Privacy Policy
At AVSL we are committed to protecting your privacy. This Policy explains why we collect personal information about our customers, website visitors or social media followers.
How we collect personal data and how we use it
As a rule, we don't collect any unnecessary personal data and we keep what we retain to the minimum. The depth of information we collect depends on your level of interaction with our company.
Website visitor
Session cookies may be stored for the duration of your visit (see cookie policy below). As an account holder we will use your email address as a username for your login – an email is sent to this address to confirm the address is valid. This is not used for marketing purposes unless you separately request to be added to our mailing list. User passwords are stored using irreversible encryption and never stored in plain text.
Delivery address
If you order from one of our account holders your name, address and contact telephone number may be provided to us to allow us to directly ship the goods to you on behalf of our customer. The address will also be provided to our carrier so that they can deliver the order.
This information will be stored as part of the invoice which we are required to keep for at least 6 years.
Account holders
When you open an account with AVSL we collect information from you via our account form that we submit to our bank to arrange approval of credit facilities.
We collect and store the invoice and delivery address for your company along with the names, email address and telephone numbers of the key people that we may need to contact with relation to your account (Directors, Buyers, Accountant etc).
Website Cookie Policy
We use only the minimum website cookies needed to facilitate its operation. We don't use cookies to collect or store your personal information or track you once you leave our website. We don't have any third-party advertisements on our website.
Session cookie
This is a unique identifier that is used to differentiate you from other visitors during your time on our website and allow you to stay logged in as you move between pages of the website. This cookie is temporary and is deleted automatically when you close your browser.
Persistent cookie
If you choose to stay logged in, we store a separate persistent cookie that will remain after you close your browser. This is a unique identifier that allows us to automatically log you back in next time you visit the site. The default is not to set this cookie, you can choose not to set this cookie when you log in to our website.
Third party cookies
We use Google Analytics, a popular web service, to track visitor numbers and website usage statistics. The data is collected and stored by Google and will be covered by their privacy policy https://policies.google.com.
Contact & Communication
Telephone Calls
Calls made to AVSL may be recorded for training purposes and stored securely for 28 days. We also use this data to help us improve our customer experience.
Email marketing
We operate an email newsletter, used to inform subscribed account holders about the products and services we provide. Users can subscribe to our mailing list via an opt in process and can choose to be removed from the newsletter list at any time by following the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every message.
We use Mail Chimp as our marketing email provider. They provide tracking facilities within the actual email that is used to analyse the success of each marketing email and allow us to target and limit the messages we send. This data is collected and stored by Mail Chimp and will be covered by their privacy policy https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy.
General email
All email communication sent or received to our @avslgroup.com email addresses is retained on our servers for 3 years. This allows us to resolve any disputes or queries that may arise. Additionally, emails may be archived or retained by the sender or recipient themselves.
Social Media
We communicate and engage with our customers through external social media platforms. This interaction is through a public forum and is limited to providing information about our products and services. Occasionally we may post information in collaboration with one of our customers with their consent.
We participate in social media platforms according to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy held by each social media platform respectively.
We will never ask for personal information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive information to contact us through more private communication methods, such as by telephone or email.
Data protection and security
We safely and securely store information in our systems and are committed to keeping your data secure. Our security measures include:
- Security policies that limit employees access to only the information they need for their role.
- Encryption of data, integrity checks and regular backups.
- Internal training and security policies for our employees.
- Firewall protection of our internal network with regular penetration testing by a third-party provider.
- 24-hour security protecting our building, IT infrastructure and servers.