This Privacy Policy describes how mystories.co.za (the “Site” or “we”) collects, uses, and discloses your Personal Information when you visit or make a purchase from the Site.

Collecting Personal Information

Either Party may need to provide, collect, use, store or process Personal Information of the other Party. Each Party hereby authorises such collection, use, storage and processing where the need arises.

Each Party shall only provide, collect, use, store, or process Personal Information:

  • In compliance with the South Africa Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI).
  • As necessary for the purposes of this agreement.
  • In accordance with the lawful and reasonable instructions of the Party providing the Personal Information.

MyStories (Pty) Ltd is not liable for any damages whatsoever and howsoever arising as a result of any stolen or lost user data, or the unauthorised use of such user data save as for provided in the POPI Act.

When you visit the Site, we collect specific information about your device, your interaction with the Site, and information necessary to process your purchases. We may also collect additional information if you contact us for customer support. In this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” refers to any information that can uniquely identify an individual.

Device information

  • Examples of Personal Information collected: version of web browser, IP address, time zone, cookie information, what sites or products you view, search terms, and how you interact with the Site.
  • Purpose of collection: to load the Site accurately for you, and to perform analytics on Site usage to optimize our Site.
  • Source of collection: Collected automatically when you access our Site using cookies, log files, web beacons, tags, or pixels. 
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our processor WooCommerce.

Order information

  • Examples of Personal Information collected: name, billing address, shipping address, payment information including credit card numbers, email address, and phone number.
  • Purpose of collection: to provide products or services to you to fulfill our contract, to process your payment information, arrange for shipping, and provide you with invoices and/or order confirmations, communicate with you, screen our orders for potential risk or fraud, and when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
  • Source of collection: collected from you.
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our processor WooCommerce, Payfast, Couriers, Artist Admin, Printers.

Customer support information

  • Examples of Personal Information collected: name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers, email address, and phone number.
  • Purpose of collection: to provide customer support.
  • Source of collection: collected from you.
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: Payfast, Printers, Couriers

 

We collect information about you during the checkout process on our store.

What we collect and store

While you visit our site, we’ll track:

  • Products you’ve viewed: we’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed
  • Location, IP address and browser type: we’ll use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping
  • Shipping address: we’ll ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order!

We’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our site.

Note: you may want to further detail your cookie policy, and link to that section from here.

When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. 

We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:

  • Send you information about your account and order
  • Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
  • Process payments and prevent fraud
  • Set up your account for our store
  • Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
  • Improve our store offerings
  • Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them

We use of a third party vendor for payments and are unable to view any credit card details ourselves.

If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we will store order information for 7 years for tax and accounting purposes. This includes your name, email address and billing and shipping addresses.

We will also store comments or reviews, if you choose to leave them.

Who on our team has access

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, both Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

  • Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
  • Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

What we share with others

We share information with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; for example —

  • Applications such as BOBGO to process waybills.
  • Couriers/The CourierGuy for national deliveries.
  • International Couriers/AdminArtist for international deliveries.
  • Payfast to process payments

Payments

We accept payments through Payfast. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to Payfast, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.

On request, we can provide instructions for a direct bank transfer/EFT. Please contact us for more details.

Please see the Payfast Privacy Policy for more details.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons.

Contact

For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at [email protected]

Last updated: 01 February 2024

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you have the right to lodge your complaint with the relevant data protection authority. You can contact your local data protection authority, or our supervisory authority here: [ADD CONTACT INFORMATION OR WEBSITE FOR THE DATA PROTECTION AUTHORITY IN YOUR JURISDICTION. FOR EXAMPLE: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/]