Privacy Policy

We take the privacy of our users (also referred to as ‘You’ or ‘Your’ or ‘Visitor’ or ‘Customer’ or ‘Subscriber’) extremely seriously. We understand the importance of protecting the privacy of all our users and subscribers while providing relevant and personalised service. 

This privacy policy outlines www.ministryofrugs.com’s (also referred to as the ‘Site’, ‘We’, ‘Us’ or ‘Our’) commitment to respect our users’ right to privacy and explains our privacy practices for our products and services in compliance with all the data protection regulations and legislation.

We are committed to complying with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and implementing the highest level of professional, technical and organisational best practices when it comes to collecting user data, storing it and using it for lawful purposes to deliver high quality services. 

This policy provides information on what personal data we collect, why we collect the personal data, how it is used and the lawful basis on which your personal data is processed, and what your rights are under the applicable data protection and privacy laws, including the GDPR.

By accessing or using (www.ministryofrugs.com) the Site, you hereby accept, agree and confirm to comply with the terms of this privacy policy.


  • THE DATA WE COLLECT

    • We collect personally identifiable data from our users to provide better services and user experience. We collect and use the data that you provide to us directly, for example; when you purchase from us or register for an account; we use cookies and other similar technologies to collect data from your devices when you interact with our advertising or use our site (you can find out more information in the “Cookie Policy” section below); we keep records when you speak to our customer service teams; we use CCTV in our stores for security monitoring and market research purposes; we take personal data from a number of third parties to help us manage your account and improve your shopping experience.

    1. To process your order, we take details that include your name, address, e-mail address; business address, phone number; gender, date of birth and country. We also collect information about your debit/credit card and bank account information provided by you to our payment service providers, that we require for the purpose of recording and processing the order. 
    2. To deliver your order, we use your account data plus your chosen delivery address details to; deliver your purchases and keep you informed of their status, and to process any returns including (where appropriate) collecting the item from you. 
    3. We also collect data when you participate in our surveys, subscriptions, marketing campaigns and feedback. 
    4. We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. 
    5. When you visit our Site, our servers record information ("log data"), including information that your browser automatically sends whenever you visit the Site. This log data includes your Internet Protocol ("IP") address (from which we understand the country you are connecting from at the time you visit the Site), browser type and settings, the date and time of your request.
    6. Our Site uses cookies (small text files placed on your device) and similar technologies to distinguish you from other users. This is to provide you with a good user experience when you browse our Site and allows us to improve its features. For detailed information on the cookies and similar technologies we use, please see our cookies policy.
    7. We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this 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). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences. We also do not intentionally gather personal data from visitors who are under the age of 16. If a parent becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with data, he or she should contact us. We will delete such information from our files as soon as possible.
    8. Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
  • HOW WE USE YOUR DATA

    • We only use the collected data for lawful purposes such as for performing our contractual obligations, for our legitimate business interest (or those of a third party) and to comply with legal requirements. Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and most secure experience. Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract. Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means Processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to. Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. How we use information held about you include:

    1. To acknowledge, confirm and deal with your order placed in on our site or store. Such use of your data is necessary in order to implement your request and may be passed to a third party to supply or deliver the product or service that you ordered, and we may keep your details for a reasonable period afterwards in order to fulfil any contractual obligations such as refunds, guarantees and so on.
    2. Where you are a customer, provide you with customer services, administer your customer account and contact you regarding your use of the services. Such use is necessary to respond to or implement your request and for the performance of the contract between you and us such as dealing with queries regarding orders, refund requests and complaints. Handling the information you send enables us to respond. We may also keep a record of these to inform any future communication with us and to demonstrate how we communicated with you throughout. We do this on the basis of our contractual obligations to you, our legal obligations and our legitimate interests in providing you with the best service and understanding how we can improve our service based on your experience.
    3. To contact you in connection with user/customer/member surveys and use any information you choose to submit in response, provided that you gave us your consent to being contacted in this way at the time you provided us with the personal data.
    4. To provide you a personalised experience, We keep a record of how you interact with our website or app and any marketing material. We use this data, along with purchase history, demographics, account data and third party data. We do this so we can create a profile about you, which helps us to tailor your shopping experience, to show you products and offers that we think you will be most interested in, and find ways to improve our stores, apps and websites. We use your data to engage with you on social media.
    5. To protect our customers, premises, assets and staff from crime, we operate CCTV systems in our stores and car parks which record images for security. We do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests. If we discover any criminal activity or alleged criminal activity through our use of CCTV, fraud monitoring and suspicious transaction monitoring, we will process this data for the purposes of preventing or detecting unlawful acts. We aim to protect the individuals we interact with from criminal activities. Our employees may wear body-worn devices to protect themselves in limited circumstances. These devices record both audio and video and are only activated in high risk situations where it is necessary such as aggressive behaviour and/or when there is a threat of violence.
    6. To send you relevant communications by email, phone, post or social media in relation to updates, products and services. You are free to opt out of hearing from us by email or post at any time. 
    7. We use technologies such as cookies within digital marketing networks, ad exchanges and social media networks to get relevant marketing messages across to you and other customers. We share aggregated and anonymised data about the customer segments we are interested in reaching with advertising partners, so they can focus on showing adverts to those who are most likely to be interested in our products, services and offers, and to prevent them showing you irrelevant or repetitive advertisements. We receive data on how you interact with our adverts and content on third party websites and social media platforms (such as Google, Instagram, Facebook and others) which it is necessary to use to tailor and personalise the products and services that are displayed to you. We place targeted advertising in social media. You may receive advertising based on data about you that we have provided to a social media platform, or allowed it to collect using cookies on our website or code in our applications. For some of our marketing campaigns, we may use this data to exclude you from receiving advertising, if we believe it will not be relevant to you. 
    8. Where we are permitted to market to you without consent, we will update you on the latest similar products and services sold on our websites or in our stores that we think you will be interested in. When we send you communications we use records of how you interact with our website and any other marketing we have sent to you, along with purchase history, to personalise the marketing we send you so it is relevant and interesting. We use your account data to notify you about important service messages, such as material changes to this policy, product recalls or information about your account. We use cookies and similar technologies to help us understand how you use the site, this allows us to optimise your shopping experience and continually improve our site. 
    9. To administer any of our prize draws or competitions which you enter.
    10. To comply with our contractual or legal obligations to share data with law enforcement to respond to requests from competent authorities, enforce rules, protect our operations, protect our rights, safety or property, you or others; and enforcing or defending legal rights, or preventing damage.
  • DATA DISCLOSURE AND SHARING

    • We work with a number of trusted third parties to provide you high quality goods and services. Anybody we work with to support us in our operations and delivery of service is subject to stringent security and data protection assessments before we begin to do business with them and on an ongoing basis. We share your personal data with third parties in the following ways:

    1. Like many businesses, we hire selected third parties who act on our behalf to support our operations, such as delivery partners, helping us to deliver the goods you order to you including our partners that dispatch and deliver goods to you directly,  card processing or payment services, credit reference agencies to protect against possible fraud, IT suppliers and contractors (e.g. data hosting providers or delivery partners) as necessary to provide IT support and enable us to provide customer services and other goods/services available on this Site or to customers, web analytics providers, providers of digital advertising services, social media networks and providers of CRM, marketing and sales software solutions. Pursuant to our instructions, these parties may access, process or store your personal data in the course of performing their duties to us and solely in order to perform the services we have hired them to provide. 
    2. We operate globally through sister companies and partners. In order to provide the services you request from us, our sister companies and partners may access and process the information which we collect from you for the purposes described above, including to offer products and services to you. They will only use your data for the purposes for which we originally collected it.
    3. Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.
    4. Where applicable we will share certain data on defaulted accounts with prospective debt purchasers as part of the negotiations for sale of the debt or where we have received appropriate instruction we will share data about your credit account with debt management companies to allow them to assist you with managing your debts.
    5. We use professional third party companies to assist us in independently reviewing issues and complaints with our products. We will share data with these technicians and with general service companies such as insurance companies, printers and mailing houses that assist us in providing our products and services.
    6. We need to disclose your personal data to comply with a legal obligation and/or judicial or regulatory proceedings, a court order or other legal process. We also need to disclose your data to enforce our Terms & Conditions or other applicable contract terms that you are subject to, to protect us, our customers, or contractors against loss or damage. This may include (without limit) exchanging information with the police, courts or law enforcement organisations.
  • INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFER

    • Our main operations are based in the UK and your personal data is generally processed, stored and used within the UK.

    1. Your personal data will be transferred to and stored in countries other than the country in which the information was originally collected, including the United Kingdom, United States and other destinations outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"), to our service providers and affiliated businesses for the purposes described above. Please note that the countries concerned may not provide the same legal standards for protection of your personal data that you have in the United Kingdom or EEA. When we transfer your personal data to countries outside of the EEA we will take all steps to ensure that your personal data will continue to be protected.
    2. In some instances your personal data may be processed outside the UK. For example, we operate support teams in countries in Europe, Asia and America. Operatives in these locations will have access to your account data in order to assist you with your query. We also work with suppliers and partners who may make use of Cloud and /or hosted technologies across multiple geographies.
    3. If you place an order with us and you are outside of the UK we will transfer the personal data that we hold on you to the UK to facilitate your order and may also transfer your personal data to third parties located in your country of residence to enable us to supply products you order from us. 
  • DATA SECURITY

    • We have taken all reasonable organisational and technical steps to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, misused or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Furthermore, we limit access to your personal data only 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. We secure access to all transactional areas of our websites and apps using 'https' technology.

  • THE DATA RETENTION PERIOD

    • We collect personal data and retain it for the purpose it was collected for and for as long as it is reasonably necessary to fulfil our contractual, corporate and any legal responsibility.

    1. 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. 
    2. We keep your personal data as long as you are a customer of ours and generally for up to 7 years afterwards to comply with legal requirements. During that time we take steps to remove any personal data as soon as we no longer need it. 
  • THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

    • If you use any third party apps, websites or services to access our services, your usage is subject to the relevant third party's terms and conditions, cookies policy, and privacy policy. For example, if you interact with us on social media, your use is subject to the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the relevant social media platform (Facebook, X etc.). The same applies if you use third party services, like Amazon's Alexa. In certain cases we may be required to share your personal data, in relation to transactions and usage of the services, with the relevant third party.

  • YOUR DATA PROTECTION RIGHTS

    • Certain applicable data protection laws give you specific rights in relation to your personal data. In particular, if the processing of your personal data is subject to the GDPR, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

    1. Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. 
    2. Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
    3. Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
    4. Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
    5. Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
    6. Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
    7. Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
    8. In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data. You have the right to stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing activity through all channels, or selected channels. We must always comply with your request.
    9. If you have a concern about our privacy practices, including the way we handled your personal data, you can report it to the UK data protection authority (the Information Commissioner's Office or ICO), or, as the case may be, any other competent data protection authority of an EU member state that is authorised to hear those concerns.
    10. If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us through the contact section. There is no fee for accessing your information and we will deal with your request within 30 days of receiving it. We will charge a fee of £95 if your request is clearly repetitive and unfounded. We may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. We may need to verify your identity for security purposes and request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity. 
  • CHANGES TO PRIVACY POLICY

    • Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or modifications. 

  • CONTACT AND DATA CONTROLLER

    • This website (www.ministryofrugs.com) is operated by London Rugs Corporation Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. The head office is located at 61 Willow Walk, London, SE1 5SF. To contact us, email: info@ministryofrugs.com.


    The data controller responsible for your personal data is the London Rugs Corporation ("we," "us" and/or "our") with whom you contract as a customer.