PRIVACY POLICY
Chord Electronics is committed to protecting your privacy. This page informs you of who we are, our policies regarding the collection of data, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service and the choices that you have associated with that data.
While using our website, https://chordelectronics.co.uk (the “Service”), you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.
Who are we?
We are Chord Electronics Ltd, a registered for-profit limited company within the United Kingdom, operating globally, specialising in the research, development, and manufacture of electronic equipment for the professional and consumer audio market.
The company is registered in England & Wales and our company registration number is: 02347071
What information do we collect and how do we use it?
When using our website and its various functions, we may need to collect information for the purpose of providing you with a bespoke experience.
We collect records regarding your interaction with our organisation, including our website. A complete list of these records is defined below.
Cookies
When you visit our website, a piece of data called a cookie will be stored in your web browser, this may include one or more cookies. This cookie/s will be used to recognise you, keep track of your visit and any activity that you perform on our website. These cookie/s allow us to enable certain functions of the service, to provide analytics, to store your preferences and to enable advertisements delivery, including behavioural advertising.
We may also use these cookie/s in conjunction with third-parties or remarketing platforms to serve you with advertising relating to the pages and products that you have visited on our website. This advertising will be served to you in the form of display adverts, search network adverts, social media adverts, video adverts, email marketing, retargeting and remarketing adverts, using the Google Ads, Twitter Ads or Facebook Ads (also occupying Instagram) platforms. Whilst you are served with these adverts, the third-party websites will not have access to any of your personal information.
When you visit our website for the first time, you will be informed that we use cookies to provide our service. By agreeing to continue, you accept that cookies may be or will be, stored within your web browser or device/machine. If at any point in time you wish to instruct your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, please visit the help pages of your web browser.
Please note that if you delete or refuse cookies then you might not be able to use all of the features that we offer, you may not be able to store your preferences and some of our pages may not display properly. For more information about cookies please see the following: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/
Our full cookies policy can be found here: https://chordelectronics.co.uk/cookies-policy/
Emails and online messaging
If you use any of the contact forms on our website to send us a message/email, including those on our Contact Us page and FAQs page or send us a general email to any email address attached to the @chordelectronics.co.uk domain name, your message, email address, subject of your message, contents of your message, IP address, web browser information and date and time of submission will be securely transmitted to us.
This information will be electronically stored within a secure online database stored on a remote server, stored on an internal email server, and stored on an employees’ local machine which may or may not be taken outside of the registered office of Chord Electronics. Your information may also be transferred to an internally created database for the purpose of monitoring your query or printed to assist with the efficient processing of your request. Your information will be stored for as long as necessary to provide you with an effective, efficient service.
We respect your privacy, although in the event that your request requires specialist assistance, we may transfer the contents of your message to another member within Chord Electronics (or, in limited circumstances, to our legal advisors) for the purposes of fulfilling your query or to further investigate your request.
We will never use the content of your emails to serve you with newsletters or physical materials, nor will we share the content of your message/email with a third-party unless expressed permission is requested by yourself for the purpose of providing support.
During and after your contact with Chord Electronics Ltd. to protect and preserve the privacy of your personal information, and our employees, we respectfully request that you do not forward, share or disseminate the contents of any correspondence with Chord Electronics within a public forum or to a third-party unless express written permission has been granted. Doing so may be a violation of Data Protection legislation.
Newsletter
By using and signing up to our online Newsletter, on any page, you will submit personally identifiable information, included but not limited to: First and Surname, Email address, Country of residence and Products that you are interested in (types of product).
Once the form has been submitted, we will recognise your intent for us to store the above information along with your IP address, browser information, date and time of submission in order to provide you with email newsletters, service announcements, product updates or promotional materials relating to the interests that you have provided.
In the event that you have interacted with a co-marketing campaign, between Chord Electronics Ltd and a third-party, we may receive your personal information if, in the process, you consented to join a Chord Electronics newsletter.
Your information will be electronically stored for as long as necessary to complete your wishes within a secure remote online database which has limited access by webmaster and marketing personal. A separate secure internal database will be kept which will only be viewed by marketing for the purposes of providing you with only the most relevant emails. We will also share this information within our email marketing platform – Hubspot. When you receive emails from us, it will be via the Hubspot platform, although Hubspot themselves will have no access to your personal information.
The email newsletters that you receive are based on the interests that you entered at the point of sign-up, if you are unhappy with the content of the email newsletters, you may forward a request to info@chordelectronics.co.uk,likewise, if you wish to no longer receive our email newsletters you can unsubscribe using the link within the newsletters footer or send a request to info@chordelectronics.co.uk
At no time will we share your information with any third-party, nor will we acknowledge that you are a member of our email lists. We will also never use this information to send you any other means of communication than email newsletters.
At the point of submission, we will automatically collect your IP address, browser information, and finally, the date and time of this submission. This aids us in preventing fraud and validating your claim. However, our email newsletters are marketed on a strict opt-in basis.
Product registration
If you choose to officially register your product/purchase with us via our online Product Registration form, we will ask you to provide personally identifiable information along with information regarding your purchase and serial number. We will also ask for information regarding your country of purchase and country of origin, along with your Official Chord Electronics dealer name and how the product was transferred to you. We will use this information to confirm that you have purchased a genuine Chord Electronics product.
We will store this information indefinitely for the purposes of providing customer support, identifying ownership, validating the warranty period, and potentially providing support to law-enforcement agencies. Whilst registering your product helps us identify the ownership of a product, you must keep your original purchase receipt in the event that a warranty return is initiated as this will be required. This information will be held within a secure remote online database which has limited access by webmaster, support agent and marketing personnel. A separate secure internal database will be kept which will only be viewed by marketing, sales, and engineers in the event that a repair or service request is submitted.
As a customer you do have the option of not registering your product/purchase with us. By not registering your product you will not sacrifice any of your consumer rights or support and the original warranty period will be honoured.
We may use your data to perform market analysis, which helps us to improve our products or services. This data may be shared with our distributors for the purposes of improving our products and services. Your personal information relating to first name, last name, email address, and serial number will never be shared with them and instead your personally identifiable information will be anonymized and deleted from the data that you entered. No personally identifiable information will remain.
Within our product registration process we allow you to provide us with additional information relating to your purchase which is key in helping us develop our products and services, including by not limited to, ‘my next purchase is likely to be’, ‘Are you a returning Chord Electronics customer’, ‘How did you hear about us’, ‘Household income’ and ‘Your age’. Providing this information is not mandatory. If you provide this information we will store this information against your personally identifiable information, such as your ‘Name’, ‘Surname’, ‘Email’ etc. however during the analysis we will delete your personally identifiable information before the production of a report. No personally identifiable information will remain. We will store this information indefinitely to continue year-on-year reports. If you wish to remove this information you may contact Chord Electronics to delete this entry and re-register your product. Please email info@chordelectronics.co.uk
If during the sign-up process you agree to sign up to our newsletter, this request will be processed, where your registration information will be separated and added to our newsletter in line with the above privacy policy.
In the event that you require assistance by a third-party service department, confirmation of your registration and warranty status will be transferred to an authorised technician. Further information on this procedure is explained below.
At the point of submission, we will automatically collect your IP address, browser information, and finally the date and time of this submission. This aids us in preventing fraud and validating your claim.
Selling your device if you have registered your product with us
If you have or are intending to sell your device, we advise customers to inform us in order to remove your personally identifiable information from our systems. In the process, we will continue to note the product, serial number, dealer name, country of purchase and date of purchase in order to verify the warranty period of the device in the unlikely event that requires a repair. We recommend that at this point you take pictures of your device and serial number in the event that your sale has unwanted circumstances.
If you sell/trade your device, we recommend that you do not provide a copy of your purchase receipt or registration document. This can be used to personally identify you. We also respectfully request that you do not provide any correspondence with Chord Electronics Ltd, this may infringe our employees’ personal information.
We will never disclose your personal identifiable information to anyone other than yourself.
Out of warranty/in-warranty returns procedure and Chord Electronics’ RMA online system:
If it is determined by you, your official Chord Electronics dealer/distributor, or a member of Chord Electronics staff, that your product is faulty, we will determine whether your product needs to be returned directly to Chord Electronics, or an official Chord Electronics dealer/distributor, or an authorised third-party service centre. The factors that determine where your unit is serviced depends on the severity of repair, age of the unit, whether tools and parts currently exist within your country, and whether a service centre exists in your country.
During the process of booking your device in for service, we will perform an initial check against the information that we hold against your particular device or your personal information, to determine whether your product is currently within its warranty period or has been submitted previously for a repair.
During the returns procedure we will track the process of your repair on a remote system (AKA RMA System or database), which will be assigned to your personal information and may be assigned to your dealer’s or distributor’s information. You can request for us or your dealer/distributor, to anonymise this data, however, your serial number must be accurate in order for us to identify your device. During and following repair, we will store our findings, condition of the device and details of the repair, within a secure online and internal database. This allows us to identify the possibility of quality control issues between specific batches, guarantee our craftsmanship and parts, and respond accurately to future service requests.
If during initial assessment, it is determined that your device can be sent to an Official Chord Electronics service centre, with your confirmation, we will transfer the details of your repair, identifying marks of your unit, your first name, your surname, email address, telephone number, messages, details of your dealer and notes for repair. We will also provide you with a point of contact at the service centre. If it is your dealer/distributor that has initiated the repair/service of your device, they will be held entirely responsible for asking for your permission to gather and send this information to us and/or the third-party service centre.
Pre-sales serial number allocation
Prior to the sale of any Chord Electronics device, a unique serial number/s is assigned, we may also assign other unique identifying characteristics/methods to the device to prevent fraud or unlawful acquisition. The serial number may be etched, printed, engraved, written, or digitally stored within the hardware/software.
These identifying characteristics and serial number/s will be stored at Chord Electronics and will never be assigned to your personal information. A separate database is assigned to product registrations.
This information will be stored indefinitely.
Dealer locator
When using our online Dealer Locator function, we will request your location either via GPS or via manual entry. We will use this information strictly to provide you with a list of your nearest Chord Electronics dealers. We may use and store this information in order to provide the features of our service or further improve or customise its features. This includes analysis via analytics software or heatmapping.
You can choose to either enable or disable location services at any time when you use this service through your browser settings or not serve us with the information at the point of entry. We will never use this information to serve you with advertising and will never provide this information to third-parties.
This information is anonymised, and Chord Electronics has no access to personally identifiable information. Information regarding your choices for our Dealer Locator may be stored on your device in the form of a Cookie.
Logging in to the Chord Electronics website
Any means of logging-in to the Chord Electronics website is reserved for Chord Electronics employees only. There is no additional content to be obtained by attempting to log-in to the website.
Unless you are a Chord Electronics employee, attempting to, or successfully logging-in to the chordelectronics.co.uk website will be seen as a malicious attack. We employ an array of systems to monitor and counteract fraud and such malicious activities. At the point of attempt or log-in your IP address will be logged along with other identifiable information. This information will be used and submitted to law-enforcement or other means of protecting our property, including banning your IP address from accessing the chordelectronics.co.uk website.
The recording of the IP address of your device at the point of log-in, will be held for as long as possible to prevent fraud or attack.
Dropbox – AKA Chord Electronics Marketing Assets
Chord Electronics uses a file hosting service by the company ‘Dropbox’ to serve assets to the press, dealers, distributors and its professional agents. Via the Admin Tools available from Dropbox, Chord Electronics can see the IP address, general location, and usernames of devices that attempt to access our folders.
For more information regarding Dropbox, please see their privacy policy: https://www.dropbox.com/en_GB/privacy
Social media and forums
As part of marketing, we use social media and forums to broadcast messages, communicate with our customers and serve updates regarding our services. We use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Head-Fi and AV Forums. You can see a copy of their privacy policies on their websites. We will never personally collect, store, or profile your interests from any social media platform or forum.
During our interaction, we aim to never personally identify a user, your interaction, or personally identifiable information with Chord Electronics, unless express permission has been awarded. We may, however, repost or reply to your comments if this option is available. Of course, we promise to maintain the greatest confidence and respect to our users and their social profiles.
If you interact with our posts, please be aware that your profile and interaction may be visible to other members of the platform. This is out of Chord Electronics’ control.
You can view Facebook’s Privacy Policy here: https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
You can view Twitter’s Privacy Policy here: https://twitter.com/en/privacy
You can view Instagram’s Privacy Policy here: https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388
You can view YouTube’s Privacy Policy here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7671399?p=privacy_guidelines&hl=en&visit_id=1-636627759165367293-667661626&rd=1
Remarketing
Chord Electronics uses Google Ads & Remarketing (DoubleClick) and Facebook Pixel to potentially serve you with advertising relating to the products that you have viewed on our website following your visit. Your visit and viewed pages will be stored locally on your machine in the form of a Cookie, which you can disable at the point of entry to our website or by resetting the Cookies mentioned within our Cookie policy. This Cookie does not in any way personally identify you or give us access to your computer. This cookie will simply allow Google Ads or Facebook Pixel, automated service, to see that you may have viewed a page on our website and relate that to an advertising campaign that we are running. Google Ads and Facebook Pixel allow you to see display advertising relating to your interests but never gives us information about you.
This information is held locally on your machine, which Chord Electronics has no access to.
SSL certificate
When you visit the Chord Electronics website you may notice the green padlock icon within the address bar and that accessing www.chordelectronics.co.uk , chordelectronics.co.uk or chordmojo.com begins with https rather than http. This is because we use an SSL Certificate to protect your interaction whilst you use our website, the ’S’ in https:// stands for ‘Secure’. You can view the certificate by clicking on the green padlock.
Throughout the duration of your visit you will have an encrypted session and the information that you provide to us, for example within the Register Product page, will be safely transmitted.
You can learn more about SSL Certificates here: https://www.globalsign.com/en/ssl-information-center/what-is-an-ssl-certificate/
Analytics
When you use the Chord Electronics website, we use analytics tools which provide us with the ability to monitor and document activity on our website. This could be noted against a customer record. We use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Hubspot and Lucky Orange which, upon your entry to our website, will place a cookie on your machine. The information regarding your visit will be securely transmitted to these operators’ servers. These operators will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity, conversion rates and internet usage. Google and Facebook may transmit this data to third-parties where required to do so by law, or where a third-party will perform this data processing on their behalf.
Further information can be obtained from;
Google’s Analytics Privacy Policy: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
Facebook Pixel’s Privacy Policy: https://en-gb.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
How we store and access information regarding your personal identifying information:
Chord Electronics takes appropriate measures to prevent unauthorised access, disclosure, modification, or unauthorised destruction of the data. This includes encryption, two-factor authentication and use of strong passwords or two-factor authentication.
The data processing is carried out using computers and/or IT enabled tools, following organisational procedures and modes strictly related to the purposes indicated. In addition to the owner, in some cases, the Data may be accessible to certain types of persons in charge, involved with the operation of this Application (administration, sales, marketing, legal, system administration) or external parties (such as third-party technical service providers, mail carriers, hosting providers, IT companies, communications agencies) appointed, if necessary, as Data Processors by the Owner. The updated list of these parties may be requested from the Owner at any time. We do not freely provide this within this document to prevent targeted or automated, attacks to our systems.
Place in which we process information
Chord Electronics processes the data at its operating offices and any other location where the parties are involved in processing the information, this may be outside of Chord Electronics registered office.
Depending on the location of the user, data may be transferred out of the user’s country, other than their own.
Length of time data will be held
Within this document we have described the length of time which data will be held for. If otherwise stated, personally identifiable information will be held as long as necessary to complete the intentions of the user and safe use of the data.
Wherever there may be a legal obligation to do so, personally identifiable data may be held longer than stated. However, once the retention period expires, the personally identifiable information will be deleted and at this point, the user may not have the right to access as it will no longer exist.
Additional information about a user’s personal data
In addition to the information contained in this privacy policy, this application may provide the user with additional and contextual information concerning particular Services or the collection and processing of personal data upon request.
System logs and maintenance
For operation and maintenance purposes, this application and any third-party services may collect files that record interaction with this application (system logs) use other personal data (such as the IP address) for this purpose.
Information not contained in this policy
More details concerning the collection or processing of personal data may be requested from Chord Electronics Ltd. at any time. Please see the contact information at the beginning of this document.
How Do Not Track requests are handled:
This application does not support Do Not Track requests. To determine whether any of the third-party services it uses honour the Do Not Track requests, please read their privacy policies.
Changes to this privacy policy
The owner reserves the right to make changes to this privacy policy at any time by giving notice to its users on this page, and possibly within this application, and/or – as far as technically and legally feasible – sending a notice to users via any contact information available to the owner. It is strongly recommended to check this page often.
Should the changes affect processing activities performed on the basis of the user’s consent, the Owner shall collect new consent from the user, where required.
Keeping you in control
You may exercise your right at any time regarding the data processed by Chord Electronics. You have the right to do the following:
Withdraw your consent at any time, where you have previously given consent to the processing of personal data by Chord Electronics.
Object to the processing of your data if the processing is carried out in another way than listed within this Privacy Policy.
Access the personal data that we hold about you. Upon demand we will provide you with a copy of the data processed in a format that you can read.
Verify and seek rectification of your data if you believe the accuracy of the data to be incorrect.
Restrict the processing of your data, if you wish for it to not be used in the way as outlined within this Privacy Policy.
Have your data deleted, if you would like to revoke Chord Electronics access to this.
Lodge a complaint, if you believe that your data has been unfairly processed.
We will take reasonable steps to verify the identity of anyone requesting access to their data.
Contacting Chord Electronics with regards to your data
If you wish to contact Chord Electronics with regards to your personally identifiable information or wish to understand more then please contact Chord Electronics at: info@chordelectronics.co.uk