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AfriSol Power Limited Solar trading as PV Shop – Privacy Notice for Solar Installations

What this Privacy Notice covers

This Privacy Notice gives you information about how AfriSol Power Limited Solar trading as PV Shop (“Solar PV Shop”) treats the information which we hold about you.

Please read the following sections carefully to understand how your information will be used and handled by Solar PV Shop.

Solar PV Shop collects and uses your data in accordance with current data protection law the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679)) (“data protection law”).

Who we are?

The data controller with control of your personal information is Solar PV Shop. Our registered office is at c/o AfriSol Power Limited, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, Company Number 13840870.

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of third parties. Please note that those websites will have their own privacy policies and Solar PV Shop does not accept any responsibility or liability for such policies/websites. Please check these other policies before submitting personal information to those websites.

Our business relies upon lead generation and marketing activities.  As such, it is important that we are transparent about how we use personal data for these activities.

Once we have acquired this personal data, it is our responsibility to ensure that we process your information in accordance with our UK data protection laws. Providing you with the following privacy notice is one step towards our data protection compliance.

Information: Collection, Use and Grounds for Processing

Solar PV Shop collects and processes information about you from a variety of sources. These are summarised below:

The information you give to us

This includes information about yourself which you provide to us by email, letter, telephone, via our website or in person.

The information you give us may include (but is not limited to) your name; home address; email address; phone number                                    

We process this information to:

  1. supply you with details of our services or other information where you have requested these from us.
  2. Comply with our record keeping and regulatory compliance obligations where you have opted to receive the same, or where we are able to rely on the fact that we have sold you similar products in the recent past or where we have a legitimate interest to do so, send you marketing communications concerning our product and service offerings.
  1. Account management.
  2. Auditing
  3. Complying with legal obligations.
  4. Otherwise, engage with you where none of the above applies.

We process this information on the following grounds:

  1. Because, you have consented and supplied information for us to contact you with our goods and services directly to us through our website, Facebook page, Instagram, telephone, email, or WhatsApp.
  2. Because we have a legitimate business interest in contacting you with news and information about our business and that interest is not overridden by your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms (for example because you can opt-out of such materials at any time) Solar PV Shop only operate legitimate interest for existing customers who have purchased a product and customers whom have previously had a quote. With regards to this Solar PV Shop have made the decision that they will only attempt a follow up telephone contact three times within a one-week period, however, once we have had the first connected contact with the customer their preferences will be updated, and they will be either opted in or opted out, and if no positive outcome arises for the customer then communications with the customer will cease. Their right to erasure will always be maintained in accordance with GDPR.
  3. Because, in certain cases, the processing is necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations, for example (but not limited to) where regulations oblige us to keep records of our customers’ details and account information.

 

Information we collect about you

Through our website, we collect non-personally identifying information which web browsers and servers typically make available. This includes technical information, such as your IP address, your login information and information about your visit, such as records of how you navigate the pages on our site and how you interact with the pages. For details on how we use cookies, please see our ‘Cookies’ section below.

We process this information to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for your device and to collect anonymous statistical data in order to improve our services.

How long we keep your information for

We only keep your information for as long as is reasonably necessary in accordance with our data retention policy These periods may be extended if, for example, there is a legal dispute between or where we reasonably believe a longer retention period is justified. We may also keep your information for longer if we are required by law to do so.

How we share your information

Your personal information is not shared with any third parties except where we are required to do so to comply with the law, to protect our rights or to perform our contractual obligations to you, sometimes through our chosen solar installation companies and sub-contractors.

To achieve this, your information will be shared with the following groups of people:

(a) If you are a customer or a customer contact then we may share your contact details with third parties that help with the fulfilment of your contract (such as solar installation companies, sub-contractors, suppliers, accountants, bank etc), credit reference agencies, our trusted third-party providers and other third parties where we are contractually obliged to do so. We ensure that all our third-party providers are under strict obligations to keep your information secure and confidential.

(b) Our IT providers will sometimes be given access to our contact database in order to monitor, maintain and improve our IT systems. Our IT providers have a strict contractual obligation to handle your information in accordance with data protection law and to keep it confidential at all times.

(c) We may, on occasion, share your information with our professional advisers.

(d) We will share your information with third parties where we are legally required to do so – for example, the police in the event of an accident or claim, our insurance providers in the same instance, our bank for financial admin, all government regulators which require us to do so.

(e) Potential seller or buyer in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Marketing activities

We generate almost all our leads on social media. Prospects send us their details through our social media platforms to contact them. We do not buy leads, nor cold call prospects.

Marketing by post – marketing by post is permitted under data protection laws and is recognised as being fundamentally important to all businesses.  We therefore rely on our legitimate interest to market to you, provided that we do not believe that this interest unfairly affects your rights and freedoms.

Marketing on the telephone – we always check telephone numbers against the Telephone Preference Service before we make our calls.  Provided that we do this, you have not specifically opted out of receiving telephone calls from us, and we do not leave an automated voice mail message, we are entitled to make marketing telephone calls.

Marketing by electronic means – we are always mindful of the current laws concerning marketing by electronic means (email, text messages, fax etc). We need your clear, informed, unambiguous, specific consent to market to you by electronic means, unless we have sold similar products to you in the recent past (usually 12 months).

If you wish to update your marketing preferences at any time, you may do so by getting in touch with AfriSol Power Limited Solar trading as PV Shop, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. Tel: ‎020 4538 4008 or by email to sm@solarpvshop.co.uk.

International data transfers

We do not transfer any personal data outside of the UK.

Automated decision making

Solar PV Shop does not carry out any automated decision making or profiling using your personal information.

Your rights

Under data protection law you have the following rights which you can exercise by contacting us:

(a) The right to be told what we do with your information. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to know what information we gather, process and store, what we do with it, who we share it with and how long we keep it for. This information is set out in this Privacy Notice, as updated from time to time;

(b) Where we are processing your information on the grounds of your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time;

(c) The right to access a copy of your information which we hold. This is called a ‘subject access request’. Additional details on how to exercise this right are set out in the ‘Access to Information’ section, below;

(d) In certain circumstances, the rights to request that we erase, rectify, cease processing and/or delete your information where the original purpose for which the data was collected has expired;

(e) In certain circumstances, the right to request copies of the information we hold about you in a machine-readable format so that you can transfer it to other services;

(f) The right to object to the processing of your information where it is likely to cause or is causing damage or distress;

(g) The right to prevent us from processing your information for direct marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your information) if we intend to use your information for marketing purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your information, clicking the unsubscribe link in marketing emails we send you or by contacting us using the details set out at the end of this Privacy Notice;

(h) The right to object to decisions being made about you by automated means. For the avoidance of doubt, Solar PV Shop does not use automated decision making at this time;

(i) The right, in certain circumstances, to have your information rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed if it is inaccurate; and

You also have the general right to complain to us (in the first instance) and to the Information Commissioner’s Office (if you are not satisfied by our response) if you have any concerns about how we hold or process your information. Our contact details are set out at the end of this Privacy Notice. The Information Commissioner’s Office website is www.ico.org.uk.

For further information on your rights under data protection law and how to exercise them, you can contact the Citizens Advice Bureau (www.citizensadvice.org.uk) or the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk).

Access to information

Under data protection law you can exercise your right of access by making a written request to receive copies of some of the information we hold on you.

You must send us proof of your identity, and/or proof of authority if making the request on behalf of someone else before we can supply the information to you.

Data security

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although Solar PV Shop does its best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website. Any transmission is at your own risk.

IP Addresses and Cookies

Solar PV Shop may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and management. This is statistical data about users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. Cookies help us to improve our website and deliver a better and more personalised service; to allow us to estimate audience size and usage pattern; to store information about your preferences and so allow our website to be customised according to your individual interests; to speed up your searches; and to recognise you when you return to our website.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our website’s system will issue cookies when you access our website.

When using Google Analytics and AdWords Solar PV Shop always abide by Google’s Privacy policy.

Cookies are small text files that are stored by your Internet browser on your computer. While our cookies may change from time to time, we generally use the following types of cookies:

Google Analytics Cookies:

_ga 2 years Used to distinguish users.

_gid 24 hours Used to distinguish users.

_gat 1 minute Used to throttle request rate.

_gac_ 90 days – Contains Google Adwords related campaign-related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more.

Campaign Monitor Cookies:

campaignMonitorViewedIds:

Facebook Cookies:

devicePixelRatio – 7 days used to track your activity on our site after you landed on our site via Facebook Ad

You can prevent Google Analytics from placing cookies on your device by visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en and installing an Opt-out add-on.

Solar PV Shop and third-party vendor (Google) use first-party cookies (Google analytics Cookie) to optimise and serve ads based on past visits to our website. We utilise the following types of advertising:

Interest-Based Advertising

We use online behavioural advertising to improve your experience and show you products/services that might interest you. We and our advertising partners display tailored interest-based ads using the information you make available to us when you interact with our site’s content and services. Interest-based ads, also sometimes referred to as personalized or targeted ads, are displayed to you based on information from activities such as browsing, visiting certain pages on our site or filling out our online survey form visiting sites that contain our content or ads, interacting with our tools, or using our payment services. We do this using a variety of digital marketing networks and ad exchanges, and we use a range of advertising technologies like pixels, ad tags, cookies, as well as specific services offered by some sites and social networks such as Facebook’s Custom Audience service.

Google Analytics Advertising Features

we currently use the following features available via Google Analytics:

– Remarketing Lists for Search Ads

– Google Display Network Advertising (Impressions Reporting)

– Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting

Remarketing is a feature of Google’s Adwords that enables us the delivery of ads based on your previous interest or specific visits to our site. For more information on remarketing and remarketing lists please visit the following site: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6212951?hl=en&ref_topic=2611268

If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics for display advertising you can do so by visiting Ads Preferences Manager http://www.google.com/settings/ads

Hotjar Service

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our user needs and to optimise our service and experience. Hotjar is a technological service that helps us better understand our user experience thus enabling us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our user behaviour, their devices (i.e., screen size, device type), browser information and preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy by visiting the following link: https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy

You can opt-out to the creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.

Changes to our Privacy Notice

Any changes made to this Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on the Website and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. It is recommended that you visit this page from time to time to review any changes. This Privacy Notice was last updated on 11 January 2023.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Notice are welcomed and should be sent to AfriSol Power Limited Solar trading as PV Shop, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom, Tel: ‎020 4538 4008 or by email to sm@solarpvshop.co.uk.