Privacy policy

Who we are

This website is run by North Coast Chocolate Company Limited, a company registered in Scotland (company number SC890162), at 5 Sir Georges Street, Thurso, KW14 7AW. We’re responsible for the personal details you give us.

If you have any questions about your details, email us at info@northcoastchocolatecompany.co.uk.

What we collect

When you order: your name, email address, phone number, delivery address, what you bought and any gift message. Payments are handled by Stripe, so we never see or store your full card details.
When you send an enquiry: what you tell us in the form, such as your name, email, phone number and message. For wedding favours that includes your wedding date, venue and the number of favours, and for wholesale enquiries your business name, type and location.
When you sign up for our newsletter or a restock alert: your email address, and the flavour you’d like to hear about.
When you email us: your email address and whatever you include.
When you browse the site, if you accept analytics cookies: which pages you visit, roughly where you are (town or region), the type of device and browser you use, and how you found us. See Cookies below.

Why we use it

To fulfil your order: to take payment, pack and post your chocolates, and email you about your order and its delivery. We need these details to carry out our contract with you.
To keep proper records: we keep order records because tax law requires us to.
To answer your enquiries: it’s in our legitimate interests to reply to you and to deal with any problem with your order.
To send you news and restock alerts: only because you asked us to. You can unsubscribe at any time, using the link in our emails or by emailing us.
To understand how people use our website: only if you accept analytics cookies.
To keep the website secure: our hosting provider records visitors’ IP addresses to protect the site from attacks. This is in our legitimate interests.

We don’t sell your details, and we don’t use them for advertising.

We use a few trusted companies to run our shop. They only use your details to provide their service to us:

Stripe takes payments and keeps our order records.
Netlify hosts this website and receives the forms you fill in.
Resend sends our order confirmation and delivery emails.
Google provides Google Analytics (only if you accept it) and the fonts used on this website. Loading the fonts sends your IP address to Google.
The courier delivering your parcel, such as Royal Mail, receives your name and delivery address, and sometimes your email or phone number for delivery updates.

Some of these companies store details outside the UK, including in the United States. When they do, your details are protected by the UK’s data protection rules for international transfers, such as the UK–US data bridge or contracts approved by the UK’s data protection regulator.

How long we keep it

Orders: six years after the end of the financial year you ordered in, because tax law requires it.
Enquiries and emails: for as long as we need to help you, and no more than two years after we last hear from you.
Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
Restock alerts: until we’ve told you the flavour is back, and no more than a year.
Analytics: Google Analytics keeps its data for 14 months.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the details we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete them, or object to how we use them. You can also ask us to stop using them while a question is sorted out, or to send them to you in a format you can pass on. Where you’ve given consent, you can withdraw it at any time.

To do any of these things, email info@northcoastchocolatecompany.co.uk. We’ll reply within a month.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your details, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Cookies

Cookies are small files that websites save in your browser. We only use the ones we need to run the shop, plus Google Analytics if you say yes.

Always on, because the site needs them:

nccc-basket remembers what’s in your basket as you move between pages. It’s kept in your browser’s storage until you check out or empty your basket.
nccc-consent remembers whether you accepted or rejected analytics cookies, so we don’t ask on every page. It lasts six months, then we ask again.

Only if you accept analytics cookies:

_ga and _ga_1RLX2JTGN8 are set by Google Analytics to count visits and tell one visit from another. They last up to two years. Google Analytics doesn’t store your IP address.

When you check out, you move to Stripe’s secure checkout page, which sets its own cookies to process your payment and prevent fraud. You can read about these in Stripe’s cookie policy.

You can change your mind at any time in Cookie settings, which is also linked at the bottom of every page. If you switch analytics off, we delete its cookies.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we use your details, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.