Privacy policy

1. Information We Collect

Kitefin Teas & Sundries (“We”, “Us”, or “Our”) only collects the information necessary to fulfill your order or respond to your inquiries, such as your name, email address, mailing address, payment information, and the details of the product that you’re ordering. We may collect this information from you directly (such as if you place an in-person order) or via our third-party partners whom you have authorized to share it with us. You may also choose to provide us with additional personal information (such as for a custom tea blend), if you contact us directly.

2. Why We Need Your Information and How We Use It

We need your information in order to provide any products or services you request, such as shipping you your purchase, or responding to your messages. Additionally, we’re required by law to collect certain information, such as for tax purposes. We use your information only for those purposes.

In legalese, we rely on the following legal bases to collect, use, and share your information:

  • as needed to provide our services, such as when we use your information to fulfill your order, respond to messages, settle disputes, or provide customer support;
  • when you have provided your affirmative consent, which you may revoke at any time;
  • if necessary to comply with a legal obligation or court order or in connection with a legal claim, such as retaining information about your purchases if required by tax law; and
  • as necessary for the purpose of our legitimate interests, if those legitimate interests are not overridden by your rights or interests, such as 1) providing our services (we use your information to provide the services you requested); and 2) complying with the policies of our service providers.

3. Information Sharing and Disclosure

Your data belongs to you, not us. We only share your personal information for very limited reasons and in limited circumstances, as follows:

  • Shopify. We share information with Shopify as necessary to provide you our services and comply with our obligations under Shopify's terms of service.
  • Service providers. We engage certain third parties, such as delivery companies, to perform functions and provide services to our shop. We share your personal information with these third parties, but only to the extent necessary to perform these services. For example, we provide your mailing address to our shipping partner in order to ship your purchase to you.
  • Business transfers. If we sell or merge our business, we may disclose your information as part of that transaction, only to the extent required by law.
  • Compliance with laws. We may collect, use, retain, and share your information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to: (a) respond to legal process or to government requests; (b) enforce our agreements, terms and policies; (c) prevent, investigate, and address fraud and other illegal activity, security, or technical issues; or (d) protect the rights, property, and safety of our customers, or others.

4. Data Retention

We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to provide you with our services, to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. We generally keep your data for 4 years in accordance with US tax law.

5. Transfers of Personal Information Outside the EU

We may store and process your information through third-party hosting services in the US and other jurisdictions. For example, we use Google Workspace (hosted in Google Cloud) for certain bookkeeping tasks. As a result, we may transfer your personal information to a jurisdiction with different data protection and government surveillance laws than your jurisdiction. If we are deemed to transfer information about you outside of the EU, we rely on Privacy Shield as the legal basis for the transfer.

6. Your Rights

Certain territories specify a number of rights in relation to your personal information. Because we believe in data privacy, we will do our best to honor these rights for all customers, to the extent we are legally able, regardless of where you live.

  • Access. You have the right to access and receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you (if any) by contacting us using the contact information below.
  • Change, restrict, delete. You have the right to change, restrict our use of, or delete your personal information. Aside from specific legal, regulatory, or exceptional circumstances (as described above) we will delete your personal information upon request.
  • Object. You can object to our processing of some of your information based on our legitimate interests. In such cases, we will delete your personal information unless we have compelling and legitimate grounds to continue using that information, or if it is needed for legal reasons. (For example, if you place an order, then revoke your consent for us to process your information, we may use your information long enough to fill your order, and delete it afterward except for what we're required by law to keep.) 
  • Revoke. If you have provided your consent to receive marketing messages from us (such as by joining our mailing list), you may revoke that consent at any time. 
  • Complain. If you wish to raise a concern about our use of your information (and without prejudice to any other rights you may have), you have the right to do so with your local data protection authority.

7. How to Contact Us

For purposes of EU data protection law, Kitefin Teas & Sundries is the data controller of your personal information. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.