Privacy and Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy Statement
Effective as of 5/25/2018
 

This is the Privacy Policy Statement of MSC Industrial Supply UK, a division of J&L America, Inc. (a Michigan corporation) (collectively, "MSC "). Our address is 7 Pacific Avenue, Wednesbury, West Midlands, WS10 7WP.

MSC is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy in accordance with the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable laws.

1. Information about MSC's Processing of Personal Data

MSC is the data controller of the personal data to which this Privacy Policy Statement applies. MSC processes your personal data based on the following lawful bases:

a. To Perform a Contract

MSC processes your personal data for the following purposes in order to perform our contractual obligations to you:

processing the orders that you place with us for goods and services;
processing your payments to us; and
notifying you about the status of your purchases.
b. Based on our Legitimate Interests

MSC also processes your personal data based on MSC's legitimate interest in:

providing a customized, optimized website experience for you so that you are better able to search for and browse our products and place orders with us;
understanding the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing;
improving the performance and usability of our website at http://www.mscdirect.co.uk(the "Website")
monitoring, maintaining, and improving the security and integrity of our systems;
informing our suppliers about who is purchasing the products they manufacture;
reviewing aggregated and non-personally identifiable geographical location data based on the IP addresses of individuals who visit our Website for purposes of understanding where visitors to our Website are located;
maintaining a record of customers who have purchased from us for as long as we determine is reasonably necessary to operate our business efficiently by balancing the risks of long-term storage of personal data against the costs of deleting personal data which may be useful for efficiently conducting future business;
keeping accurate financial records for accounting and audit purposes; and
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
MSC also processes your personal data based on MSC's legitimate interest in distributing our product catalog and relevant marketing materials to you via direct postal mail. The objective of this processing is to make our customers aware of the goods and services offered by MSC and of current sales promotions and discounts, all with the goal of fulfilling MSC's primary value proposition: to save customers time and money by transforming the way they operate. Direct mail marketing is a longstanding commercial practice in the industrial distribution industry. In MSC's industry, which consists largely of business-to-business relationships and transactions, customers expect and desire to receive timely and relevant catalogs and marketing materials from the merchants with which they do business. MSC limits its processing of personal data for direct mail marketing purposes to existing customer contacts who have made a purchase from MSC within the past 24 months. Therefore, data subjects who we do not consider to be active customers of MSC or may no longer be interested in MSC's products and services do not receive direct mail marketing. Of course, any customer who informs us that they object to receiving direct mail marketing from us will be removed from our mailing lists immediately.

c. With Your Consent

Finally, with your consent, which you may provide upon registering on or logging into our Website, by email to us, when you call our contact centre, or during the course of other interactions through which we obtain your affirmative consent (e.g., at events or when you choose to download information we make available to you on our Website), we process your personal data for purposes of:

distributing relevant marketing materials to you through email, SMS, and marketing to you over the phone; and
operating Internet remarketing programs (such as Google AdWords) through which "cookies" are used to display ads for our products to you on other websites you visit based on the products and pages you viewed on our Website.
2. Details about MSC's Processing of Personal Data

a. Categories of Personal Data Collected

MSC processes the following categories of personal data:

Contact information, including phone number, mailing address, billing address, email address, and job titles;
Shipping information for delivery of the products you purchase from us;
Billing information (including bank and/or credit card information);
Transactional information, including historical data about your purchases from us; and
Information about your visits to our Website, including what web browser you use, your IP address, your computer operating system, what pages you view on our Website, and when and how often you visit our Website.
b. Cookies

MSC's Website uses cookies (small files stored on your computer by a website to give you a unique ID) and web beacons (also known as pixel tags or clear GIFs) for the following purposes based on the lawful bases described above:

to help us remember your settings and preferences so that we can provide you with a more personalized experience;
to log you into the Website; enable us to show you your account data; and help us keep your data and the Website safe and secure;
to provide you with functionality and optimize the performance of the Website;
to help us understand how you are using the Website so that we can make it better;
to monitor which pages you visit and your activity on our Website using Google Analytics; and
to advertise using to you using Google AdWords based on your previous visits to the Website.
Most web browsers are initially set to accept cookies. However, you can adjust your computer browser settings so that you are informed when a cookie is being placed on your browser. You can also set your browser to decline or accept all cookies. To prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics, you can install Google's opt-out browser add-on . To opt out of ads on Google that are targeted to your interests, use your Google Ads settings at adssettings.google.com .

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you configure your computer to block or erase all Cookies, you may not be able to use all or certain parts or features of this Site.

c. Transfers of Personal Data to Third Parties

MSC transfers certain personal data to subcontractors that perform services for MSC relating to the processing of personal data for the purposes set forth above. These subcontractors perform the following categories of services to MSC:

Package and product delivery services
Email marketing services
Direct mail marketing services
Printing services
Data cleansing and supplementing services
Internet advertising services
Sales analysis services
Website activity analysis services
These subcontractors are not authorized by us to use or disclose your personal data except as necessary to provide services for MSC.

MSC may also disclose your personal information to third parties in the following circumstances:

we may disclose your personal information to any member of our group (including our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006);
to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request;
to enforce applicable terms of service or terms of sale, including investigation of potential violations;
to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues;
to protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of MSC, our customers, or the public as required or permitted by law;
if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective buyer or seller of such business or assets; and
if MSC or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers may be one of the transferred assets.
d. Transfers outside of the EEA

MSC transfers certain personal to its parent and sister companies and to subcontractors located outside the European Economic Area.These transfers are made subject to appropriate safeguards. If you wish to enquire further about these safeguards, please contact us as set forth in section 4 below.

e. Data Retention

With respect to personal data that MSC processes in order to fulfill our contractual obligations and based on our legitimate interests (as described above), MSC will retain such data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes of the processing.

With respect to personal data that MSC processes with your consent, MSC will retain: (i) contact information for purposes of direct mail and email marketing for twenty-four (24) months after the date of last purchase; (ii) data for purposes of Google advertising programs for up to one hundred eighty (180) days; and (iii) data for purposes of Google Analytics programs for up to fifty(50) months. Of course, you may revoke your consent at any time by notifying us at Privacy@mscdirect.com

3. Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights with respect to your personal data which MSC processes:

The right to access your personal data;
The right to rectify your personal data where it is incorrect or incomplete;
The right to erase your data if certain grounds are met;
The right to restrict or suspend our processing of your personal data;
The right to complain to a supervisory authority about our processing of your personal data;
The right to data portability;
The right to withdraw the consent you have previously given to our processing of your personal data;
The right to object to our processing of your personal data for purposes of our legitimate interests
The right to object to our processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
If you refuse to provide us with personal data comprising your contact information, shipping information, and/or billing information, we may refuse to do business with you because we will not be able to fulfill our contractual obligations to you in connection with your purchase of products from us.

4. Contact Information

If you want to exercise any of your legal rights, or if you have any questions about MSC's processing of your personal data, you may contact us by emailing us at Privacy@mscdirect.com or by telephone at 0800 66 33 55.

You can also review and update certain of your personal data by updating your profile in the My Account section of the Website.