PRIVACY POLICY

Merlin Equipment Ltd (trading as Merlin Power) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store and protect your personal information and the rights you have in relation to it. 

We may collect the following types of personal information: 

• Contact Details: This may include your name, email address, phone number, postal address, and other contact information.
• Business Contact Information: If you work for an organisation we deal with or may want to deal with, we may hold your name, job title, employer, work email address, work phone number, business address, and the web address of your public professional profile (for example, LinkedIn).
• Purchase details: When you buy from us, we collect your name, billing and delivery addresses, email address, phone number and details of what you ordered.
• Payment information:

1. Online card payments are processed by our secure payment provider. We do not see or store your full card number.
2. Card payments over the phone: a member of our team types your card details straight into our payment provider’s secure system while you are on the call. We do not write down or store your full card number.
3. Bank transfer (Faster Payments, BACS or CHAPS): we receive the bank details shown on your bank’s payment advice and keep them with our accounting records.

• Email engagement: When we send you marketing emails, we record whether you open them, click links in them, reply or unsubscribe. We use this to check our emails are relevant and to respect your choices.
• Usage Data: We may collect information about how you interact with our website or services, including your IP address, browser type, and the pages you visit on our website.
• Cookies and Tracking Technologies: We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to collect information about your online activities. You can learn more about how we use cookies in our Cookie Policy. 
• Anything else you tell us: For example, feedback, survey responses or information you share at trade shows.

Where we get your information:

Most information comes from you directly, for example, when you buy from us, make an enquiry, ask for a quote, return a product for repair or speak to us at a trade show. For business-to-business marketing, we may also obtain work contact details from publicly 
available business sources such as company websites and professional directories. If we got your details from a publicly available source, we will tell you so in our first email to you.

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

• Providing Services: To provide you with the products or services you request, including processing orders and transactions. We do this because it is necessary to perform our contract with you, or to take steps you have asked for before entering into one (for example, giving you a quote).
• Communication: To communicate with you about our products, services, promotions, and updates, and to respond to your inquiries or requests. We do this to perform our contract with you or because you have asked us to. Promotional messages are sent on the basis described under Marketing below.
• Improving Services: To analyse usage patterns and trends, improve our website, and customise your user experience. We do this because it is in our legitimate interests to run and improve our website. Where this uses non-essential cookies, we ask for your consent first.
• Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, and legal processes, including responding to lawful requests from government authorities. We do this to meet our legal obligations, for example, keeping tax and accounting records.
• Marketing: We may send you marketing communications about our products, services, news and offers where you have provided your consent, where the electronic marketing “soft opt-in” applies, or, for business contacts at companies and other organisations, where we rely on our legitimate interest in promoting our products and services to businesses likely to use them. We have assessed this use and keep a record of that assessment. You can opt out of receiving marketing communications from us at any time by using the unsubscribe link in our emails or by contacting us.

Note: You don’t have to give us your personal information, but if you don’t, we may not be able to do some of the things above, such as processing your order or responding to your enquiry.

Merlin Power values your privacy and is committed to safeguarding your Personal Information.

• We do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone. Merlin Power may share data with trusted partners to facilitate various aspects of our operations, including but not limited to statistical analysis, email communications, or customer support. All such third parties are strictly prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to Merlin Power, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your Personal Information.

How we send marketing emails:

When we send marketing emails, we follow these rules:

• We only send electronic marketing communications where we have an appropriate basis to do so. This may include where an individual has given us consent; where the PECR “soft opt-in” applies because we obtained their contact details during a sale or genuine negotiation for a sale and gave them an opportunity to opt out of marketing; or where we are contacting a corporate business contact, and it is appropriate for us to rely on our legitimate interests.
• Where we rely on the soft opt-in, we only market our own similar products and services and provide an opportunity to opt out in every marketing communication. 
• We maintain records of marketing preferences and, where appropriate, the source and basis on which a contact is eligible to receive marketing. 
• We offer an easy way to opt out of electronic marketing and act on opt-out requests promptly. 
• We maintain a suppression or “do not contact” list of people who have unsubscribed or objected to marketing and screen marketing activity against this list. 
• We don’t disguise or conceal who we are when we send electronic mail. 

We may share your personal information with:

• Service Providers: We may share your data with third-party service providers who assist us in delivering our services, such as our website and online shop platform, payment processors, shipping companies, and email service providers. 
• Legal Obligations: We may disclose your information when required by law or in response to legal processes, such as subpoenas or court orders.
• Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or part of our business, your information may be transferred to the acquiring entity.
• Your Consent: We may share your information with third parties when you give us explicit consent to do so.

Who on our team has access? 

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, staff who handle orders and customer service can access:

• Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
• Customer information, including your name, email address, and billing and shipping information. 

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfil orders, process refunds, and support you.

We use trusted service providers for accounting, stock and order management, our customer database, our online shop and email marketing. Some of them store or access data outside the UK, for example in the European Economic Area and the United States.

Wherever your information is stored outside the UK, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place. These include countries the UK recognises as having adequate data protection, the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. Contact us if you’d like more details.

We keep order and account information for seven [7] years to meet our legal and accounting obligations. We keep business contacts while they remain relevant to our business, and regularly review and delete contacts who have not interacted with us for a long period. If you unsubscribe or object to marketing, we keep your email address on a “do not contact” list so we can make sure we don’t contact you again.

We may use cookies on our website to show you relevant adverts on other websites and platforms, such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft Bing. We only do this if you have agreed to advertising cookies through our cookie banner, and you can change your choice at any time.

You can opt out of targeted advertising by using the links below: 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads 
• Google: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous
• Bing: https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/ad-settings/signedout

You can also manage interest-based advertising from many companies at: https://optout.aboutads.info/

You have certain rights regarding your personal information, including the right to:

• Access and correct your data.
• Withdraw your consent where we rely on consent to process your personal information.
• Object to processing based on our legitimate interests.
• Object at any time to the use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Unsubscribe from marketing communications at any time using the unsubscribe link provided in our emails or by contacting us.
• Request the deletion of your data (subject to legal obligations).
• Ask us to restrict how we use your data, or to give you a copy of the data you provided to us in a commonly used format.
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk, if you believe your rights have been violated. We’d appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first, so please contact us beforehand if you can.

To exercise your rights or for any privacy-related inquiries, please contact us at marketing@merlin-power.com. We will respond within one month. If your request is complex, we may need up to two more months, and we’ll let you know within the first month if so.

We want to ensure that your Personal Information is accurate and up to date. If any of the information that you have previously provided to Merlin Power changes, for example, if you change your email address, name, or contact number, please make us aware of the updated  details by sending an email to marketing@merlin-power.com. You may ask us, or we may ask you, to correct information in the instance that you or we think it is inaccurate, and you may also ask us to remove information which is inaccurate.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. The most recent version of the policy will be posted on our website with the effective date. 

This Privacy Policy covers the personal information we process through our website, our sales and marketing activities (including email) and our dealings with customers. It does not cover other websites we link to, so please read their own privacy policies.

We welcome your comments regarding this Privacy Policy. If you believe that Merlin has not adhered to this Privacy Policy, please contact us at marketing@merlin-power.com. Merlin Equipment Ltd is registered in England and Wales (company number 03995246). Registered office: Clyst Court, Hill Barton Business Park, Clyst St Mary, Exeter, Devon, EX5 1SA. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller (registration number ZA859122).