Privacy policy
Mrs Lofthouse’s Emporium 4 Queen Street, Scarborough 01723 679916
Last updated: 28 September 2026
We are a second-hand bookshop. We collect as little about you as we can, we do not sell or share it, and this page explains the rest in plain terms.
We are the data controller for the information described here, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
What we collect, and why
If you buy or sell books in the shop and do not open an account, we hold nothing about you. A cash sale is just a sale.
If you open a shop account — for store credit, loyalty points, or so we can keep hold of an order for you — we record your name and one way of reaching you: a phone number, an email address, a postcode or a date of birth. We ask for one identifier because a name on its own is not enough to tell two customers apart, and store credit going to the wrong person is a real problem rather than a theoretical one.
We also keep a record of the purchases, trade-ins and credit notes on that account, because that is what the account is.
If you ask us to post something to you, we keep your address for as long as it takes to get the parcel to you.
If you buy from us on eBay or our website, the marketplace passes us your name, delivery address and order details so we can send you your book. We use them for that and for our sales records, and nothing else.
If you enter a prize draw, we keep your name and one contact detail until the winner has been reached, and then we blank them.
Marketing is opt-in only. We never pre-tick the box, and we record when and how you agreed. If you did not say yes, we will not contact you with offers.
Telling us your gender is optional. If you would rather not, we store nothing at all — not a blank, not a “declined”.
Who else sees it
Nobody, in the ordinary course of things. We do not sell your details, and we do not pass them to anyone for marketing.
When we look a book up, we send its ISBN and title to eBay and to Google Books. That is information about the book. It contains nothing about you.
Our website takes payment through Shopify, and marketplace orders are handled by eBay. Those companies handle your payment and delivery details under their own privacy policies, because that is how taking payment online works. We never see or store your full card details.
Our records are backed up nightly, encrypted, to cloud storage.
How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account details | 24 months after your last visit, then made anonymous |
| …unless you still have unspent credit | Until you spend it, however long that takes — it is money we owe you |
| Sales and trade-in records | About six years, because HMRC requires it. Once an account is anonymised these keep the figures and lose the name |
| Prize-draw entries | Until the winner is reached, then blanked |
What you can ask us to do
You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. You can withdraw consent to marketing at any time, and object to what we are doing with your details.
Ask in the shop, ring us, or write. We will check it is really you — usually by asking for a detail on the account — and we will answer within one calendar month.
If you are not happy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Cookies
Our website uses only the cookies needed to make it work — keeping a basket between pages, and signing you in. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.
Changes
If we change how we handle your information we will update this page and change the date at the top.