Privacy Policy

The information we collect and when.

The Buoyant Group Limited trading as Pay Weekly Carpets are required to process your personal information fairly and lawfully and this means that you are entitled to know how we intend to use any information that you provide to us.

References to “Data Protection Law” in this section means the Data Protection Act 1998 or any other applicable law, regulation or code relating to data protection in the United Kingdom. References to “your information” are a reference to personal data as defined under the applicable Data Protection Law.

Your personal information will be securely held in The Buoyant Group Limited systems, on behalf of Pay Weekly Carpets, so that we are able to either now or in the future, manage your contract and relationship with us. This includes the following information:

Applications, letters, emails, texts, website enquiries, during telephone and face to face conversations (with ourselves or our agents), and customer surveys
Information that Pay Weekly carpets or The Buoyant Group receive from or through other organisations (Credit Reference Agencies, fraud prevention agencies, insurance companies, social networks, debt collection agencies, debt management companies, insolvency services)
From analysis of management information from data recording information about your payments and other transactions which are used to help us combat financial crime and other illegal activities

Personal information is any information that either alone, or in combination with other information, would identify a person as a living individual, for example your name and date of birth.

We only collect personal information that we know we will genuinely use and in accordance with the Data Protection Legislation. The type of personal information that we will collect on you, and you voluntarily provide to us as part of our usual business may include some or all of the following:

Your name and title
1. Address
2. Date of birth
3. Telephone number(s)
4. Email address
5. Credit referencing information including:
  - Marital status
  - UK residency status
  - Length of time at address
  - Sex and gender
  - Employment status and length of employment
  - Number of dependents (children)
  - Household income
  - Household expenditure
  - Rent/mortgage payments

Payment details (bank cards)
IP address

We may, in further dealings with you, extend this personal information to include purchases, services used, subscriptions, records of conversations and agreements and payment transactions.

You are under no statutory or contractual requirement or obligation to provide us with your personal information. However, we require at least the information above in order for us to deal with you as a potential customer in an efficient and effective manner.

The type of data we collect and the reasons why.

Credit Assessment: We collect personal and financial information from you and from credit reference agencies (CRAs) to help us conduct identity checks and to assess your ability to meet your financial commitments and to check that you are creditworthy.

Such information includes your current and recent addresses, whether you are on the electoral role, your date of birth, e-mail address and telephone number, about your employment and income, whether you are a home owner or tenant, personal data about bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages and other agreements that involve a credit arrangement like utilities and communications contracts (including mobile and internet) and how you are meeting your payments obligations to these organisations and whether you have any court judgments. We will also collect information about your UK residency status.

Prevent and detect crime: We collect personal and financial information from you and from CRAs and public or government bodies to help us to detect and prevent crime and fraud and to verify your identity under our anti-money laundering obligations.

Servicing of your contract: The information we collect will enable us to communicate with you about your rental contract, to service your account and any matters in relation to the products and goods supplied.

We will also use your data to issue statements, to process your payments onto our systems, to contact you about any missing payments and to trace you. We will make a record of our communications with you and your account activity to help us to monitor and manage your account, check that we are providing an adequate service and to help us to deal with any complaints. We will collect information about your bank account or payment card to enable us to process your rental repayments.

Improving our services and products: We will use your information, for research, assessment, and analysis (including market and product analysis) and to develop and improve our services to you and other customers.

The legal basis for processing your personal data.

The UK’s data protection law allows us to process your personal data where we have a proper reason for doing so. Such reasons include to fulfil a contract we have with you, where it is in our legitimate interest, where we have a legal duty and when you consent to it.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, and this is not unfairly against your interests. We rely on the legitimate reason basis in respect of our credit assessment activities described above. We will also share your data with credit reference agencies.

We rely on the contract performance basis in order to take steps to enter into the rental contract with you and supply the goods and products, to service the contract and to enforce our rights and remedies under the contract.

We rely on the legal duty for processing by collecting information in order to prevent and detect crime and by sharing such data with credit reference and government agencies and authorities. We will also collect information necessary for us to maintain records as required by government and regulatory bodies.

We will rely on your consent where:

you request that we disclose your information to others,
1. in the event that we process any special categories of personal data at your request, we will only record them with your explicit consent if they are relevant to the management of your account (for example if you have a medical condition which requires a bespoke approach to our dealings with you), and
2. to send you marketing communications (see below).

How we use your information.

To contact you, following your enquiry, reply to any questions, suggestions, issues, or complaints you have contacted us about.

Make available our products and services to you.

Process your orders.

Take payment from you or give you a refund.

Personalise your shopping experience, for example we may provide you with details of products that match a product, which you may have rented, purchased, or enquired about previously.

For statistical analysis and to get feedback from you about our products, websites, and other services and activities.

Help us understand more about you as a customer, the products, and services you consume, so we can serve you better.

Contact you about products and services from us.

Provide you with advertising and promotions.

Help answer your questions and solve any issues you have.

Who we might share your information with

We may give information about you and how you manage your account to the following organisations and where we do so shall take reasonable steps to ensure that your rights are protected and that they will keep the information confidential.

People who provide a service to us or are acting as our agents. This includes any organisation where we have decided to outsource all or part of the administration or servicing of your agreement including in respect of:

delivery fulfilment of the goods,
1. a third party that holds customer data on its servers for us, including back up data for our use,
2. debt collection and goods recovery,
3. a third-party intermediary to manage debit card processing (although they are not permitted to store, retain, or use your billing information for any other purpose), and
4. third parties we use to carry out repairs or servicing to the goods and products supplied.

Our insurers, auditors and accountants, solicitors, consultants, and other professional advisers.

Anyone to whom we transfer or may transfer our rights and duties under your finance agreement (for example if we were to sell your agreement to another funder company).

Any funders or investors (or prospective funders or investors) of our business.

Credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies (see below).

We may also give out personal information about you if we have a duty to do so in order to comply with any legal obligation (including with any Government agencies or regulators).

Where we use a Data Processor to provide part of our service, we have Data Processor Agreements in place. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share your personal information with any organisation apart from us or further sub-processors who must comply with our Data Processor Agreement. They will hold your personal data securely and retain it for the period we instruct.

Credit Reference Agencies.

If you submit your details to get pre-approval for a product, we will supply your Personal Data to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and carry out what is called a ‘soft credit search’ to get a view of your credit rating.

The CRAs will record our search but other lenders will not be able to see it and it will not affect your credit score.

When we perform a soft search on you, this will also include a soft credit search of any person that you share financial ties with (a joint current account or a joint mortgage, for example); this person is known as a ‘financial associate.’ Beyond using your financial associate’s data for decisioning purposes, we will not use their data for any other purpose. However, it will leave a soft search on their credit file, so you should make them aware before submitting your details.

CRAs link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or your financial associate successfully files a request with the CRAs to break that link.

The above soft search will give us an overall view of your financial health (including your credit score) but not your full credit report.

CRAs will supply to us public information (including from the electoral register), credit, financial situation, and financial history information, in addition to financial crime prevention information about you.

We will use your credit file information to:

Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product.
Verify the accuracy of the information you have provided us.
Prevent criminal activity, fraud, and money laundering.
Manage your account.
Trace and recover debts.
Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.

We will go on sharing your Personal Data with CRAs for as long as you are a customer. We will also inform CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. They may also provide this information to other organisations including financial institutions who offer similar products to Pay Weekly.

In order to understand more about CRAs, you can read their Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) which will tell you:

More about their role as a credit reference agency.
Their role as a financial crime prevention agency.
The data they hold.
The ways in which they use and share Personal Data.
Data retention periods.
Your data protection rights.

You can access the CRAIN for each of the CRAs here:

To assess a finance application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more CRAs. Please see CRA sites for details on how this process is managed the CRA we use is below.

https://www.callcredit.co.uk/crain

Marketing

We will send you relevant offers and news about our products and services in a number of ways including by email, but only if you have previously consented to receive these marketing communications. When you register with us, we will ask if you would like to receive marketing communications, and you can opt out online, over the phone or in writing at any time.

If you wish to amend your marketing preferences, you can do so via your account or via the contact details below.

Your rights over your information

The right to be informed about our collection and use of personal data.

You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data. We ensure we do this with our internal data protection policies and through our external website policy. These are regularly reviewed and updated to ensure these are accurate and reflect our data processing activities.

Right to Access Your Personal Information

You have the right to access the personal information that we hold about you in many circumstances, by making a request. This is sometimes termed ‘Subject Access Request.’ If we agree that we are obliged to provide personal information to you (or someone else on your behalf), we will provide it to you or them free of charge and aim to do so within 1 month from when your identity has been confirmed.

We would ask for proof of identity and sufficient information about your interactions with us that we can locate your personal information.