Privacy & Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy:

Note: 'Us' refers to bulthaup Winchester / hobsons|choice 'You', 'User(s)', 'Visitor' refers to any person who uses this website.

This Web site is owned and controlled by hobsons|choice.

hobsons|choice is committed to implementing measures designed to protect the privacy of those using our services. hobsons|choice respects the privacy of all those who visit our Site and use our online services and we collect information from and about our users to be used to improve the service we offer. Except as set forth within this Privacy Policy, and other published guidelines, we do not release personally identifiable information (as described below) about users of this Site without their permission.

Effect of This and Related Documents: This Privacy Policy, together with any other published guidelines, governs your interaction with this Site, and your registration for and use of hobsons|choice online services.

Opt-Out Option: If you would like to have your personally-identifiable information removed from hobsons|choice databases going forward, please e-mail privacy@bulthaup-winchester.co.uk, and we will use reasonable efforts to comply with your request. However, there will be residual information that will remain within hobsons|choice databases, access logs, and other historical internal records, which may or may not contain such personally-identifiable information.


The Information We May Gather

  1. Non-personally-identifiable information:
    1. As a standard practise, hobsons|choice assigns a random number to each user for anonymously tracking content preferences and traffic patterns. This random number lets us keep track of "how many" times users are doing specific things - like visiting our site each month - without really knowing who those users are (unless they specifically tell us). We analyse this data for trends and statistics, such as which parts of our site users are visiting and how long they spend there. We also gather information about what users are searching for. We use all this information in order to improve our content, plan site enhancements, and measure overall site effectiveness.
  2. Personally identifiable information:
    1. General: In certain areas of this Site, we require that you provide us with personally-identifiable information, in order to be able to use that portion or those portions of this Site.
    2. If you submit a request for more information from us, the information you submit will only be used by hobsons|choice. Our lists are private and are never sold to any third parties.

If you have any queries about this policy please feel free to contact us.

 


Cookie Policy:

What are Cookies?

Cookies are small files which are stored on your computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to your website visit on our site.

Cookies help to improve your visit to our website by helping with the following:

  • Remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
  • Remembering information you’ve given (e.g. your postcode) so you don’t need to keep entering it
  • Measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs

Please note that cookies can't harm your computer and we do not store personally identifiable information in cookies we use on this website.

We're giving you this information as part of our initiative to comply with UK legislation, and to make sure we're honest and clear about your privacy when using our website.

Please be assured that we're working on a number of other privacy and cookie-related improvements to the website.


The Cookies we use:

General website cookies

This website is built using standard HTML and open source PHP web technologies, as part of this we use the built in session cookie to manage your session. When you navigate to the site, the server establishes a unique session that last for the duration of your visit.

Measuring website usage – Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics sets or updates cookies only to collect data required for the reports. Additionally, Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. This means that all cookies set by Google Analytics for our domain send data only to the servers for our domain. This effectively makes Google Analytics cookies the personal property of this website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain.

The following table lists the type of information that is obtained via Google Analytics cookies and used in Analytics reports.

Functionality Description of Cookie Cookie Used

Setting the Scope of Site Content

Because any cookie read/write access is restricted by a combination of the cookie name and its domain, default visitor tracking via Google Analytics is confined to the domain of the page on which the tracking code is installed. For the most common scenario where the tracking code is installed on a single domain (and no other sub-domains), the generic setup is correct. In other situations where you wish to track content across domains or sub-domains, or restrict tracking to a smaller section of a single domain, you use additional methods in the ga.js tracking code to define content scope. See Domains & Directories in the Collection API document for details.

All Cookies

Determining Visitor Session

The Google Analytics tracking for ga.js uses two cookies to establish a session. If either of these two cookies are absent, further activity by the user initiates the start of a new session. See the Session article in the Help Center for a detailed definition and a list of scenarios that end a session. You can customize the length of the default session time using the _setSessionCookieTimeout() method.

This description is specific to the ga.js tracking code for web pages. If you use Analytics tracking for other environments—such as Flash or mobile—you should check the documentation for those environments to learn how sessions are calculated or established.

__utmb
__utmc

Identifying Unique Visitors

Each unique browser that visits a page on our site is provided with a unique ID via the __utma cookie. In this way, subsequent visits to our website via the same browser are recorded as belonging to the same (unique) visitor. Thus, if a person interacted with our website using both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the Analytics reports would track this activity under two unique visitors. Similarly if the same browser were used by two different visitors, but with a separate computer account for each, the activity would be recorded under two unique visitor IDs. On the other hand, if the browser happens to be used by two different people sharing the same computer account, one unique visitor ID is recorded, even though two unique individuals accessed the site.

__utma

Tracking Traffic Sources & Navigation

When visitors reach our site via a search engine result, a direct link, or an ad that links to our page, Google Analytics stores the type of referral information in a cookie. The parameters in the cookie value string are parsed and sent in the GIF Request (in the utmccvariable). The expiration date for the cookie is set as 6 months into the future. This cookie gets updated with each subsequent page view to our site; thus it is used to determine visitor navigation within our site.

__utmz

Custom Variables

We can define our own segments for reporting on our particular data. When we use the _setCustomVar()method in our tracking code to define custom variables, Google Analytics uses this cookie to track and report on that information. In a typical use case, we might use this method to segment our website visitors by a custom demographic that is selected on our website (income, age range, product preferences).

___utmv

Website Optimizer

We can use Google Analytics with Google Website Optimizer (GWO), which is a tool that helps determine the most effective design for our site. When a website optimizer script executes on our page, a _utmx cookie is written to the browser and its value is sent to Google Analytics. See the Website Optimizer Help Center for more information.

___utmx

Once the cookies are set/updated on the web browser, the data they contain that is required for reporting purposes is sent to the Analytics servers in the GIF Request URL via the utmccparameter.

Cookies Set By Google Analytics

Google Analytics sets the following cookies as described in the table below. A default configuration and use of Google Analytics sets only the first 4 cookies in the table.

Name Description Expiration

__utma

This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to our site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits our site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.

2 years from set/update.

__utmb

This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with our site. When a user views a page on our site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on our site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a user pauses on a page on our site for longer than 30 minutes. We can modify the default length of a user session with the _setSessionCookieTimeout()method.

30 minutes from set/update.

__utmc

This cookie is no longer used by the ga.js tracking code to determine session status.

Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. For backwards compatibility purposes with sites still using the urchin.js tracking code, this cookie will continue to be written and will expire when the user exits the browser. However, if we are debugging our site tracking and we use the ga.js tracking code, we should not interpret the existence of this cookie in relation to a new or expired session.

Not set.

__utmz

This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach our site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within our own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to our site.

6 months from set/update.

__utmv

This cookie is not normally present in a default configuration of the tracking code. The __utmv cookie passes the information provided via the _setVar()method, which you use to create a custom user segment. This string is then passed to the Analytics servers in the GIF request URL via the utmcc parameter. This cookie is only written if you have added the _setVar() method for the tracking code on our website page.

2 years from set/update.

__utmx

This cookie is used by Website Optimizer and only set when the Website Optimizer tracking code is installed and correctly configured for our pages. When the optimizer script executes, this cookie stores the variation this visitor is assigned to for each experiment, so the visitor has a consistent experience on our site.  See the Website Optimizer Help Center for more information.

2 years from set/update.

For further information about the Cookies Google uses please visit this Cookie Information page.

Measuring website usage – DC Storm

DC Storm Cookies are used by this website to identify how users interact the website, so that they can see things like the most popular pages and the journey that users take though their site.

First Party cookies – These cookies are set by this website that you are visiting.

Impressions

Cookies are also created to identify when a user has viewed an advert for this website on an external site.

The cookie contains a unique identifier and nothing else. If you subsequently visit this website, then we link that cookie (and hence the advert) to your visit, but if you never visit the website, the cookie is meaningless and will expire automatically, 90 days after you last saw one of the adverts.

First Party cookies Information

These cookies are written to track website usage of this site:

Cookie Name Description Expiry
_#srchist Stores the history of traffic sources the user has arrived to the site by 1000 days
_#sess Stores information about the session 1000 days
_#vdf Stores the visit definition – ts type, number of visits, expiry 1000 days
_#uid Stores a user identifier (only within a site) 1000 days
_#slid Unique sale ID 1000 days
_#clkid Unique identifier for a click generating a landing 1 year
_#lps Flags that the last page was secure and therefore has no referrer 20 min
_#tsa Stores the referrer details to avoid duplicate Landing events 10 min
_#env Flags whether the environment variables (screen size, browser etc) need to be collected again 30 days

For further information about the Cookies DC Storm uses please visit their Cookie Information page.


How do I Control or Delete Cookies?

If cookies are not enabled on your computer is could mean that your experience with our website will be impacted. However, if you want to control or delete cookies you can do so.

Information on deleting cookies or controlling cookies is available at www.aboutCookies.org. To reiterate though, by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.

 


Showroom: bulthaup Winchester, 1 The Broadway, Winchester, Hampshire, SO23 9BE
Telephone: 01962 849000 | enquiry@bulthaup-winchester.co.uk
A hobsons|choice bulthaup kitchen showroom - www.hobsonschoice.uk.com