Privacy Policy
Last updated: 26 July 2023
1. Introduction
This Privacy & Cookie Policy details how we, Comparestack Limited of Witan Gate House, 500-600 Witan Gate West, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK9 1SH United Kingdom collect, use and process personal data provided to us. If you have any questions on this Privacy & Cookie Policy or otherwise relating to how we process your personal data you can contact us at [email protected].
This Privacy & Cookie Policy affects your legal rights and obligations so please read it carefully. If you do not agree to be bound by this Privacy & Cookie Policy, please do not provide your personal data to us.
We may update this Privacy & Cookie Policy from time to time at our discretion and in particular to reflect any changes in applicable laws. If we do so, and the changes substantially affect your rights or obligations, we shall notify you if we have your email address. Otherwise, you are responsible for regularly reviewing this Privacy & Cookie Policy so that you are aware of any changes to it.
We are the data controller of the personal data provided to us.
2. Whose personal data do we collect?
By ‘personal data’ we mean identifiable information about you, such as your name, email address, telephone number, date of birth, address, billing address, payment details and your IP address. It also includes special categories of personal information, including information about your health. Whilst you do not have to provide such information in order to use the Comparestack service, it may be that a service provider requires such information and so you may need to provide a special category of personal data to us so that you can search for a price comparison or quote.
We will collect your personal data in a number of ways:
- when you make an enquiry, provide feedback or otherwise contact us with a question or comment;
- when you search for a price comparison or quote;
- when you subscribe to our newsletter;
- when you engage with us on social media;
- when you provide a review or testimonial to us;
When you contact us by email or post, we may keep a record of the correspondence and we may also record any telephone call we have with you.
When you use our website, we automatically collect and store information about your device and your activities. This information could include (a) technical information about your mobile device such as type of device, web browser or operating system; (b) your preferences and settings such as time zone and language; and (c) how long you used the website and which services and features you used. We do this in accordance with the Cookies policy set out below.
3. Lawful use of your personal data
We will only use your personal data where we have a lawful basis to do so. The lawful purposes that we rely on under this Privacy & Cookie Policy are:
- consent (where you choose to provide it),
- performance of our contract with you;
- legal compliance; and
- legitimate interests. When we refer to legitimate interests we mean our legitimate business interests in the normal running of our business which do not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests.
We use your personal data to allow you to access the Comparestack service in accordance with our Terms of Use. This includes sending an email to you following a quote search.
We use your personal data to comply with any legal obligations, demands or requirements, for example, as part of anti-money laundering processes or to protect a third party’s rights, property, or safety.
We may also use your personal data for our legitimate interests, including managing our relationship with you, dealing with any customer services you require, for audit purposes, to contact you about changes to this Privacy & Cookie Policy, to manage any promotions we may run.
4. Who do we share your data with?
In order to provide the Comparestack service to you, if you request a switch, we will share your personal data with our service providers so that they can enable the switch. However, you agree that if you do switch your supply to a supplier through Comparestack, that supplier has its own privacy policy which will apply to how they use your personal data. You can find these privacy policies on their websites and you must ensure that you agree to the relevant privacy policy before completing your switch. Please note, that we will share any financial information we have from you with a service provider and within 7 days of acknowledgement of receipt by the service provider, we shall delete your financial information.
For our legitimate interests, we may share your personal data with any service providers, sub-contractors and agents that we may appoint to perform functions on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions, including payment providers, IT service providers, customer support services, accountants, auditors and lawyers. We shall provide our service providers, sub-contractors and agents only with such of your personal data as they need to provide the service for us and if we stop using their services, we shall request that they delete your personal data or make it anonymous within their systems.
If you have accessed Comparestack through an introducer such as a cash back or affiliate site, we may share your personal data with that introducer for our legitimate interests and in accordance with your consent.
In order to comply with our legal obligations, under certain circumstances we may have to disclose your personal data under applicable laws and/or regulations, for example, as part of anti-money laundering processes or to protect a third party’s rights, property, or safety.
For our legitimate interests, we may also share your personal data in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of assets, consolidation or restructuring, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by or into another company.
5. Where we hold and process your personal data
Some or all of your personal data may be stored or transferred outside of the European Economic Area (the EEA) for any reason, including for example, if our email server is located in a country outside the EEA or if any of our service providers are based outside of the EEA.
If we do store or transfer your personal data outside the EEA, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated as safely and securely as it would be within the EEA and under applicable laws.
6. Security
We shall process your personal data in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. We do this by using appropriate technical or organisational measures, for example, all information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and our employees are required to comply with all applicable data protection laws.
Notwithstanding our efforts, you acknowledge that no system can be completely secure. Therefore, although we take these steps to secure your personal data, we do not promise that your personal data will always remain completely secure.
7. Marketing
We may send to you emails about our products and services if you consent. You can choose to no longer receive emails from us by notifying us at [email protected] or clicking unsubscribe from an email. We shall therefore retain your personal data in our records for marketing purposes until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive emails from us. Please note, even if you do unsubscribe from marketing emails, we will still contact you for our legitimate interests in relation to your access to the Comparestack service. In addition, you acknowledge that it may take a few days for us to update your preferences on our system.
8. Your rights
You have a number of rights under applicable law. To exercise any of these rights, please email us at [email protected].
You have the right to obtain from us a copy of the personal data that we hold for you or request that we transfer your personal data to another service provider.
You can also require us to correct errors in the personal data that we process for you if it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
You also have the right at any time to require that we delete your personal data that we hold for you.
At any time, you can withdraw your consent to receive our marketing emails.
Please note, we reserve the right to charge an administrative fee if your request in relation to your rights is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
If you have any complaints in relation to this Privacy & Cookies Policy or otherwise in relation to our processing of your personal data, please us. We shall review and investigate your complaint and try to get back to you within a reasonable time. You can also contact the Information Commissioner, see www.ico.org.uk or if you are based outside of the United Kingdom, please contact your local regulatory authority
9. Retention of personal data
We retain your personal data in accordance with applicable laws. Our current practice is to retain your personal data for 2 years from the date you provide it to us. We also retain a copy of the results and tariffs provided to you following a request for a quote for 2 years. However, if we are required to do so by applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements we may retain your personal data for a longer period.
Following such period, we shall make sure it is deleted or made it anonymous within our systems.
10. Cookies
A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred (through your browser) from a website to the hard drive of your computer. The cookie identifies your browser but will not let a website know any personal information about you, such as your name and/or address. These files are then used by websites to identify when users revisit that website.
Cookies placed in your browser’s memory are called session cookies and cookies placed on your computer’s hard drive are called persistent cookies. Session cookies are deleted when you close your browser, while persistent cookies remain on your hard drive, even after closing your browser. Session cookies are generally used to improve the user experience when using a website. Persistent cookies are generally used to store user preferences between browser sessions.
We use cookies to ensure that you get the most out of our website. You can delete cookies at any time or you can set your browser to reject or disable cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our site. For more information about how to reject cookies using your internet browser settings please consult the “Help” section of your internet browser (or alternatively visit http://www.aboutcookies.org).
Our website uses one first party cookie: a session cookie. This cookie expires after 2 hours of inactivity on our website, and is used to keep track of your session. It does not collect any personal data.
Our website also uses the following third party cookies:
- Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the website and ways that we can improve your experience. This cookie collects information anonymously and generates reports detailing information such as the number of visits to the system, where visitors generally came from, how long they stayed on the system, and which pages they visited. They place several persistent cookies on your computer’s hard drive. It does not collect any personal data. If you do not agree to this you can disable persistent cookies in your browser. This will prevent this third party cookie from logging your visits.
- Mouse Flow which enables us to see visitors’ behaviour and fix problems.
- Google Tag Manager enables us to install tracking tags on our site, that is, it enables Google Analytics & Mouse Flow.
- Cloudflare cookie. This is mandatory; you cannot use the Comparestack service if you disable this cookie. This cookie is used to identify individual visitors behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-visitor basis.
- Google Advertising / AdWords / Double Click which is used to provide online advertising and remarketing activities. Remarketing means that if you visit a site after you have left our site, the site you visit may serve advertisements to you for our site. You can opt out of remarketing by visiting Google’s Ad Settings page at https://www.google.com/settings/ads.
We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on our site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the relevant social media sites (Twitter, GitHub and LinkedIn) will set cookies through our website which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.
11. General
If any provision of this Privacy & Cookie Policy is held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid or unenforceable, then such provision shall be construed, as nearly as possible, to reflect the intentions of the parties and all other provisions shall remain in full force and effect.
This Privacy & Cookie Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales, and you agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.