purposes for which cookies are used are: 

1. For technical purposes essential to effective operation of a website, particularly in relation to online transactions
2. To drive marketing, particularly banner advertisements and targeted updates.
3. To enable information to be collected about the browsing and shopping habits and activities of customers, including to monitor the success of campaigns, competitions etc.
4. 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.

How do I disable cookies?

If you want to disable cookies you need to change your website browser settings to reject cookies. How to do this will depend on the browser you use and we provide further detail below on how to disable cookies for the most popular browsers:

For Microsoft Internet Explorer:

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

For Mozilla Firefox:

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

For Opera 6.0 and further:

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

What happens if I disable cookies?

This depends on which cookies you disable, but in general the site may not operate properly if cookies are switched off. If you only disable third party cookies you will not be prevented from making purchases on this site. If you disable all cookies you will be unable to complete a purchase on this site.