How do we use this information?
Audi will only process information that is necessary for the purpose for which it has been collected. You will always have the option not to receive marketing communications from us (and you can withdraw your consent or object at any time). We will never send you unsolicited ‘junk’ email or communications, or share your personal information with anyone else who might.
There are various ways in which we may use or process your personal information. We list these below:
Consent:
Where you have provided your consent, we may use and process your information:
1. To contact you from time to time about promotions, events, products, services or information which we think may be of interest to you (don’t worry, we won’t bombard you);
2. To share your personal information with our recommended third party partners, so that they can contact you with marketing information about their products and services (we will, of course, give you details about these third parties before you give your permission for us to send information to them).
3. Where the vehicle manufacturer has obtained your consent on our behalf:·
● To undertake market analysis and research; and·
● To use mathematical and statistical methods to create information and offers customised for you based on your information, including by making predictions about your behaviour.
We rely on our legitimate interests as the legal reason to use your information for these purposes if we collect your information from another source.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us on the details here or, in relation to any marketing messages you receive, by using the unsubscribe option included in those messages.
We also process personal information we obtain from optional cookies that we set on this website based on your consent. For more information, please review our Cookie Policy (https://www.audi.co.uk/legal-pages/cookie-policy.html).
Contractual performance
We may use and process your personal information where this is necessary to perform a contract with you and to fulfil and complete your orders, purchases and other transactions entered into with us (or one of our authorised dealers from here https://www.audi.co.uk/owners-area/locate-a-centre.html or selected partners).
Legitimate Interests
We may use and process your personal information as set out below where it is necessary for us to carry out activities for which it is in our legitimate interests as a business to do so.
Processing necessary for us to support customers with sales and other enquiries
1. To respond to correspondence you send to us and fulfil the requests you make to us (for example: test drives, service requests, brochure requests or information about specific vehicles);
2. To provide vehicle support and services (for example warranty services);
3. To provide service, maintenance and warranty information and reminders, unless you object;
Processing necessary for us to respond to understanding customers’ and drivers’ needs
4. To analyse, evaluate and improve our products and services so that your visit and use of our website, applications, customer service centre and dealer network are more useful and enjoyable (we will generally use data amalgamated from many people so that it doesn’t identify you personally);
5. To undertake market analysis and research (including contacting you with customer surveys) so that we can better understand you as a customer and provide tailored offers, products and services that we think you will be interested in. We will only send such offers to you if you have provided your consent for us to do so;
6. For product development purposes (for example to improve vehicle quality, performance and safety);
7. We use automated methods to analyse, combine and evaluate information that you have provided to us (including by using information we receive from third party data providers and by receiving and sharing your personal information within our group of companies like Volkswagen Financial Services), see details about our relevant group companies below:·
● Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Limited·
● Volkswagen AG·
● Audi AG·
● SEAT S.A·
● SEAT CUPRA, S.A.U.·
● SKODA AUTO a.s.
We collect and analyse this information in this way so that we can deliver the most appropriate customer experience to you by tailoring and making relevant all our services and communications, including by making predictions about your current or future needs or interests (for example, when you might be ready to change your vehicle and the models you may be interested in);
Processing necessary for us to promote our business, brands and products and measure the reach and effectiveness of our campaigns
8. To contact you from time to time with marketing information after you have purchased a product or service from us, made a purchasing enquiry or requested a test drive, brochure or other information of interest. We will only contact you with information about our own products and services (and in ways the law allows), which we hope you will like. You have the right to object to us sending you this information at any time;
9. To contact you from time to time with marketing information (unless you object) if you have expressly indicated to us that you are acting on behalf of a corporate business or where we have obtained your corporate business contact details from our authorised dealer network or an online or public business directory. In relation to any such information we send by email or SMS, we will include an option allowing you to object to receiving future messages by unsubscribing;
10. To tailor the marketing information we send based on information we hold about you (e.g. by sending offers and information based on a vehicle you own).
11. To use mathematical and statistical methods to create information and offers customised for you based on your information, including by making predictions about your behaviour. This may include predicting your preferences, suitable product recommendations, your likelihood of making another purchase or your loyalty to a vehicle brand or model.
12. To contact you with targeted advertising delivered online through social media, search engines, third party websites and applications and other platforms operated by other companies, unless you object. You may receive advertising based on information about you that we have provided to the platform or allowed it to collect using cookies on our website or code in our applications (or a combination of the two). You may also receive advertising because, at our request, the platform has identified you as falling within a group whose attributes we have selected or a group that has similar attributes to the individuals whose details it has received from us (or a combination of the two). To find out more, please refer to the information provided in the help pages of the platforms on which you receive advertising from us. Please also see the section below for further information regarding our use of social media platforms specifically;
13. To identify and record when you have received, opened or engaged with our website or electronic communications (please see our Cookie Policy - https://www.audi.co.uk/legal-pages/cookie-policy.html for more information);
14. To administer competitions and promotions that you enter with us from time to time and to distribute prizes;
15. To send you information on our extended warranty products where you are benefiting from a current Audi warranty and it is about to expire. You have the right to object to us sending this information at any time;
16. To identify the extent to which your interactions and communications with us or our content contributed to your engagement with us or our brand;
Processing necessary for us to communicate with you and to assess and respond to complaints, claims and regulators
17. To communicate with you (including through social media) including to respond to queries, complaints or claims and to manage legal and regulatory requests and requirements;
18. To enforce or protect our legal rights or to establish, bring or defend legal claims;
Processing necessary for us to operate the administrative and technical aspects of our business efficiently and effectively
19. To verify the accuracy of information that we hold about you and create a better understanding of you as a customer. We may use information about you from third party data providers for this purpose, including data cleansing service providers that provide the latest home address or vehicle ownership information for you;
20. For network and information security purposes i.e. in order for us to take steps to protect your information against loss, damage, theft or unauthorised access;
21. To comply with a request from you in connection with the exercise of your rights (for example where you have asked us not to contact you for marketing purposes, we will keep a record of this on our suppression lists in order to be able to comply with your request);
22. To inform you of updates to our terms and conditions and policies;
23. For cookies that are essential for our website to function properly. Please see our Cookie Policy (https://www.audi.co.uk/legal-pages/cookie-policy.html) for further information;
24. To contact you when your local authorised dealer opens, closes, moves premises or is no longer an authorised dealer.
Legal Obligation
We may process your personal information to comply with our legal or regulatory requirements (for example to register your car with the DVLA, to assist, or respond to a request for information from, an authorised authority, regulatory body or court, or to respond to a court order). These requirements include processing to remember your cookie consent preferences for optional cookies used by our website. Please see our Cookie Policy for further information.
Vital Interest
Sometimes we will need to process your personal information to contact you if there is an urgent safety or product recall notice and we need to tell you about it
How do we share this information?
We do not sell your information to third parties, but we do work closely with our dealer network, Volkswagen Financial Services, our group companies and with third party suppliers who fulfil business activities for us (like roadside assistance, marketing, events, social media platforms and market research etc.)
Service providers. We do not sell your information to third parties. However, we may from time to time disclose your information to the following categories of companies or organisations to which we pass the responsibility to handle services on our behalf: roadside assistance service providers, customer contact centres, mobility and car hire providers, hosting providers, data cleansing and verification providers, direct marketing communications agencies and consultants, market research and market analytics service providers, our legal and other professional advisors.
Dealers. We will also share your information with our dealer network in situations where we need to pass your information to them in order to manage any request, provide a service (including to fulfil and manage your orders) or handle any complaint you may have made to us. For example, where you have requested a test drive, we will need to share your personal information with your selected dealer so that they can contact you to arrange for the test drive to take place.
Sharing for legal reasons. We will also share your personal information if we have a duty to do so, e.g. to register your car with the DVLA, to assist an authorised authority, regulatory body or court, or to enforce or protect our legal rights or to establish, bring or defend legal claims.
Group companies. There are also circumstances where we share your information with our parent (or other companies within our Group) in order to understand you as a customer, fulfil orders, transactions, handle complaints or provide you with a service or information that you have requested. For example, we will share information with Volkswagen Financial Services UK Limited where you enquire about their services through us or where you make a complaint to us and later make the same or similar complaint to them. Volkswagen Financial Services UK Limited may use your information to provide you with information and carry out their obligations arising from contracts you enter into with them. For more information, please see their privacy statement (https://customer.vwfs.co.uk/legal-notice.html).
Social Media Platforms. We use a number of different social media platforms to communicate with you and to promote products and services. We process your personal information using these platforms in a variety of ways, as follows:
Pages. We use your personal information when you post content or otherwise interact with us on our official pages on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok and other social media platforms. We also use the Page Insights service for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to view statistical information and reports regarding your interactions with the pages we administer on those platforms and their content. Where those interactions are recorded and form part of the information we access through these Page Insights services, we and the relevant platform are joint controllers of the processing necessary to provide that service to us.
Cookies. We use cookies and similar technologies in our websites and applications to collect and send information to Facebook and LinkedIn about actions you take on our website and applications. In particular: ·
● Facebook uses this information to provide services to us and also for further processing for its own business purposes. We and Facebook are joint controllers of the processing involved in collecting and sending your personal information to Facebook using cookies and similar technologies as each of us has a business interest in Facebook receiving this information. You can find out more about these technologies by visiting our Cookie Policy. (https://www.audi.co.uk/legal-pages/cookie-policy.html). The services we receive from Facebook that use this information are delivered to us through Facebook’s Business Tools, which include Facebook Pixel, App Events SDK and Website Custom Audiences. These tools allow us to target advertising to you within Facebook’s social media platform by creating audiences based on your actions on our website and applications and allow Facebook to improve and optimise the targeting and delivery of our advertising campaigns for us.
● We use LinkedIn Insight Tag, a small piece of code that we embed in our websites that allows us to perform in-depth campaign reporting and unlock insights about users that may visit our websites via our LinkedIn campaigns (e.g. by allowing us to discover business demographics by layering LinkedIn data on data about our website visitors). LinkedIn Insight Tag enables the collection of metadata such as IP addresses, timestamps, and events such as page views. You can find out more about these technologies by visiting our Cookie Policy (https://www.audi.co.uk/legal-pages/cookie-policy.html).
Our relationship with Facebook and LinkedIn. As we are joint controllers with these platforms for certain processing, we and each platform have:
● entered into agreements in which we have agreed each of our data protection responsibilities for the processing of your personal information described above;
● agreed that we are responsible for providing to you the information in this privacy statement about our relationship with each platform; and
● agreed that each platform is responsible for responding to you when you exercise your rights under data protection law in relation to that platform’s processing of your personal information as a joint controller.
Facebook and LinkedIn also processes, as our processor, personal information that we submit for the purposes of matching, online targeting, measurement, reporting and analytics purposes. These services include the processing these platforms carry out when they display our advertisements to you in your news feed at our request after matching contact details for you that we have uploaded to them. These advertisements may include forms through which we collect contact information you give to us.
Further information. The Facebook company that is a joint controller of your personal information is Facebook Ireland Limited, 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland. The LinkedIn company that is a joint controller of your personal information is LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company, Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Ireland. For further information regarding these platforms and their use of your personal information, please see:
● Facebook’s Controller Addendum for Page Insights (https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/page_controller_addendum) and Controller Addendum for Business Tools (https://www.facebook.com/legal/controller_addendum) and LinkedIn’s Page Insights Joint Controller Addendum (https://legal.linkedin.com/pages-joint-controller-addendum) which include information regarding how our and those platforms’ responsibilities to you are allocated as controllers of your personal information;
● Facebook's Data Policy at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy and LinkedIn’s Privacy Policy at https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy which include details of the legal reasons (known as ‘lawful bases’) on which each platform relies to process your personal information, together with details regarding your data protection rights;
● Facebook’s help pages (https://www.facebook.com/help/331509497253087) regarding its Page Insights (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/144825579583746?id=939256796236247) and Business Tools and its terms and conditions (https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/businesstools/update) relating to those tools; and
● LinkedIn’s help pages (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/4499/linkedin-page-analytics-overview?lang=en) regarding its Page Insights and its terms and conditions (https://www.linkedin.com/legal/sas-terms) relating to its advertising services, including LinkedIn Insight Tag (https://www.linkedin.com/help/lms/answer/65521/the-linkedin-insight-tag-faqs?lang=en).
Transfers outside Europe. Due to the international nature of our business, there may be some instances where your information is processed or stored outside of the UK and EU. In those instances, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place for that transfer and storage as required by applicable law.
Safeguards. We take steps to ensure that any third party partners who handle your information comply with data protection legislation and protect your information just as we do. We only disclose personal information that is necessary for them to provide the service that they are undertaking on our behalf. We will aim to anonymise your information or use aggregated none specific data sets where ever possible.