Advanced Privacy Policy

Keeping your personal information safe and secure is our top priority. That’s why we want to notify you of some changes to our privacy policy in readiness for the introduction of the new data protection law on 25 May 2018.

Your personal information is an important part of our service. For instance, it lets us provide our services and products to you, including any other financial information. If you are happy for us to, it also lets us get in touch whenever we have offers or deals that we think might be of interest to you.

The fact that the law is changing only builds on what we already do today – and that is to give your personal information the respect and security it deserves.

When you contact or purchase products from Residential Electronics and Telecommunications, you can trust us with your information – and that’s a responsibility we take very seriously. Our privacy policy spells out exactly what data we collect and how we use it.

Why have a Privacy Policy?

We’ve updated our privacy policy to reflect the changes in data-protection laws. We’ll update it again between now and 25 May 2018 when further changes come into effect.

Firstly, we are under a legal obligation to let you know what personal information we collect about you, what we use it for and on what basis.

We always need a good reason and we also have to explain to you your rights in relation to that information. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and to have a copy of it, and you can ask us to change or delete it.

But whatever we do with your information, we need a legal basis for doing it. We generally rely on one of three grounds (reasons) for our business processing. Firstly, if you have ordered a product or take a service from us, we are entitled to process your information so that we can provide that service to you and bill you for it.

Secondly, if we want to collect and use your information for other purposes, we may need to ask for your consent (permission) and, if we do, that permission must always be indicated by a positive action from you (such as ticking a box) and be informed. You are also free to withdraw your permission at any time. We tend to need permission when what is proposed is more intrusive (for example, sharing your contact details with other organisations so they can market their own products and services to you).

But we do not always need permission. In some cases, having assessed whether our use would be fair and not override your right to privacy, we may come to the view that it falls within the third ground – our ‘legitimate interests’ to use the information in a particular way without your permission (for example, to protect our network against cyber-attacks). But when we do this, we must tell you as you may have a right to object. And if you object specifically to us sending you marketing material, or to ‘profiling you’ for marketing purposes, we must then stop.

This is all set out in detail in this policy, which focuses more on those items that we think are likely to be of most interest to you. As well as covering processing for business purposes, we give you information on circumstances in which we may have to, or can choose to, share your information.

Our Privacy Policy

Please read the policy carefully as it applies to the products and services we provide you. It applies to our consumer, customers but doesn’t apply to the information we hold about companies or organisations.

It also applies even if you’re not one of our customers and you interact with us, such as by:

using one of our products or services – paid for by someone else
taking part in a survey or trial
entering a prize promotion;
calling our helpdesk
generally enquiring about our services

If you need to give us personal information about someone else in relation to our products and services, the privacy policy will also apply. And if we need the permission of the other person to use that information, we’ll ask you to check they are OK with this.

Who we are

We are Residential Telecommunications a trading name of Residential Electronics and Telecommunications Limited. We review our privacy policy and update it regularly.

Accessing and updating how we use your information

We want to make sure that any personal information we hold about you is up to date. So if you think your personal information is inaccurate, you can ask us to correct or remove it at no charge to you.

Please contact our Customer Services team on the number below to do this.

03302230731.

You can always tell us that you do not wish to receive direct marketing communications from Residential Telecommunications. But remember, if you do not want us to get in touch, you may miss out on valuable and exciting offers. If you would prefer not to receive direct marketing communications from us, simply let us know at any time by contacting us as below or by following the opt out instructions in the relevant communication. Please note that this will not stop you from receiving service communications from us.

Please call Customer Services on
0330 2230 731

or write to

Residential Electronics and Telecommunications LTD,
166A Old Christchurch Road
Bournemouth,
BH1 1NU

or email contact@residentialtelecommunications.com

What kinds of personal information do we collect and how do we use it?

To provide our products and services to you:

We’ll use your personal information to provide you with products and services. This applies when you register for or buy a product or service from us. Or if you register for an online account with us or download and register on one of our apps.

record details about the products and services you use or order from us.
charge you and make sure your payment reaches us
give information to someone else (if we need to for the product or service you’ve ordered)
support you more if you are a vulnerable customer

We use the following to provide products and services and manage your account:

Your contact details and other information to confirm your identity and your communications with us. This includes your name, gender, address, phone number, email address, agreement number and passwords.
Your payment and financial information.
Your communications with us, including letters emails and phone calls.
Information from cookies placed on your connected devices that we need so we can provide a service.

We use this information to carry out our contract (or to prepare a contract) and provide products or services to you. If you don’t give us the correct information or ask us to delete it, we might not be able to provide you with the product or service you ordered from us.

If you tell us you have a disability or otherwise need support, we’ll note that you are a vulnerable customer, but only if you give your permission or if we have to for legal or regulatory reasons. For example, if you told us about a disability we need to be aware of when we deliver our services to you, we have to record that information so we don’t repeatedly ask you about it. We will also record the details of a Power of Attorney we have been asked to log against your account.

As a business we may need to your information:

We’ll use your personal information if we consider it is in our legitimate business interests so that we can operate as an efficient and effective business. We use your information to:

identify, and let you know about, products and services that interest you
create aggregated and anonymised information for further use
detect and prevent fraud; and
secure and protect our network

To market products and services you may be interested in:

We’ll use your personal information to send you direct marketing and to better identify products and services that interest you. We do that if you’re one of our customers or if you’ve been in touch with us another way (such as entering a prize promotion or competition). We use your information to:

create a profile about you to better understand you as a customer and tailor the communications we send you
tell you about other products and services you might be interested in

We use the following for marketing and to identify the products and services you’re interested in:

Your contact details. This includes your name, gender, address, phone number, date of birth and email address
Your payment and financial information
Information from cookies and tags placed on your connected devices
Information from other organisations such as aggregated demographic data, data brokers
Details of the products and services you’ve bought and how you use them

We’ll send you information (about the products and services we provide) by phone, post, email, online banner advertising. We also use the information we have about you to personalise these messages wherever we can as we believe it is important to make them relevant to you. We do this because we have a legitimate business interest in keeping you up to date with our products and services, making them relevant to you and making sure you manage your spending with us. We also check that you are happy for us to send you marketing messages by recorded phone call, post, email before we do so. In each message we send, you also have the option to opt out.

We’ll only market other organisations’ products and services if you have said it is OK for us to do so.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing information or withdraw your permission at any time, as set out in the 'How to contact us and further details' section below.

Read our cookie policy for more details on how we use cookies.

To create aggregated and anonymised data:

We’ll use your personal information to create aggregated and anonymised information. Nobody can identify you from that information and we’ll use it to:

make sure our network is working properly and continuously improve and develop our network and products and services for our customers
run management and corporate reporting, research and analytics, and to improve the business; and
provide other organisations with aggregated and anonymous reports

We use the following to generate aggregated and anonymised information.

Your gender, address and date of birth
Information about what you buy from us, how you ordered it and how you pay for it, for example, which product you purchased from us
Information from cookies and tags placed on your computer
Information from other organisations who provide aggregated demographic information, data brokers, our partners and publicly available sources like the electoral roll and business directories
Details of the products and services you’ve bought and how you use them – including your, call and browser(including IP address) records.

We have a legitimate interest in generating insights that will help us operate our network and business or would be useful to other organisations.

To develop better business practices and have a better understanding of what our customers want, we will use it to:

maintain, develop and test our network (including managing the traffic on our network), products and services, to provide you with a better service
train our people and suppliers to provide you with products and services (but we make the information anonymous beforehand wherever possible)
create a profile about you to better understand you as our customer
run surveys and market research about our products

We use the following information to do this.

Your contact details
Your payment and financial information
Your communications with us, including, post, emails, and phone calls (and any recordings made)
Information from cookies placed on your connected devices
Details of the products and services you’ve bought and how you use them – including your, call and browser (including IP address and static IP address, if it applies) records

If we use this information for market research, training, testing, development purposes or to create a profile about you, we do so because it is in our legitimate business interests of running an efficient and effective business which can adapt to meet our customers’ needs.

To prevent and detect crime, we will use it to:

We’ll use your personal information to help prevent and detect crime and fraud. We’ll also use it to prevent and detect criminal attacks on our network.

To do that we use the following information, but only where strictly necessary.

Your contact details and other information to confirm your identity and communications with us. This includes your name, gender, address, phone number, date of birth, email address, passwords and credentials (for example, security questions).
Your payment and financial information
Details of the products and services you’ve bought and how you use them – including your call and browser (including IP address) records
We use this personal information because we have a legitimate interest in protecting our network and business from attacks and to prevent and detect crime and fraud.

To meet our legal and regulatory obligations:

We might have to release personal information about you to meet our legal obligations.

To law enforcement agencies:

Under investigatory powers legislation, we might have to share personal information about you to government and law-enforcement agencies, such as the police, to help detect and stop crime, prosecute offenders and protect national security.

They might ask for the following details.

Your contact details. This includes your name, gender, address, phone number, date of birth, email address, passwords and credentials (such as your security questions and answers) needed to confirm your identity and your communications with us
Your communications with us, such as post, calls, emails.
Your payment and financial information
Details of the products and services you’ve bought and how you use them – including your call and browser (including IP address) records.

The balance between privacy and investigatory powers is challenging. We share your personal information when the law says we have to, but we have strong oversight of what we do and get expert advice to make sure we’re doing the right thing to protect your right to privacy.

We’ll also share personal information about you where we have to legally share it with another person. That might be when a law says we have to share that information or because of a court order.

In limited circumstances, we may also share your information with other public authorities, even if we do not have to. However, we would need to be satisfied that a request for information is lawful and proportionate (in other words, appropriate to the request). And we would need appropriate assurances about security and how the information is used and how long it is kept.

Sharing your information

We use other providers to carry out services on our behalf or to help us provide services to you.

We also use them to:

provide customer-service, marketing, infrastructure and information-technology services;
personalise our service and make it work better;
process payment transactions;
run surveys

Where we use another organisation, we still control your personal information. And we have strict controls in place to make sure it’s properly protected.

Protecting your information and how long we keep it

How do we protect your personal information?

We have strict security measures to protect your personal information. We check your identity when you get in touch with us, and we follow our security procedures and apply suitable technical measures, such as encryption, to protect your information.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We’ll keep:

a summary copy of your contract for six years from the date of the contract
your contact details on file while you’re one of our customers, and for six years after; and
details relating to any dispute for six years after it was closed

In other cases we’ll store personal information for the periods needed for the purposes for which the information was collected or for which it is to be further processed. And sometimes we’ll keep it for longer if we need to by law. Otherwise we delete it.

How to contact us and further details

If you have any questions on how we use your data:

You can contact our data protection officer by email at contact@residentialtelecommunications.com or write to us at

Residential Electronics and Telecommunications LTD,
166A Old Christchurch Road
Bournemouth,
BH1 1NU,

and mark it for the attention of data protection.

If you want to make a complaint on how we have handled your personal information, please contact our data protection officer who will investigate the matter and report back to you. If you are still not satisfied after our response or believe we are not using your personal information in line with the law, you also have the right to complain to the data-protection regulator, that’s the Information Commissioner - https://ico.org.uk/.

How will we inform you of any changes to this policy?:

Our privacy policy might change from time to time. We’ll post any changes on this page for at least 30 days. And if the changes are significant, we’ll tell you by email, or phone call.

Glossary:

Aggregated data means grouped information, for example the total number of calls made in a month or total number of minutes called.
Anonymised data means data which has had all personally identifiable information removed.
Browser records means the types of websites that you visit, as well as the date, time, length of your internet session, cell site and network used, device information, your data usage, your IP address, and the nature of the websites you view.
Call records Any communications we have had with you via a phone call
Cookies are small text files (up to 4KB) created by a website and stored in the user's connected device – either temporarily for that session only or permanently on the hard disk (called a persistent cookie). Cookies help the website recognise you and keep track of your preferences.
Residential electronics, we and our means Residential electronics and telecommunications Limited and it covers all the products and services operated by our brand in the UK.
Encryption means scrambling information into an unreadable form that can only be translated back using a special key.
IP address is a unique string of numbers that identifies each device using the internet or a local network.
Model contracts are standard contractual clauses set by the European Commission. They offer enough protection of people’s privacy, fundamental rights and freedoms when their personal information is moved from within the EEA to outside of it. The contracts keep to data-protection legislation.
Personal information means information that identifies you as an individual, or is capable of doing so.
Power of attorney refers to the option to choose a trusted friend or relative (or more than one if you want) to act on your behalf. The person you appoint, called an 'attorney', can then use your money to pay bills, sell assets on your behalf and make gifts. In the UK an ‘attorney’ must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian to be valid.
Tags are an instruction inserted on a website that specifies how the site, or a part of the site, should be formatted and how it’s performing.