Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Ontario Telescope and Accessories Inc. ("Ontario Telescope", "we", "us", "our") operates the retail store at 5-670 Hardwick Rd, Bolton, Ontario, and the website at ontariotelescope.com. We are a Canadian company and we are responsible for the personal information in our custody and control.

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, how we protect it, and what rights you have. It applies to our website, our retail store, our email and telephone communications, and our trade-in and consignment programmes.

2. Privacy Officer

We have designated a Privacy Officer who is accountable for our compliance with this policy and with applicable privacy legislation.

Privacy Officer
Ontario Telescope and Accessories Inc.
5-670 Hardwick Rd, Bolton, Ontario L7E 5R5, Canada
Email: sales@ontariotelescope.com (mark your message "Privacy Officer")
Telephone: 905-487-6363

Direct any question, access request, correction request, withdrawal of consent or complaint to the Privacy Officer. We respond to access requests within 30 days.

3. The law that applies to us

We are subject to the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Where you live in Alberta, British Columbia or Quebec, that province's private-sector privacy legislation may also apply to information we collect from you — including Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Law 25). Our commercial email is governed by Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Where you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, or in a US state with applicable privacy legislation, additional rights may apply and are described in section 10.

4. What we collect

Information you give us

• Identity and contact — name, email address, telephone number, shipping and billing addresses.
• Order information — items purchased, order value, order history, delivery preferences, gift messages.
• Payment information — processed by our payment providers. We do not see or store your full card number. We receive only the card type, the last four digits, the expiry date and the authorization result.
• Account information — if you create an account, your login credentials and saved preferences.
• Correspondence — the content of emails, telephone notes, support tickets and product enquiries.
• Trade-in and consignment information — device model, serial number, condition assessment, inspection results, and the trade-in offer and its outcome.
• Reviews and submissions — any product review, photograph or comment you submit.

Information collected automatically

• Device and usage data — IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device identifiers, referring page, pages viewed, time on page, and the links you click.
• Cookies and similar technologies — see section 8.

Information from third parties

• Our e-commerce platform, payment processors and fraud-screening providers.
• Shipping carriers, for delivery status and address validation.
• Advertising and analytics partners, where you have consented to that tracking.

We collect only what we need for the purposes set out below. We do not collect government identification numbers, and we do not knowingly collect sensitive categories of personal information.

5. Why we collect it

• To take, process, fulfil and deliver your order, and to arrange shipping, customs clearance and returns.
• To take payment, prevent fraud, and manage chargebacks and disputes.
• To communicate with you about your order, an enquiry, a warranty claim, a trade-in or a consignment.
• To provide after-sales support, process returns, and coordinate warranty claims with manufacturers.
• To operate our trade-in programme, including verifying ownership and checking serial numbers against manufacturer and law-enforcement records.
• To send marketing communications, where we have your consent or an existing business relationship — see section 6.
• To understand how our website is used, and to improve our range, our pricing and our service.
• To meet our legal, tax, accounting and record-keeping obligations.
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

If we ever want to use your information for a purpose that is not listed here and not compatible with it, we will tell you and obtain your consent first.

6. Consent, and how we handle marketing email

We rely on your consent to collect, use and disclose your personal information, except where the law permits or requires us to act without it. Consent may be express or, where the purpose is obvious and the information is not sensitive, implied. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. Withdrawing consent may mean we can no longer provide certain services — we will tell you if that is the case.

Marketing email. Canadian anti-spam law sets out when we may send you commercial email. We send marketing email only where:

• you have given express consent — you opted in deliberately, by ticking a box or signing up to our list; or
• we have implied consent arising from an existing business relationship, which generally means you have purchased from us within the previous 24 months or made an enquiry within the previous 6 months.

Providing your email address at checkout so that we can send your order confirmation is not, by itself, consent to receive marketing. Transactional messages about an order you have placed — confirmations, shipping notices, backorder updates, warranty and RMA correspondence — are not marketing and are sent regardless of your marketing preferences.

Every marketing message we send identifies us, gives our contact information, and contains a working unsubscribe link that we action within 10 business days. You can also unsubscribe at any time by contacting the Privacy Officer. If you unsubscribe we retain a minimal record of your address on a suppression list, for the sole purpose of making sure we do not email you again.

7. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as described here.

• E-commerce platform — Shopify Inc., which hosts our online store, processes orders and stores customer records.
• Payment processors — to authorize and settle your payment, and to investigate fraud and disputes.
• Email and marketing platform — Klaviyo, which sends our transactional and marketing email and holds the associated contact and order data.
• Shipping carriers and customs brokers — your name, address, telephone number and order contents, as needed to deliver your order and clear it through customs.
• Manufacturers and distributors — your name, contact details, proof of purchase and the product serial number, where needed to open or progress a warranty claim, or to verify a trade-in unit.
• Professional advisors — our accountants, auditors, insurers and lawyers, where reasonably required.
• Law enforcement and public authorities — where we are legally required to disclose, or where we reasonably believe a trade-in unit has been reported lost or stolen.
• A purchaser of our business — if we sell or reorganize the business, customer records may transfer as part of that transaction, subject to the purchaser continuing to be bound by this policy.

We use contractual protections to require our service providers to protect your information, use it only for the purposes we specify, and not disclose it further.

8. Cookies, tracking and your privacy choices

We use cookies and similar technologies to keep your cart working, keep you signed in, remember your preferences, measure how the site is used, and — where you have consented — to show you relevant advertising on other websites.

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Blocking strictly necessary cookies will stop parts of the store from working.

Targeted advertising and opt-out. Sharing personal information with advertising partners may be considered a "sale", "sharing" or "targeted advertising" under certain US state privacy laws. If you would like to opt out, visit our Your Privacy Choices page. We honour the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. If you visit our site with GPC enabled, we treat it as an opt-out request for that browser and device.

9. Where your information is stored, and international transfers

Your personal information is stored and processed outside Canada, including in the United States. Our e-commerce platform, our email platform, our payment processors and certain other service providers operate servers and personnel in the United States and elsewhere.

This means that while your information is in a foreign country, it is subject to the laws of that country, and may be accessible to that country's courts, law enforcement and national security authorities under those laws. We remain accountable for your information when it is transferred to a service provider for processing, and we use contractual and other means to provide a comparable level of protection.

If you want to know more about our practices for a specific service provider, contact the Privacy Officer.

10. Your rights

Everywhere in Canada, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you, and be told how it has been used and to whom it has been disclosed. We respond within 30 days. In limited circumstances the law permits us to withhold information — if so we will tell you why.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Withdraw your consent to our collection, use or disclosure, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice.
• Unsubscribe from marketing at any time.
• Complain — see section 13.

Deletion. You may ask us to delete your personal information and we will do so where we are able. We cannot delete records we are legally required to keep — in particular sales, tax and accounting records, which we must retain for the periods in section 11. Where we cannot delete, we will tell you which records we are retaining and why, and we will stop using them for any other purpose.

If you live in Quebec, Quebec's Law 25 gives you additional rights, including the right to data portability, the right to request that a link to your information be de-indexed or that the information cease to be disseminated in certain circumstances, and the right to be informed about and to object to decisions based exclusively on automated processing. We do not make decisions about you based exclusively on automated processing.

If you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, objection and portability under the GDPR, and the right to complain to your national supervisory authority.

If you live in a US state with applicable privacy legislation, you may have the right to know, delete, correct and opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information, and to be free from discrimination for exercising those rights. Use our Your Privacy Choices page, or contact the Privacy Officer.

We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. We do not charge for a reasonable request.

11. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it, and then destroy, erase or anonymize it. Our standard periods are:

• Order, invoice and tax records — 7 years from the end of the tax year to which they relate, to meet Canada Revenue Agency requirements.
• Warranty, RMA and repair records — 7 years from the date of the claim.
• Trade-in and consignment records, including serial numbers and inspection results — 7 years.
• Customer accounts — for as long as the account is active, and 3 years after it becomes inactive.
• Customer service correspondence — 3 years.
• Marketing contacts — until you unsubscribe or withdraw consent. A minimal suppression record is kept indefinitely so that we do not contact you again.
• Website analytics — up to 26 months.

We may keep information longer where it is needed to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, or where the law requires it.

12. How we protect it

We maintain physical, organizational and technological safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including:

• encryption of our website and checkout in transit (TLS), and encryption at rest by our platform providers;
• payment card data handled entirely by PCI-DSS compliant processors — we never store full card numbers;
• access limited to those who need it to do their job, with individual accounts and multi-factor authentication on our administrative systems;
• secure storage of paper records at our premises, and secure destruction when their retention period ends;
• contractual privacy and security obligations on our service providers.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

13. If something goes wrong — breaches

If we experience a breach of security safeguards involving your personal information and it creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and notify you as soon as feasible, and we will tell you what happened and what you can do about it. We maintain a record of every breach of security safeguards, whether or not it is reportable, as the law requires.

14. Children

Our store is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under the age of 14 without the consent of a parent or guardian. If you believe we have, contact the Privacy Officer and we will delete it.

15. Complaints

If you are concerned about how we have handled your personal information, contact our Privacy Officer first. We will investigate and respond in writing.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to:

• Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — priv.gc.ca, 1-800-282-1376;
• Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta — oipc.ab.ca, if you are in Alberta;
• Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia — oipc.bc.ca, if you are in British Columbia;
• Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec — cai.gouv.qc.ca, if you are in Quebec.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. If we make a material change we will post a notice on our website and, where the law requires it, notify you directly. The version in effect at the time you provide information governs our use of that information.

17. Contact

Ontario Telescope and Accessories Inc.
Attention: Privacy Officer
5-670 Hardwick Rd, Bolton, Ontario L7E 5R5, Canada
sales@ontariotelescope.com · 905-487-6363