Privacy Policy — Bargain Books

The Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (“POPI”) came into complete commencement on 1 July 2021, in this regard we have a number of obligations and duties in terms of POPI that we must comply with. The protection of your personal information is a high priority for us, and we have taken steps to ensure that your personal information is protected and remains private.

In addition to this document serving as our privacy policy, this document will also serve as our data subject notification as contemplated in section 18 of POPI. In this regard, this document will inform you of what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it and what safety measures are in place to protect it.

Where we refer to “process”, it means how we collect, use, store, make available, destroy, update, disclose, or otherwise deal with your personal information. As a general rule we will only process your personal information if this is required to deliver or offer a service, provide a product or carry out a transaction.

We may combine your personal information and use the combined personal information for any of the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy.

In this document any reference to “we” or “us” or “our” is reference to Bargain Books.

If you use our services, goods and/or products, you agree that we may process your personal information as explained under this Privacy Policy.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time if the law or our business practices require it.

The version of the Privacy Policy displayed on our website at the time of your interaction with us will be applicable.

What is personal information?

Personal information refers to any information that identifies you or specifically relates to you. Personal information includes, but is not limited to, the following information about you:

Age
Belief
Birth
Biometric
Colour
Conscience
Correspondence
Criminal history
Culture
Disability
Education
E-mail address
Employment history
Ethnic origin
Financial history
Gender
Identity number
Language
Location information
Marital Status
Mental Health
Medical History
Name
National Origin
Online identifier
Other particular assignment
Personal opinions
Personal preferences
Personal views
Physical address
Physical health
Pregnancy
Race
Religion
Sex
Sexual orientation
Social origin
Symbol
Telephone number
Well being

Is the supply of personal information voluntary or mandatory?

The supply of certain personal information is mandatory where we are required to collect such information in terms of applicable legislation. If you do not provide this personal information, we may be unable to comply with our legal obligations or conclude or perform a contract with you.

We may be required to collect and process personal information in terms of the following legislation, where applicable:

Basic Conditions of Employment Act, No. 75 of 1997
Labour Relations Act, No. 66 of 1995
Employment Equity Act, No. 55 of 1998
Unemployment Insurance Act, No. 63 of 2001
Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, No. 130 of 1993
Income Tax Act, No. 58 of 1962
Companies Act, No. 71 of 2008
National Credit Act, No. 34 of 2005 (where customers apply for credit facilities)
Consumer Protection Act, No. 68 of 2008

In addition, where required, personal information may be processed in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, No. 4 of 2013.

In other instances, the supply of personal information is voluntary. However, where such information is necessary for us to:

Create and manage customer accounts
Administer loyalty programmes
Process credit applications
Complete online purchases and deliveries
Conduct direct marketing (where consent has been obtained)
Respond to customer queries

Failure to provide the required personal information may result in us being unable to provide the requested products or services.

When will we process your personal information?

We will only process your personal information for lawful purposes relating to our business if the following applies:

if you have consented thereto.
if a person legally authorised by you, the law, or a court, has consented thereto.
if it is necessary to conclude or perform under a contract we have with you.
if the law requires or permits it.
if it is required to protect or pursue your, our or a third party’s legitimate interest.

What is special personal information?

Special personal information is personal information about the following:

Biometric information
Criminal behaviour
Ethnic origin
Health
Philosophical beliefs
Political persuasion
Race
Religious beliefs
Sex life
Trade union membership

When will we process your special personal information?

We may process your special personal information in the following circumstances:

if you have consented to the processing.
if the information is being used for any Human resource or payroll requirement.
if the processing is needed to create, use, or protect a right or obligation in law.
if the processing is for statistical or research purposes and all legal conditions are met.
if the special personal information was made public by you.
if the processing is required by law.
if racial information is processed, and the processing is required to identify you; and / or if health information is processed, and the processing is to determine your insurance risk, or to comply with an insurance policy or to enforce an insurance right or obligation.

When and from where we obtain personal information about you?

We may collect personal information about you from the following sources:

Directly from you when you:
- Purchase products in-store or online
- Apply for a credit facility
- Register for a loyalty programme
- Create an online account
- Subscribe to marketing communications
- Contact us via email, telephone, social media, or customer support
- Participate in surveys, competitions, or promotions
From your use of our website, mobile platforms, or digital channels, including through cookies and similar technologies.
From publicly available sources where you have deliberately made your information public.
From third parties where it is lawful to do so, including:
- Payment service providers and banks involved in processing transactions
- Credit bureaux and credit assessment service providers (where you apply for credit)
- Delivery and courier service providers
- Marketing service providers and advertising platforms
- Fraud prevention agencies
- Regulatory authorities or governmental bodies where required by law
- Our service providers, agents, and subcontractors who assist us in operating our business

Where required by law, we will obtain your consent before collecting personal information about you from third parties.

Reasons we need to process your personal information.

We process your personal information for the following purposes:

To provide you with our products and services, whether in-store or online.
To process transactions and payments.
To administer and manage your credit facility (where applicable), including credit assessments and account management.
To deliver products, documents, and notices to you.
To manage and administer customer accounts.
To enable your participation in our loyalty programme, including:
- Determining eligibility
- Allocating and managing reward points
- Monitoring qualifying purchases
- Informing you of relevant offers and benefits
To communicate with you regarding your purchases, accounts, queries, complaints, and service updates.
To respond to enquiries, requests, or complaints.
To consider you for employment when you apply for a job with us, including communicating with you about your application and its outcome.
To conduct direct marketing where you have consented or where otherwise permitted by law.
To conduct customer satisfaction surveys and promotional campaigns.
To improve, develop, and enhance our products, services, stores, and online platforms.
To conduct market research, analytics, and statistical analysis (on an aggregated or anonymised basis where possible).
To verify your identity and prevent fraud or other unlawful activity.
To comply with applicable laws, regulations, industry codes, and regulatory requirements.
To enforce our contractual rights and protect our legal interests.
For internal record-keeping, reporting, and administrative purposes.

Job applicants

When you apply for a job with us through our website or our online chat, we collect your name, email address, telephone number, CV, covering message, and your answers to our screening questions. Those questions cover your availability on weekends and public holidays, your eligibility to work in South Africa, your home area, your retail experience, your earliest start date, whether you have a valid matric certificate, and two short questions about recommending books. We also record how you found the vacancy, for example through Google or our careers page.

We use this information to assess your application for the role, or roles, you applied for, to communicate with you about your application, and to tell you the outcome. We process it because you have asked us to consider you for employment, and because it is necessary for us to take steps towards concluding an employment contract with you.

Your application is seen only by the Bargain Books staff responsible for recruiting for that role. We do not sell it, and we do not use it for marketing. It is held for us by our website, database and email service providers, under agreements that require them to keep it secure and confidential. Some of these providers store information outside South Africa, as described under “Under what circumstances will we transfer your information to other countries?”.

We do not make decisions about your application by automated means alone. A person considers every application.

Please do not include special personal information in your application, such as your identity number, health, religious beliefs, race or criminal record. We do not need it at this stage. If we need it later in the process, for example for a background check, we will ask for your consent first.

When you apply, you agree that we may keep your CV and application on record for up to 5 years after recruitment for the role ends. After that we delete them. You may withdraw your application at any time, or ask us to see, correct or delete your information. To do so, reply to any email we have sent you about your application, or contact our Information Officer at the details below. Withdrawing your application does not affect anything we did with your information before you withdrew.

Website voice chat

The chat on our website lets you speak to our assistant instead of typing. Voice chat is optional: the typed chat works without it, and a call starts only when you choose to start one and allow your browser to use your microphone. We use voice chat to answer the questions you ask, in the same way as the typed chat. Answers may draw on earlier typed messages and are spoken through ElevenLabs; when you are signed in, your spoken questions join your chat history.

Calls are handled by our voice service provider, ElevenLabs. During a call, your voice is streamed to ElevenLabs, which turns what you say into text, passes your questions to our assistant and speaks our answers back to you. ElevenLabs processes your call outside South Africa, as described under “Under what circumstances will we transfer your information to other countries?”. ElevenLabs may keep the audio and a transcript of your call, under the retention settings of its service.

We do not store the audio of your call. We store the text of the questions you ask and of our answers in our chat history, in the same way as messages typed into the chat, and before we store a question we automatically remove any email addresses, telephone numbers, identity numbers and card numbers we recognise in it. Chat history is deleted automatically 36 months after the conversation was last used. We also keep statistics about each call, such as how long it lasted and the general topic of each question, for 90 days. These statistics do not include the audio or the words you used.

Your online account

If you create an online account, we keep the details you give us in it, and we link to it the following things you do on our website while you are signed in, so that you can see them on your account page:

Saved books: the books you save, until you remove them or delete your account.
Stock checks: your requests asking a branch whether a book is on the shelf. Your name, mobile number and email address on a request are deleted 90 days after you make it, or as soon as you delete your account if that is sooner; the title and branch of the request may be kept for our records without them.
Stock alerts on WhatsApp: if you choose to get them (when you sign up, on your account page, or when you set an alert), we send a WhatsApp message to the mobile number on your account when a book you asked us to watch is on the shelf at a branch you chose. We never use this for promotions. (When you ask a branch for a stock check, its answer comes on WhatsApp because you asked for it, whatever this choice is.) We record your choice, the words you were shown and when you made it. Each alert lapses after 90 days. You can turn these messages off on your account page, which also cancels any alerts still waiting, or reply STOP on WhatsApp to stop all our WhatsApp messages.
Messages to us: the messages you send us through our contact form or chat. If you delete your account, the message is no longer linked to it, but we keep the message itself so that we can deal with it, as we do with messages sent without an account.

If you connect an AI assistant (such as Claude or ChatGPT) to your account, it can see the information our website makes available to it, such as your name, email address and saved books, for as long as it stays connected. It cannot change your account. You can see and disconnect connected apps on your account page at any time.

How we use your personal information for marketing

We may use your personal information to market our products, services, promotions, and special offers to you.

We may communicate with you for marketing purposes through:

In-store communications
Post
Telephone
SMS
Email
Other electronic communication channels

Where you are an existing customer, we may send you direct marketing communications in respect of similar products or services, subject to your right to opt out at any time.

Where you are not an existing customer, or where required by law, we will only send you direct marketing communications by electronic means if you have given us your prior consent.

You have the right to withdraw your consent or opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:

Following the unsubscribe instructions included in electronic communications;
Contacting us using the details provided in this Privacy Policy; or
Updating your marketing preferences through your customer account (where applicable).

Your withdrawal of consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing conducted prior to such withdrawal.

In general, we will only share your personal information if any one or more of the following apply:

if you have consented to this.
if it is necessary to conclude or perform under a contract we have with you;
if the law requires it; and / or
if it’s necessary to protect or pursue your, our or a third party’s legitimate interest.

Under what circumstances will we transfer your information to other countries?

We will only transfer your personal information to third parties in another country in any one or more of the following circumstances:

where your personal information will be adequately protected under the other country’s laws or an agreement with the third-party recipient.
where the transfer is necessary to enter into or perform under a contract with you, or a contract with a third party that is in your interest.
where you have consented to the transfer; and / or
where it is not reasonably practical to obtain your consent, the transfer is in your interest.

This transfer will happen within the requirements and safeguards of the law. Where possible, the party processing your personal information in the other country will agree to apply the same level of protection as available by law in your country or if the other country’s laws provide better protection the other country’s laws would be agreed to and applied.

How we secure your personal information

We will take appropriate and reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect your personal information according to industry best practices. Our security measures (including physical, technological, and procedural safeguards) will be appropriate and reasonable. This includes the following:

keeping our systems secure (like monitoring access and usage);
storing our records securely;
controlling the access to our buildings, systems and/or records, including requiring staff with administrative access to our website to confirm each sign-in with a second step (an authenticator app);
safely destroying or deleting records; and
ensuring compliance with best practice standards.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We will keep your personal information for as long as:

the law requires us to keep it.
a contract between you and us requires us to keep it.
you have consented for us keeping it.
we are required to keep it to achieve the purposes listed in this Privacy Policy.
we require it for statistical or research purposes.
a code of conduct requires us to keep it; and / or
we require it for our lawful business purposes.

Take note: We may keep your personal information even if you no longer have a relationship with us, for the historical data that may be required by your employer or employee.

Our cookie policy

A cookie is a small piece of data sent from our websites or applications to your computer or device hard drive or Internet browser where it is saved. The cookie contains information to personalise your experience on our websites or applications and may improve your experience on the websites or applications. The cookie will also identify your device, like the computer or smart phone.

Cookies and similar technologies that our websites or applications need in order to work (for example, to keep your cart and keep you signed in) are forwarded to your computer or device when you use them. Analytics cookies are forwarded only if you click Accept on our cookie banner, and you can change your choice at any time through the “Cookie preferences” link at the bottom of our website. A cookie will enable us to know that you have visited the website or application before and will identify you. We may also use cookies to prevent fraud and for analytics.

Your duties and rights about the personal information we have about you.

You must provide proof of identity when enforcing the rights below.

You must inform us when your personal information changes.

Please contact our Information Officer to give effect to any of the below rights.

You have the right to request access to the personal information we have about you by contacting us. This includes requesting:

confirmation that we hold your personal information.
a copy or description of the record containing your personal information; and
the identity or categories of third parties who have had access to your personal information.

We will attend to requests for access to personal information within a reasonable time. You may be required to pay a reasonable fee to receive copies or descriptions of records, or information about third parties. We will inform you of the fee before attending to your request.

Please note that the law may limit your right to access information.

You have the right to request us to correct or delete the personal information we have about you if it is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading, obtained unlawfully or we are no longer authorised to keep it. You must inform us of your request in writing. It may take up to 15 business days for the change to reflect on our systems. We may request documents from you to verify the change in personal information.

A specific agreement that you have entered into with us may determine how you must change your personal information provided at the time when you entered into the specific agreement. Please adhere to these requirements. If the law requires us to keep the personal information, it will not be deleted upon your request. The deletion of certain personal information may lead to the termination of your business relationship with us.

You may object on reasonable grounds to the processing of your personal information.

We will not be able to give effect to your objection if the processing of your personal information was and is permitted by law; you have provided consent to the processing and our processing done according to your consent or the processing is necessary to conclude or perform under a contract with you.

Where you have provided your consent for the processing of your personal information, you may withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we will explain the consequences to you. We may proceed to process your personal information even if you have withdrawn your consent if the law permits or requires it. It may take up to 15 business days for the change to reflect on our systems, during this time we may still process your personal information. You must inform us of any objection in writing.

You have a right to file a complaint with us or any Regulator with jurisdiction about an alleged contravention of the protection of your personal information by us. We will address your complaint as far as possible.

The contact details for the Information Regulator are as follows:

Email:: POPIAcomplaints@inforegulator.org.za
Physical Address:: Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191.

How can you get in touch with us?

For any queries in relation to this Privacy Policy or our processing of your personal information in general, you can contact our Information Officer and/or Deputy Information Officer at the following details:

Name:: John O’Sullivan / Stacy Staudt
Contact Number:: 021 706 1461
Email Address:: john@bargainbooks.co.za / stacy@bargainbooks.co.za
Physical Address:: 10 Mymoena Crescent, Athlone Industrial Park, Athlone, Cape Town, 7764

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