Privacy Policy

Automint Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales (company number 02440888). Our registered office and head office is Unit 7, Fieldhouse Park, Old Fieldhouse Lane, Huddersfield, HD2 1FA. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller, registration number ZB422497.

If you have a question about this policy, want to exercise any of the rights described in it, or wish to make a complaint about how we handle personal data, contact us in any of these ways:

By post: Data Protection, Automint Ltd, Unit 7, Fieldhouse Park, Old Fieldhouse Lane, Huddersfield, HD2 1FA.
By email: sales@automint.uk, marked for the attention of the Data Protection contact.
By telephone: 01484 511 882.

We will respond to a request to exercise your rights within one month. If a request is particularly complex we may need longer, and we will tell you within that first month if that is the case.

Most of the information we hold is about businesses rather than individuals. Business information is not personal data, but the details of the people who work at those businesses are, and so are the details of anyone trading as a sole trader or partnership.

Depending on our relationship with you, we may hold:

Contact details: name, job title, employer, business address, delivery address, telephone number, mobile number and email address.
Account and transaction records: quotations, orders, delivery notes, invoices, credit notes, statements, payment records, credit limits and account correspondence.
Delivery and collection information: addresses, contact names and telephone numbers passed to carriers, consignment and tracking references, proof-of-delivery records, and the signature or name captured when goods are received or collected.
Registration numbers: VAT registration numbers and EORI numbers held against a trading account, and vehicle registration numbers where we are supplying or fitting parts for a particular vehicle.
Correspondence: emails, letters, notes of telephone conversations and records of visits made by our sales staff.
Website information: technical information about your visit to our website, as described in the section on cookies below.

We do not seek to collect special category data (such as health, ethnicity or religious belief) from customers or suppliers, and you should not send it to us.

We get personal data from:

You, when you contact us, request a quotation, place an order, open an account, or visit our website.
Your employer or colleagues, when they give us your details as a contact for orders, deliveries, accounts or technical queries.
Publicly available and official sources, including Companies House, the HMRC VAT and EORI registers, the European Commission's VIES and EORI services, and the DVLA vehicle enquiry service.
Credit reference and insurance providers, when we assess an application for a credit account.
Our carriers, who return delivery, collection and tracking information to us.

We only use personal data where the law allows us to. In practice we rely on one of the following.

Performance of a contract, or steps taken before entering one. Quoting, taking and processing orders, arranging delivery and collection, invoicing, taking payment, handling returns and warranty claims, and providing technical support.

Compliance with a legal obligation. Keeping the accounting records that tax law requires, making VAT and customs declarations, verifying VAT and EORI registration numbers, complying with export controls, and responding to lawful requests from public authorities.

Our legitimate interests. Running and improving the business, managing accounts and credit risk, recovering debts, keeping records of correspondence and customer visits, protecting our systems from misuse, maintaining audit trails of who accessed which records, and contacting the people at our customers and suppliers about the business we do together. Where we rely on legitimate interests we have considered whether the processing is fair to you, and you can object to it as described in the section on your rights.

Consent, where we ask for it. Where a particular use needs your consent we will ask for it separately and you can withdraw it at any time, without affecting anything we did before you withdrew it.

When a business gives us a VAT registration number or an EORI number, we check it against the official register that applies to it so that we invoice and declare correctly. For UK numbers that is HM Revenue and Customs; for numbers issued elsewhere in Europe it is the European Commission's VIES and EORI services.

We send the number being checked to the relevant register and record the result, which normally includes the registered name and address held against that number. We do not send those registers any other information about you, and we do not use the result for any purpose other than getting our own invoicing, VAT returns and customs declarations right.

We hold the result so that we do not have to repeat the check unnecessarily, and refresh it when the recorded details need confirming again.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing.

We share personal data with:

Carriers and couriers, so that goods can be delivered to or collected from you. They receive the delivery address and a contact name and telephone number.
Suppliers and manufacturers, where an order is shipped direct to you or where a warranty or technical query has to be referred to them.
Our accountants, auditors, insurers, legal advisers and debt recovery agents, where they need the information to advise or act for us.
Banks and payment providers, to take and reconcile payment.
HM Revenue and Customs and other public authorities, where the law requires it.
Our IT and software suppliers, who host or support the systems described below, and who act on our instructions.

Where a supplier processes personal data on our behalf, we require them by contract to keep it secure, to use it only for the purposes we have specified, and not to use it for their own purposes.

Our business systems and databases run on servers located at our own premises in the United Kingdom.

We also use Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID for email, documents and staff sign-in. Those services store our data in Microsoft's United Kingdom and European data centres.

Some of our suppliers, and the official registers we check numbers against, operate outside the United Kingdom. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations for the country concerned, or on the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum approved by the Information Commissioner, so that the data continues to be protected.

We keep personal data only for as long as we need it.

Accounting and transaction records, including invoices, credit notes, payment records and the customs and VAT information supporting them, are kept for seven years, which is the period our tax and audit obligations require.

Quotations, correspondence, visit notes and contact records are kept for as long as the account or enquiry is active and for a reasonable period afterwards, so that we can deal with questions, warranty claims and disputes that come up later.

Audit records of who accessed which system and record are kept for seven years.

When we no longer need personal data we delete it or, where deletion is not practical because it forms part of a larger record we must keep, we restrict access to it.

Access to our systems requires an individual account, multi-factor authentication and a permission that has been granted for the specific area being used. Permissions are set per person and per page or function, so staff see only what their role requires.

Access to records is logged, and those logs are protected so that they cannot be altered without detection. Data is transmitted over encrypted connections, and stored credentials are encrypted.

If a breach of personal data occurs that is likely to result in a risk to people's rights and freedoms, we will report it to the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and tell the people affected where the risk to them is high.

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

Be informed about how we use your personal data, which is the purpose of this policy.
Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Have inaccurate personal data corrected, and incomplete data completed.
Ask us to delete personal data where we no longer have a good reason to keep it.
Ask us to restrict how we use personal data while a question about it is resolved.
Object to processing that we carry out on the basis of our legitimate interests.
Receive personal data you gave us in a portable form, or have it transferred to someone else, where the processing is based on your consent or on a contract and is carried out by automated means.
Withdraw consent, where we relied on your consent.

You do not have to pay to exercise these rights. Contact us using the details in section 1. We may ask you for information to confirm your identity before we act on a request, so that we do not disclose personal data to the wrong person.

We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone that have a legal effect on you or otherwise significantly affect you.

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies that are necessary for the site to work, such as remembering the state of a page while you use it. These do not identify you personally.

Our web servers keep access logs recording the internet address the request came from, the date and time, the page requested and the browser used. We use those logs to keep the site working and to protect it from misuse.

Most browsers let you refuse or delete cookies. Blocking cookies that the site needs in order to work may stop parts of it functioning.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first using the details in section 1, so that we have the chance to put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the UK supervisory authority for data protection. You can reach the ICO at ico.org.uk, on 0303 123 1113, or by writing to Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

We review this policy periodically and will update it when how we use personal data changes. The effective date shown at the top of the page is the date of the current version.

If we make a change that materially affects how we use personal data about you, we will take reasonable steps to bring it to your attention rather than relying on you noticing the change here.