Privacy Policy

Animal is committed to respecting your privacy and complying with applicable data protection and privacy laws. 

This privacy policy regarding customer and online user Information applies to Animal (a trading brand of Mountain Warehouse Limited), Mountain Warehouse Limited, and its worldwide subsidiaries (“we” or “our”).

This policy does not apply to the websites of any Business Partners or to any other third parties, even if their websites are linked to our website. 

For the purpose of the relevant data protection regulations, Mountain Warehouse Limited is the “data controller” of your information. We are located at 5 Eccleston Street, London SW1W 9LX and our registration number with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is Z7037144. 

This policy outlines how we collect and use your information.

We have provided this policy statement to help you understand how we collect, use and protect your information when you visit our website or otherwise communicate with us, for example by phone or in writing by mail or e-mail.  We wish to help you make informed decisions, so please take a few moments to read the sections below and learn how we may use your personal information.

At Animal we treat customers’ personal information and details extremely seriously.

We will only use the information we collect about you in accordance with Privacy Law (i.e. for the EU, The General Data Protection Regulation and relevant in country secondary Privacy Legislation) with the primary purpose of making your shopping experience as enjoyable and easy as possible.

How We Collect Your Personal Information 

We collect your information in the following ways: Online

  • When you register an account
  • When you register for our membership or discount card schemes
  • When you place an order on our website
  • When you place an order via any of our marketplace accounts
  • When you visit our website
  • When you engage or contact us on any of our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn)
  • When you complete our surveys
  • When you contact us via email or phone
  • When you interact with one of our ads or digital marketing channels
  • When a gift is purchased in your name by another person, we will need your name and delivery details so that we can deliver the gift.

Other 

  • When you contact us via post

Why We Collect Your Personal Information 

We collect your information for the following reasons:

  • Your name to address you by
  • Your phone number to contact you about any issues with your order
  • Your e-mail address to send communications to you, including confirmation of your order, information about product safety, your transaction status including notifications about products in your cart, promotions in which you have chosen to participate, details of delivery of your order, products, solutions and services available from us, events, promotional offers and surveys
  • Your postal address to send your order and so we can let you know about our products that we think you may like
  • Your details for the administration of our Membership and Discount Cards
  • Your past transactions so you can get a refund or replacement
  • Your details and transactions to comply with any applicable legal and/or regulatory requirements;
  • Your details when you get in touch with us via email or phone to address any matters raised
  • Your answers to our post purchase survey to give informative recommendations online and continually make improvements to our products and service
  • Your device and browser information, the route you took to land on our website as well as website data such as page views, length of visit and clicks to help us optimise your shopping experience with us and ensure our functionality is working.
  • CCTV Images for purposes of Crime Prevention, Public and Staff Safety.

How We Use Cookies on Our Website

Please see our Cookie Policy here to find out more about the cookies we use and how to manage and delete cookies.

How Long We Retain Your Information

We will keep your personal information in accordance with our internal retention policies. We will determine the length of time we keep it for based on the minimum retention periods required by law or regulation.

We will generally hold your information for as long as you remain an active customer and for 7 years afterwards. This does not apply in all cases.

We will only keep your personal information after this period if there is a legitimate reason to do so.

Marketing Communications

Any marketing by us and our subsidiaries will be conducted in accordance with applicable laws and include methods to allow you to express your preferences including the possibility of being removed from our email and postal marketing lists.

We may send you marketing communications by email and/or post informing you of our products and special offers:

  • If you indicate in your preferences that we can do so
  • If your previous transactions indicate that our new products may interest you
  • If you have browsed our website and previously given us your contact details
  • If you have provided your email address in store and indicated an interest in our communications

You may choose to receive or not receive these marketing communications from Animal by indicating your preferences. Opportunities to select your preferences include the following:

  • For opting out of email marketing;
  • You can click the “unsubscribe” link in any marketing email communications we send you;

  • If you hold an online account with us, you can sign into the account on our website and choose whether to subscribe or unsubscribe to email marketing communications about our products and services;
  • For opting out of postal marketing lists (covering catalogues, newsletters and other promotional material etc), you can submit a request to be removed to privacy@animal.co.uk; and
  • For opting out of receiving communications prompted by online behaviour please see our Cookie policy here.

Please note that it can take up to 24 hours to be removed from our list therefore you may be selected for one final email before removal. Our catalogue has a longer production time, so you may receive one more mailing before removal up to one month after opting out.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, we may still communicate with you in connection with purchases you make.

We retain your details on our marketing lists until you “opt-out” at which point we add you to the suppression list. We keep that suppression list to comply with our legal obligations to ensure we don’t accidentally send you any more marketing. 

Who We Share Your Personal Information with

We will never sell any of your personal data to a third party. However, we do need to share your data with certain establishments that we work with to provide the service and shopping experience that you are used to, such as:

  • Companies that make sure your order is completed and arrives at your door, such as payment service providers, our warehouses, order fulfilment, order packers, franking machine providers and courier delivery companies.
  • Marketing agencies and affiliate programme providers.
  • Suppliers that are printers, email service providers, customer service support providers, personalisation, data cleansing providers and media partners.
  • Police and other law enforcement agencies.
  • Tax authorities, sales tax information providers and tax compliance advisers
  • Marketplaces where you can place an order.

Examples of these establishments are:

  • Clipper, Dot Digital, Mimecast, 8X8, Zendesk, Yotpo
  • Evri, TNT, FedEx, Royal Mail, DHL, Collect+
  • Sorted, WN Direct, Newgistics, Aramex, Rebound, Spring, ASDA
  • TaxJar, KPMG, Avalara
  • Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
  • Sitespect, Fresh Address, Marin
  • Amazon, eBay, C-Discount, TradeMe

Additionally, we may disclose your personal information:

  • If we sell or buy any business or assets or are acquired by a third party, personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.

International Transfers: We may transfer your personal information to our subsidiaries or third-party suppliers, delegates or agents which may be situated outside of the United Kingdom if required for the purposes described in this Privacy Statement such as administering Membership Cards/Discount Cards.

This may involve the transfer of your personal information to countries outside your home country or region, including outside the European Economic Area if that is your region, which may have a different level of data protection from your home country.

We will only transfer your personal information outside the EEA where either:

  • The transfer is to a country which the EU Commission has decided ensures an adequate level of protection for your personal information, or
  • We have put in place our own measures to ensure adequate security as required by data protection law. These measures include ensuring that your personal information is kept safe by carrying out strict security checks on our overseas partners and suppliers, backed by strong contractual undertakings approved by the relevant regulators, such as the EU Model Clauses, or
  • The transfer meets one of the requirements under Article 49 of the UK GDPR.

Privacy of Children and Special Categories of Personal data: We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly obtain any Special categories of personal data about our customers, such as information about health or medical conditions, race or religious beliefs. We regularly cleanse our data and would remove anyone flagged as deceased from receiving any marketing communications from us.

If we are made aware that we have received information from anyone under the age of 16 or entailing special categories of personal data in violation of this policy statement, we will immediately ensure that they do not receive marketing communications from us and will take steps to remove them from our database.

Legal Basis of Processing 

Our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information as described in this privacy statement will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. 

In general, we collect and process your personal information on one or more of the following bases:

Your Consent: For example, where we have obtained your consent to process your personal data for certain activities. You are free to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting privacy@animal.co.uk. If you withdraw your consent, it will not affect the lawfulness of any processing based on your consent before you withdrew it. Where applicable, we may ask for your consent to processing at the point where you provide your Personal Information.

To comply with a Contractual Obligation: For example, using your shipment details to make delivery where you have bought a product from us. We will advise you upon collection whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory and of the possible consequences if you do not provide us with your information.

To comply with our Legal Obligations: where other laws require the processing of your personal information (for example, Taxation laws).

Mountain Warehouse’s (and its subsidiaries’) Legitimate Interests: which include the provision of this website and/or relevant products and services, and/or the carrying out of marketing and profiling activities, provided always that our legitimate interests are not outweighed by your rights and freedoms.

Your Data Protection Rights

Where the processing of your personal information is subject to data protection laws, you have the following data subject rights. Please note that these rights are not absolute and in certain cases are subject to conditions as specified in applicable law:

  • Access: you have the right to request information about how we process your personal information and to obtain a copy of that personal information.
  • Rectification: you have the right to request the rectification of inaccurate personal information about you and for any incomplete Personal Information about you to be completed.
  • Objection: you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information, which is based on our legitimate interests (as described above).
  • Erasure: you have the right to request the erasure of your personal information (subject to certain conditions).
  • Automated decision-making: you have the right not to have a decision made about you that is based solely on automated processing if that decision produces legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.
  • Restriction: you have the right to ask us to restrict our processing of your personal information, so that we no longer process that information until the restriction is lifted.
  • Portability: you have the right to receive your personal information, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to have that information transmitted to another organization in certain circumstances.

Contact  

If you want to know more about the data that we may hold for you or want to know more information on how Animal collects, stores and processes your personal information then please contact us on privacy@animal.co.uk

If you have any concerns about the way we process your personal data, or are not happy with the way we’ve handled a request by you in relation to your rights, you also have the right to make a complaint to the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk  

If you are outside the United Kingdom and are not satisfied with the way in which we have resolved your matter, please contact the data protection authority of your country.

Changes to this Policy

We may amend this privacy policy at any time so please ensure you check the latest version regularly.