Privacy Policy
1. INTRODUCTION:
The Belgian Beer Company is committed to protecting your personal data. We have updated our privacy policy in align with GDPR and will continue to review it regularly. Our privacy policy provides you with details of how we collect, handle and process your personal data through your use of our site – https://www.thebelgianbeercompany.com, including any information you may provide through our social media pages, Ebay shop and Amazon shop when you purchase a product, sign up to our newsletter or take part in a giveaway or competition. By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 18 years of age.
Samantha Goode of The Belgian Beer Company is the data controller and I am responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).
Contact Details:
Full name of legal entity: The Belgian Beer Company
Email address: sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com
Trading address: Unit 8, Etruria Valley, Fowlea Road, Stoke On Trent, Staffordshire, ST1 5GQ
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by contacting us via our Contact Us page on the website – https://www.thebelgianbeercompany.com/contact-us
2. WHAT DATA DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU:
Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.
We may process certain types of personal data about you (or the person you want the order sending to) as follows:
Identity Data may include first name, surname, username, title.
Contact Data may include billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
Financial Data may include your bank account and payment card details.
Transaction Data may include details about payments between us and other details of purchases made by you.
Technical Data may include your login data, internet protocol addresses, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this site.
Profile Data may include your username and password, purchases or orders, feedback and survey responses.
Usage Data may include information about how you use our website, products and services.
Marketing and Communications Data may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
We may also process Aggregated Data from your personal data but this data does not reveal your identity and as such in itself is not personal data. An example of this is where we review your Usage Data to work out the percentage of website users using a specific feature of our site. If we link the Aggregated Data with your personal data so that you can be identified from it, then it is treated as personal data.
Sensitive Data
We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you do not provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.
3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA:
We collect data about you through a variety of different methods including:
Direct interactions: You may provide data by filling in forms on our site (or otherwise) or by communicating with us by post, phone, email or otherwise, including when you:
order our products via our website, Ebay shop, Amazon shop or over the phone;
make an online purchase and checkout as a guest;
create an account on our site;
subscribe to our newsletter;
engage with us on social media;
contact us with a query, complaint, suggestion;
request resources or marketing to be sent to you;
enter a competition, giveaway, prize draw, promotion or survey; or
give us feedback.
Automated technologies or interactions
As you use our site, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns. We collect this data by using cookies, server logs and similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites that use our cookies. Please see our cookie policy at https://www.thebelgianbeercompany.com/cookies-policy for further details.
Third parties or publicly available sources
We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below –
Technical Data from the following parties:
MailChimp for Newsletters – Complies with the EU-US and Swiss Privacy Shield Frameworks.
Google Analytics to review website traffic – Complies with the EU-US and Swiss Privacy Shield Frameworks.
Social Media sites.
4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA:
We will only use your personal data when legally permitted. The most common uses of your personal data are:
Where we need to perform the contract between us.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
To allow you to post links to our products via social media.
To enable us to comply with the law and ensure we only sell alcohol to customers over the age of 18 years.
We will not sell, rent, trade or otherwise disclose your personal data to anyone outside of The Belgian Beer Company, except in those cases where you have given us permission to share this information with specific third parties.
Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal ground for processing your personal data, other than in relation to sending marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us via the Contact Us page on our website – https://www.thebelgianbeercompany.com/contact-us or you can click on the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any of our newsletters via Mailchimp.
Purposes for processing your personal data
Set out below is a description of the ways we intend to use your personal data and the legal grounds on which we will process such data. We have also explained what our legitimate interests are where relevant.
We may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please email us at sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose / activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing |
| To register you as a new customer | (a) Identity
(b) Contact |
Performance of a contract with you |
| To process and deliver your order including:
(a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us |
(a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction (e) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests to recover debts owed to us |
| To manage our relationship with you which will include:
(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review / feedback or take a survey |
(a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products / services |
| To enable you to partake in a giveaway, prize draw, competition or complete a survey | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products / services, to develop them and grow our business |
| To administer and protect our business and our site (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Technical |
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To deliver relevant content and advertisements to you and measure and understand the effectiveness of our advertising | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications (f) Technical |
Necessary for our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products / services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy |
| To use data analytics to improve our website, products / services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences | (a) Technical
(b) Usage |
Necessary for our legitimate interests to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our site updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy |
| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile |
Necessary for our legitimate interests to develop our products / services and grow our business |
On occasion, we will use data from which you cannot be personally identified but which does include information that relates to you, for example your purchase history. This data is combined with data from other customers to provide general trends on our products – which items are the most popular, which are viewed the most etc.
Marketing communications
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have:
Requested information from us or purchased goods from us; or
If you have signed up to our newsletter; or
If you provided us with your details when you entered a giveaway / competition or registered for a promotion or free resources; and
In each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by emailing us at sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com at any time.
Where you opt out of receiving our marketing communications, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product / service purchase or other transactions.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to find out more about how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please email us at sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com
If we need to use your personal data for a purpose unrelated to the purpose for which we collected the data, we will notify you and we will explain the legal grounds of processing.
We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA:
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above:
Operational companies, such as our designated couriers.
Our wholesaler who is currently contracted to pack and dispatch all orders.
IT companies who support and manage our website hosting, website design and account management.
Direct marketing companies such as MailChimp who help us to manage our electronic communications (e.g. newsletters).
Google / Facebook to show you products that might interest you while you’re browsing the internet.
Global Iris and Paypal for payments.
Xero for tax and invoicing.
Professional advisers including accountants, lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom and other relevant jurisdictions who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS:
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Not many of our third party service providers are based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
If and when we have to transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we will do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; or
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the USA.
If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
Please email us at sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
7. DATA SECURITY:
We know and understand the importance of protecting our customers’ personal data. We will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.
We limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Our website uses ‘https’ technology.
Access to your personal data is password-protected.
We ensure our SSL encryption certificate is up to date and all times.
We shred all paper documents (for example invoices) once your order has been dispatched.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
8. DATA RETENTION:
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS:
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to;
Request access to your personal data.
Request correction of your personal data.
Request erasure of your personal data.
Object to processing of your personal data.
Request restriction of processing your personal data.
Request transfer of your personal data.
Right to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights at:
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at sales@thebelgianbeercompany.com
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
10. THIRD-PARTY LINKS:
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
11. COOKIES:
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see https://www.thebelgianbeercompany.com/cookies-policy
We may update this policy from time to time to take account of any new business activity or to reflect any changes in law or best practice in relation to data protection. We will notify you of any changes.
11. Klarna:
In order to offer you Klarna’s payment methods, we might in the checkout pass your personal data in the form of contact and order details to Klarna, in order for Klarna to assess whether you qualify for their payment methods and to tailor those payment methods for you. Your personal data transferred is processed in line with Klarna’s own privacy notice.
(Updated 11th July 2022)
