PRIVACY POLICY

Seiko U.K. Limited and Seiko Watch Corporation offer online resources that provide product-related information and services, as well as corporate news, employment and other information related to our business.

The protection of personal data, as well as compliance with privacy and data protection laws and regulations, is important to our organisation and affiliates. We aim to ensure the privacy rights of our consumers, business contacts, and employees when we handle information about them.

This policy only applies to personal data collected through our websites operated by SEIKO or by third parties acting for and on our behalf as data processors and further processed for the purposes specified herein. This policy does not apply to personal data collected from offline resources and communications. This policy also does not apply to third-party online resources to which our websites may link, where we do not control the content or the privacy practices of such resources.

Should you have any questions about this policy or our data collection, use and disclosure practices, please contact us.

As referred to in this policy, references to “us,” “we,” “our,” and “SEIKO” generally means Seiko U.K. Limited and Seiko Watch Corporation (these can include affiliates of SEIKO depending on the contexts).

Who are we?

Seiko U.K. Limited located at First Floor, Building 1, Concorde Park, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 4BY and Seiko Watch Corporation located at 26-1, Ginza 1-chome, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8118, Japan will act as a data controller and will process your personal data collected through our websites.

Collection of your personal data

We collect personal data online through our websites, or if you contact us via other methods such as by email, telephone, post or social media. Individuals may access many parts of our websites without providing any personal data. If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence. If you choose to provide your personal data, such as your name, address, date of birth, telephone number or e-mail address, by entering into forms or data fields on our websites (or corresponding with us via other methods), we will collect and use the personal data.

In addition to the personal data mentioned above, we use Google Advanced Consent Mode V2 to collect anonymised information about your interactions with our websites in order to provide you with the best service possible. This includes data collected through cookies, which can be managed through your consent preferences. Importantly, Google Advanced Consent Mode V2 operates through a mechanism known as ‘cookieless pings’. These pings allow certain non-identifying anonymous information to be collected and transferred to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Ads, even if you have not consented to data tracking. This ensures that essential website functionality is maintained, while still respecting your user privacy. This information helps us enhance our website functionality and user experience.

If you make a purchase from the website, we will collect your payment information, such as your bank details, in order to fulfil your order. Where we offer warranties, repairs or other services, we will collect and process details of the services you have requested and the watch you purchased, such as the purchase date, watch reference number, case number and serial number. If you contact us about a repair, we may collect and process data about the watch repair including the watch repair status and quotes.

If you choose to submit a review on the website, we may collect and process your name, e-mail, your review and the image of the watch you shared.

When you visit our websites, we automatically collect information about your computer or other electronic devices which may include your Internet Protocol (IP) address, date and time of your request and information provided by tracking technologies, such as cookies.

Use of Google Advanced Consent Mode V2

In our commitment to comply with privacy regulations and respect user preferences, we have implemented Google Advanced Consent Mode V2 on our websites. This system adjusts our data collection and processing activities based on your consent choices, particularly regarding cookies used for marketing and analytics purposes.

When you visit our websites, you may be asked to provide consent for various types of cookies and data collection. If you decline certain cookies, we use Google Advanced Consent Mode V2 to gather anonymous or aggregate information. This allows us to understand anonymised user interactions with our site and improve our services while ensuring your personal privacy choices are respected.

In the Advanced Consent Mode, even if a user doesn’t consent to data collection, our site will fire tracking tags before the user interacts with our cookie banner. This allows so-called “cookieless pings” to be sent to Google even if the user does not consent. These pings contain data such as:

  • Timestamp
  • Referrer user agent
  • Signals about ad-click information in the URL (e.g. GCLID)
  • Information on the consent status
  • Information on the CMP
  • Random numbers generated during page load

This enables us to recover certain amounts of anonymised non-identifiable data for Google Ads and Google Analytics 4, even without the data subject’s consent. Please note that this data is non-identifying and aggregated.

For more details concerning cookies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

The reason why we collect, use and share your personal data

We process your personal data to the extent permitted or required under applicable laws, for the following purposes:

  • to (i) sell SEIKO’s products and services to you, (ii) bill you and take payment for SEIKO’s products and services you have requested, (iii) deliver SEIKO’s estimates, products and services to you, (iv) implement online membership services and (v) perform SEIKO’s obligations under a contract to which you are a party (jointly “Performance Purposes”)
  • to (i) provide you with promotional information on SEIKO’s products and services, (ii) carry out promotional activities (including various sweepstakes and membership services) to you, (iii) send to you invitations to promotional events, (iv) invite you to participate in surveys and market research activities, and (v) analyse your interests to improve SEIKO’s products and services (jointly “Marketing Purposes”)
  • to respond to your enquiries (“Contact Purposes”)
  • to process and publish a product review you submit on our website (“Review Purposes”)
  • to comply with and enforce our rights and perform our obligations under applicable laws.
  • to analyse user traffic and for ensuring the proper administration of our site; for analytics and insight purposes e.g. to monitor market trends and demographics and to improve the user experience within our site (“Technical Purposes“).

We process your personal data for Performance Purposes in order to perform our contractual obligations to you. It is also in our legitimate interests to process your personal data for Performance Purposes as it allows us to ensure the proper administration of our site and to improve the user experience within our site. Similarly, it is in our legitimate interests to process your personal data for Contact Purposes in order to respond to your inquiry.

Where we process your personal data for Marketing Purposes, we will ask for your consent. Where you choose to disclose your opinions and photos on our website, it is in our legitimate interests to process and publish this information. However, we may also ask for your consent to publish this data on our website. Finally, we may process your personal data to comply with and enforce our rights and perform our obligations under applicable laws.

You can also refuse to provide your personal data to us. However, if you do not provide your data, this can have an effect on your use of the website, or some features on our websites may not fully function.

We process your technical device information and cookies for Technical Purposes based on our legitimate interests and to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer or other device from which you access our site. We will obtain your consent in respect of the use of any non-essential “cookies” and other anonymous web tracking technologies (such as “web beacon” and “pixel tags”) implemented by us or by third party service providers. For further information, please refer to our refer to our Cookie Policy.

Sharing of your personal data with third parties

Your personal data is intended for processing by us but may be shared with third parties in certain circumstances such as the following:

SEIKO group affiliates:  SEIKO may share your personal data among SEIKO group affiliates in order to administer SEIKO’s services and products, provide you with customer support, process payments, understand your preferences, send you information about products and services that may be of interest to you and conduct the other activities described in this policy.

Service providers: We use other companies, agents or contractors to perform services on our behalf or to assist us with the provision of the SEIKO services and products to you. We may share personal data with the following categories of service providers:

  • SEIKO’s distributors
  • infrastructure and IT service providers, including for e-mail archiving
  • marketing, advertising and communications agencies
  • credit reference agencies
  • accounting auditors and various advisers

In the course of providing such services, these service providers may have access to your personal data. However, we will only provide our service providers with personal data which is necessary for them to perform their services, and we require them not to use your information for any other purpose. We will use our best efforts to ensure that all our service providers keep your personal data secure.

Third parties permitted by law: In certain circumstances, we may be required to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with legal or regulatory obligations (for example, we may be required to disclose personal data to the police, regulators, government agencies or to judicial or administrative authorities).

We may also disclose your personal data to:

  • regulators or other third parties for the purposes of monitoring and/or enforcing our compliance with any legal and regulatory obligations, including statutory or regulatory reporting or the detection or prevention of unlawful acts;
  • any third party in the context of actual or threatened legal proceedings, provided we can do so lawfully (for example, in response to a court order);

Third parties connected with business transfers: We may transfer your personal data to third parties in connection with a reorganisation, restructuring, merger or acquisition or transfer of assets or sale of the company, provided that the receiving party agrees to treat your personal data in a manner consistent with this policy.

We will not sell your personal data to third parties.

Please note our websites may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our business contacts or affiliates. Please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and we have no control over how they may use your personal data. You should check the privacy policies of third party websites before you submit any personal data to them.

Transfer of personal data outside your country

We will not transfer personal data relating to you to a country which is outside the EEA unless one of the following scenarios under the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (UK GDPR) applies:

  • the country or recipient is covered by UK adequacy regulations under UK GDPR Article 45;
  • appropriate safeguards have been put in place which meets the requirements of UK GDPR Article 46; or
  • one of the derogations for specific situations under UK GDPR Article 49 is applicable to the transfer. This includes, in summary:
    • where the transfer is necessary to perform, or to form, a contract to which we are a party:
      • with you; or
      • with a third party where the contract is in your interests;
      • the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims;
    • you have provided your explicit consent to the transfer; or
    • the transfer is of a limited nature, and is necessary for the purpose of our compelling legitimate interests.

Please note that personal data relating to you may be transferred to our SEIKO group affiliates in Japan for administrative purposes. Such transfer is lawful under data protection legislation as Japan is subject to an adequacy decision by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (as mentioned above).

Protection of Your Personal Data

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect personal data in our possession from unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration or destruction.  Such measures include administrative, technical and physical safeguards, for example, limiting access to personal data only to employees and authorised service providers who need to know such information for the purposes described in this policy.

Protection of the privacy of children

We do not provide services directly to children or proactively collect their personal information. However, we are sometimes given information about children while handling a complaint or conducting an investigation. The information in the relevant parts of this notice applies to children as well as adults.

Customers who are under 16 years of age have to inform and obtain their parents or guardians consent to the processing of their personal information, show this policy to their parents or guardians, provide their parents or guardians’ name and contact information to us, and have their parents’ consent to us processing their child’s personal information.

Your Rights

If you are a resident in the UK, you have the following rights in accordance with applicable laws and regulations:

  • Access. You have the right to obtain from us confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning you is being processed, and, where that is the case, to request access to the personal d You have the right to obtain one copy of the personal data we hold about you at no cost, but for any further copies, we reserve the right to charge a reasonable fee based on administration costs);.
  • Rectification. You have the right to have incomplete or inaccurate personal data that we process about you rectified.
  • Erasure. You have the right to request that we delete personal data that we process about you, except we are not obliged to do so if we need to retain such data in order to comply with a legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
  • Restriction. You have the right to restrict our processing of your personal data where you believe such data to be inaccurate; our processing is unlawful; or that we no longer need to process such data for a particular purpose unless we are not able to delete the data due to a legal or other obligation or because you do not wish for us to delete it.
  • Portability. You have the right to obtain personal data we hold about you, in a structured, electronic format, and to transmit such data to another data controller, where this is (1) personal data which you have provided to us, and (2) if we are processing that personal data on the basis of your consent or to perform a contract with you.
  • Objection. Where the legal justification for our processing of your personal data is our legitimate interest, you have the right to object to such processing on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will abide by your request unless we have compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests and rights, or if we need to continue to process the data for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim.
  • Withdrawing Consent. If you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, free of charge. This includes where you wish to opt-out from marketing messages.

    With the implementation of Google Advanced Consent Mode V2, you have greater control over your personal data. You can modify your personal consent choices at any time, impacting how we collect and use your data on our site. We ensure that your rights to privacy and data control are upheld in compliance with GDPR and other relevant regulations.

Where you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact information below. For your own privacy and security, we may require evidence of your identity or to be provided with additional information before we are able to act on your request when the information we have is insufficient to accommodate your request. We will attempt to provide any requested information or make requested changes in accordance with applicable laws.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

If you are based in the UK, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK’s supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, if you believe that we have not complied with applicable personal data protection laws. Please see further information on their website: www.ico.org.uk

Your Personal Data Retention Period

Unless we are required or permitted by law to hold on to your data for a specific retention period we will hold your personal data only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements, in particular:

  • contact data is retained for as long as you are an active user of our site or services and for two years after you delete your account;
  • financial data is retained for six years from the date of your last transaction with or through us; and
  • marketing data is retained unless and until you withdraw your consent.

We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

Where possible, we aim to anonymise the information or remove unnecessary identifiers from records that we may need to keep for periods beyond the original retention period. Where we no longer need your personal data, we will dispose of it in a secure manner.

Contact Information

See below for enquiries about this policy or our privacy practice.

If you choose to make an online enquiry, we will collect your personal information, including your email address, name, and address and use such information to respond to your enquiry. If you agree to the collection and use of your personal information, please read this policy, check the consent box in the “Online Enquiries” section below, and click on the button. You will then be able to send us an email that is filled out with our email address for enquiries.

Please note that, depending on the nature of your enquiry, we may disclose your personal information to our affiliated operating company that is responsible for the relevant products or advertising so that the company can reply to your enquiry.

SEIKO UK- Personal Information Enquiries

Telephone Enquiries

+44-(0)1628 770 001

Available hours: 8:30 – 16:15 (except weekends and holidays);

Online Enquiries

[email protected]

Consent *