PRIVACY STATEMENT & COOKIE POLICY

This privacy notice, together with our terms and conditions sets out how we will use the personal data that we collect about you. It applies to information about you that you have provided to us, or information that we have collected about you.

We may collect personal information from you in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, when you visit our website, fill out a form, during a telephone conversation, or subscribe to a newsletter. You may be asked for your name, email address, mailing address, phone number and other specific details relating to your enquiry. You may, however, visit our website anonymously.

Given that the Internet is a global environment, using it to collect and process personal data necessarily involves the transmission of data on an international basis. This means for instance that data you pass to us may be processed outside the European Economic Area, although the data will always be held securely and in line with the requirements of data protection legislation. By communicating electronically with us, you acknowledge and agree to our processing of personal data in this way. We will however ensure that adequate measures are in place to protect your information and treat it as securely as it would have been had it remained in the EEA.

We may also use your information to help us better understand you as a customer so that we can tailor our services to meet your needs, for statistical analysis and to monitor and analyse our business.

When you use our service, we may share your details with selected vehicle retailers, leasing companies or their agencies, as required, so that they can provide you with quotations, brochures or arrange test drives. This will only be done when you have consented. We will always tell you who we are going to share your data with.

The personal data that we hold about you will be retained for a period of 1 year, at which point it will be securely destroyed. Within this 12-month period, you may be contacted again to follow up your initial enquiry and to evaluate the service you received. We believe that it’s in both our customers interest and our interest to contact you for this purpose. However, if you object, then please let us know.

However, if you have opted-in to receive further marketing we will retain your data until such time that you withdraw consent.

By using our website

If you visit our website, we will automatically collect the following information;

• Technical information, including internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, the display language, browser type and version, the operating system and the platform.
• Information about your visit, including clickstream to, through and from our sites, what you viewed or searched for, response times and response times.

This information is collected by cookies. You can find out more about the cookies we use, by visiting our Cookie section further down this page.

Please note, to improve our website, we may use feedback you provide to improve our products and services. We believe that this is in both our customers interest and the interest of The Auto Network. We won’t share this information with anyone else, we just want to improve our service to you!

By completing an enquiry form

The information that we collect from any enquiry form that you complete will be used to process your interest in our services.

By using the Chatbot function

We may also collect personal information about you if you use the ‘chatbot’ function on our website. A ‘chatbot’ is a computer programme that you can interact with, which simulates a conversation with a human. The chatbot may pop up on your computer screen when you visit our website, but you don’t have to use it, it’s just available for you if you prefer to communicate with us in this way.

The information we collect from the chatbot function will be used to process your enquiry with us.

By telephone

When your enquiry has been generated through a chatbot or enquiry form, to gain additional information regarding your vehicle preferences, we will contact you by telephone. Only if you have consented, will we pass your details on to selected vehicle retailers, leasing companies or their agencies as required in order that they can provide you with quotations, brochures or arrange test drives. You can withdraw your consent at any time.

We may ask you if you’d like to receive details of other services that we provide and any relevant offers. We will only use your personal information for this purpose if you have consented. You may unsubscribe from any email marketing via unsubscribe links placed within each email or by emailing datacontroller@theautonetwork.co.uk

We may also ask for consent for our partners to contact you with news and information of special offers. Please be assured that we will only share your data for this purpose when you have agreed for us to do so.

Telephone calls are recorded; we believe that it is in both our customers interest and The Auto Network interest to record telephone calls to help resolve any queries that may arise and for training, quality control purposes. We tell you about this at the beginning of the call. We won’t share the recording of your call with anyone else, however in the event of a query we may share details of the call with the relevant vehicle retailer, leasing companies or their agencies to help us resolve any issues or complaints.

Call recordings are kept for a period of 12 months after which time they are securely destroyed

In accordance with data protection legislation, you can make a request to us for the personal information we hold about you. This is called a ‘subject access request’. If we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it;
• tell you why we are holding it;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form

We will provide you with the information to which you are entitled within one month of your request. However, we will need to check who you are and therefore we will ask you for proof of identity. We do this to protect your personal information from being disclosed to anyone who should not have access to it.

You may be able to exercise additional rights, such as to ask us to stop using your personal data or to delete it and you can ask us to correct any inaccurate information that we may hold about you.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or for more information concerning your rights, including your right to access any personal information that we hold about you, you may contact the Data Protection Officer at datacontroller@theautonetwork.co.uk or write to the Data Protection Officer at theautonetwork.co.uk, Unity Building, 20 Chapel Street, Liverpool, L3 9AG.

By using this website, you signify your acceptance of this policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our website. Your continued use of the website following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, in the first instance, please contact datacontroller@theautonetwork.co.uk Should you remain dis-satisfied, then you may contact the Information Commissioners Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or visit www.ico.org.uk.

The Auto Network has the discretion to update this privacy policy at any time. Please check this page for any changes and to stay informed about how we process the personal information we collect. You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this privacy policy periodically and become aware of amendments.

A cookie is a text file that is put on your device (computer, laptop, notebook etc.) when you visit a web site. Cookies can give users of web sites a better experience and make them work more efficiently. Without cookies, it would be very difficult for a web site to remember the user's preferences or registration details for a future visit.

We use cookies in a number of different ways to ensure that every visit is smooth, helpful and informative. We sometimes use third party cookies. We have outlined below the type of cookies that we use; those that are strictly necessary for the site to function, those that are used to enhance the performance of the site, those that remember your choices to provide enhanced features and allow the site to function better for you, and those that help the site to provide a more personal (targeted) experience by gathering information about your browsing habits, for example, by remembering a website that you’ve visited.

Strictly Necessary: These are cookies that are necessary. If you don’t allow these cookies, then you won’t be able to use our website.

Analytical/Performance: These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic so that we can improve the performance of our site and the therefore improve the customer experience. If you don’t allow these cookies, then we won’t know which pages are the most (and least) popular.

Functionality: These cookies allow the website to provide better functionality and personalisation. If you don’t allow these cookies, then some parts of the website may not work properly.

Targeting: These cookies and similar technologies help personalise content. Whilst these cookies and similar technologies can track your visits to other websites, they don't usually know who you are.

You can modify your browser settings so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to your device. This will allow you to manage the cookies that are set from using this website.

You can refuse cookies altogether, however in doing so, you may not be able to use the web site at all or some parts of the web site won’t work properly.

Here’s how you manage cookies in the various major browsers:

MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER

GOOGLE CHROME

MOZILLA FIREFOX

APPLE SAFARI

For more information on cookies and how to manage them please go to www.allaboutcookies.org or www.aboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

If you have any questions or comments on this Cookies Policy, then please contact: datacontroller@theautonetwork.co.uk

This document was last updated on 19/03/2018