Privacy notice
Hearing tests are the one subject of this website, and an enquiry form is the only place on it where you are asked to type anything about yourself. This notice covers the pages at hearingaidsinwestbromwich.co.uk and the information those pages collect, and the organisation answerable for all of it is Hearing Aids in West Bromwich. Below you will find what we hold, where it goes and what you may ask us to do about it.
The name on this site
Hearing Aids in West Bromwich writes these pages and decides what happens to an enquiry once it arrives, which is what makes us the controller in data protection terms. Anything to do with this notice, including a request about your own details, should come to us through the contact page on this site. That is the only route we publish, and messages sent through it reach the people who deal with enquiries.
Which details land with us
The greater part of what we hold is simply what you chose to type into the form: your name, an email address, a telephone number, a postcode or address, and whatever you tell us about the hearing difficulty you want looked at. The form itself is delivered by Basin (usebasin.com) Photographs can be attached if you want to show us something. Please do not send photographs that show people. If one does, we delete the photograph. If you write again afterwards, or reply to us, that correspondence sits with the original enquiry. Separately, the network that serves the pages keeps ordinary technical logs of requests made to it, which include an IP address, a timestamp, the page asked for and the browser making the request.
What the information does, and the law allowing it
Start with the main reason an enquiry exists at all, and the basis in law behind it, set out word for word: To answer your enquiry and pass it to one specialist covering your area, which is what you ask us to do when you send it. Our legitimate interest is in answering the people who contact us and in running the enquiry service, for which the specialist pays us. We have assessed that this does not override your interests, because you have asked us to pass your enquiry on and you can take your enquiry elsewhere at any time. Three further purposes follow from that. We keep a record of what was asked and what was sent on, so that we can answer sensibly if you come back to us. We use the technical logs to keep the site standing up and to deal with abuse of it. And where the law puts an obligation on us, we meet it, relying on legal obligation as our basis for that. Those are the only lawful bases in play here: legitimate interests and legal obligation. No contract exists between you and us, so none is claimed. Here is what passing on involves: Your enquiry, with the details you gave, is passed to one specialist firm covering the area you told us about, so that they can contact you about it. They use it only to answer your enquiry and to arrange any visit or work you agree with them, and from that point they are responsible for how they handle it. We do not pass your details to anyone else for their own use. We send no marketing, build no profiles, make no automated decisions about you, and sell nothing to anybody.
Systems that are not ours
This website does not run end to end on equipment we own, so a measure of handling happens on other people's systems, and the record names them: Basin delivers the enquiry form; Bunny serves the pages; Namecheap provides our email; and Google supplies the typefaces the pages are set in, so your browser requests those files from Google. Each of them handles it only to do that job for us. We would also give information to a regulator, the police or a court where the law required it, and to nobody else.
Storage outside the UK
Where the machines sit decides whether any of this crosses a border, and the record states the regions involved and what protects the information on its way: The network that serves the pages holds its technical logs in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States. The form service operates from the United States and is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
The point at which we delete
There is a single rule here, applied to every enquiry rather than weighed up one by one: We keep an enquiry for twelve months from the last contact about it, so that we can answer a later question about what was said and who it went to. After that it is deleted from the form service and from our email, and any backup copy is overwritten on the provider's normal cycle. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time. The network that serves the pages keeps its technical logs for no more than 3 days.
Locks and limited access
Your browser reaches this site over an encrypted connection, the form submission included, so what you type cannot be read in transit. Once an enquiry is with us, it is seen only by the people who actually deal with enquiries and by the specialist firm it is passed to. Accounts are protected by passwords, and nobody is given access because they are curious.
Taking charge of your own details
Information that describes you carries rights, and they read as follows: You have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you and to receive a copy; to have it corrected; to have it deleted; to restrict how we use it; to object to our using it; and to receive what you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere. Ask through the contact page and we answer within one month, without charge; we may ask you to confirm who you are. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, though we would rather you told us first. Ask through the contact page and we will deal with the request. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled it: If you complain to us about how we have handled your personal information, we acknowledge it within 30 days and reply as soon as we can.
Why this is an adult matter
Booking a hearing test, for yourself or for a parent, is something an adult does, and nothing on this site is aimed at or written for under eighteens. If it becomes clear that an enquiry has come from a child, we delete it rather than pass it on, and we do not reply asking for more.
Nothing is stored on your device
This site sets no cookies of its own. No analytics package is installed, so your visit is not counted, measured or compared with anyone else's, and there is no advertising code here and no tracking pixel. One thing does reach outward: the typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google's servers for a font file as the page draws. We see nothing of that request and get nothing back from it.
If we rewrite any of this
A change in how enquiries are dealt with, or a change in the companies behind the site, means this notice is edited to match. Whatever is showing on this page is the version in force, so it is worth a second look if you enquire again later.