Privacy Policy
You have trusted us to take care of your ear wax removal. You can also trust us with your personal details. Pear Tree Audiology Privacy Policy means that we respect any personal information that you provide us with, or that we ascertain from your ear and ear wax removal, from any purchase of services or any other interactions with us.
- Information about us
- What personal information do you collect?
- How and why do you use my information?
- How long do you keep my information for?
- Who do you share personal information with?
- How do you process my personal information?
- How can I update or change the personal information you hold about me?
- What rights do I have?
- What choices do I have?
- How do you protect my personal information?
- Updating our Privacy Policy
- Contact us
- Information about us
In this privacy policy, references to ‘Pear Tree & Co. Audiology Ltd, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ mean the members of the Pear Tree Audiology, that process your personal information.
These companies include the following.
For store customers (audiology), Home visit customers or users of our Pear Tree Audiology website:
- Pear Tree & Co. Audiology Limited (a company registered in England with company number 16743601 and its registered office at 160 Eureka Park Upper Pemberton, Kennington, Ashford, England, TN25 4AZ);
The Pear Tree Audiology are data controllers of your personal information for the purposes of any data-protection legislation that applies. This means that they are responsible for how and why your personal information is collected, used and stored. If have any questions or concerns about how your information is being managed, you can write to our Data Protection Officer at Data Protection Office, 160 Eureka Park Upper Pemberton, Kennington, Ashford, England, TN25 4AZ.
In this privacy policy, when we refer to ‘you’, we mean the person whose personal information we collect, use and process. This includes anyone who contacts us in connection with our products and services or who interacts with us on our website at www.peartreeaudiology.co.uk or in-store.
- What personal information do you collect?
We may collect and process information about you including:
- your name;
- your date of birth;
- your contact phone numbers (including mobile);
- your email and postal address;
- your relevant health details, such as:
- current and past hearing health conditions, general health conditions or hearing prescriptions;
- medication details; and
- communication between your audiologist and your GP;
- your examination and test results;
- your ethnicity for the identification of risk factors in developing certain ear conditions such as asymmetrical sudden hearing loss;
- your payment details;
- information about your employment and lifestyle;
- details of any prescription supplied to you by your healthcare professional or medical practitioner;
- information that you provide by filling in forms on our website;
- details of your visit to the website and any online transactions you carry out;
- Your image through CCTV cameras or other safety and security systems;
- any other information you have chosen to give us.
We mainly collect this information from you when you have chosen to give it to us. But we may also collect it from other sources if it is necessary and legal to do so, including from:
- the NHS or other healthcare providers or institutions;
- people who have your permission to provide information on your behalf (for example, your parents or guardians);
- third-party service providers; and
- government, tax or law-enforcement agencies.
We can also combine this information with information we get from public sources.
- How and why do we use your personal data?
We process your personal information for the following reasons, to help us provide you with the best possible hearing health care and customer experience. We will only process your personal information if we have a lawful basis (reason) to do so. We rely on the following lawful bases to collect and process your personal information;
Legitimate interests – It is in our genuine interests to process your information for the following purposes to make sure we provide you with a professional hearing service in the most secure and appropriate way:
- To perform ear wax removal so we can understand hearing health and any medical conditions.
- To book your ear wax removals.
- To confirm your appointment. We will send you confirmation by email and text message if you book online. We will also send you a reminder a short period before the appointment is due.
- To contact you about changes to our service that could affect or inconvenience you.
- To send you ear wax removal reminders.
- To send you communications about looking after your ears.
- To send you direct marketing communications about our products, offers and discounts. You can opt out of these communications at any time.
- To send you surveys and to ask for feedback to help us improve our service and make our service and products more relevant to you. We use information collected through customer surveys, cookies, research, and analysis to help us improve our service.
- If you are browsing our website, we will not collect any information which will identify you by name. However, we will collect information using cookies or traffic data which uses IP addresses or other numeric identifiers to analyse how people use our website. See our Cookie Policy for more information about cookies and how we use them.
- To communicate with you about health care information, special offers and discounts that are relevant to you.
- To respond to complaints, queries and any claims made against us.
- To ensure the safety and security of our customers when in our locations of business.
- To call you about topics that may be of interest to you where it is in our legitimate interest, or you have consented where appropriate.
- Where necessary should it be subject to relevant audit activities, to ensure our standards of service and care are meeting relevant requirements.
- To perform general analytics where this is necessary for the on-going improvement to our service and care.
Please note, we will communicate with you using the communication preferences you give us. This may include by post, email, text message, phone or on social media.
Contractual obligations – we rely on the responsibilities set out in our contract with you when we process your information in order to keep to any arrangements we have made with you. This may include for the following reasons:
- To process transactions when you buy any of our services.
- To process your credit-card or debit-card information when you are paying for goods and services, or when we are dealing with refunds.
- To provide you with our products and services.
- To meet the obligations we have under our contract with you.
- To call you where it is relevant as part of our customer and patient management.
Legal obligations – there may be times when we have a legal reason for needing to share and process your personal information you have given us, including for the following reasons:
- We may need to make your personal information available to other medical practitioners, health and social care providers, or the NHS.
- We may need to respond to any complaints or claims we receive from our regulators or other third parties. Our regulators might also ask for information when carrying out their work.
- We may need to share your information with other third parties who have a legal right to access it (for example, the police, our insurers, external auditors, and investigators).
- We may need to share your information with companies who provide us with your updated personal information, such as changes to your contact information or deceased indicators (notice of your death).
- We will need to process your information if you ask us for a copy of the personal information we are holding. This is known as a ‘subject access request’ and is one of the rights you have under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- We have to process your personal information to meet our responsibilities as registered and dispensing audiologists.
- We may need to share your information to help prevent and detect fraud, and to protect the health and safety of members of the public, our staff and our customers.
- How long do you keep my information for?
We will keep personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary (or as defined under healthcare laws and regulations which apply) to provide products and services, including aftercare services, and to maintain records as needed to satisfy tax and other legal or regulatory requirements, as well as to protect and defend against claims. Once it is determined that there is no longer a legal basis to retain your Personal Data, it may be deleted or anonymised where it can no longer be used to identify you directly or indirectly.
We de-identify (anonymise) your personal data so that it does not directly or indirectly identify you for the following purposes; concerning health for future scientific and historical research purposes, analytics, and statistical purposes to develop and improve new treatments and programs of healthcare, related services, and products.
- Who do you share personal information with?
We may share your personal information with other people when it is necessary to do so, including for the following reasons:
- We may reveal personal information to health authorities, including the NHS or national equivalent organisations.
- We may pass personal information to external agencies and organisations, including the police and other law-enforcement agencies, to prevent and detect fraud (including fraudulent transactions) and criminal activity. These external agencies may check the information we give them against public and private databases and may keep a record of those checks to use in future security checks.
- If a claim is made, or could be made, against us, we may pass personal information to our insurers.
- If we sell or buy any business or assets, we may reveal personal information about you to the seller or buyer.
- If we (or our assets) are bought or taken over by another organisation, personal information we hold about customers will be one of the assets transferred.
- We may pass your personal information to others:
- if we have to by law (including under a court order);
- to protect our rights, property and safety and those of our customers, employees or others.
- What rights do I have?
You have certain rights under UK data-protection law, including the right to:
- access your personal information (we may charge a fee if we are allowed to do so by law); and
- correct your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
You also have the right to ask us to delete your personal information and to stop processing it if we have no legal basis to keep storing or processing it. This includes if:
- we no longer need your personal information for the purpose originally collected or processed it for;
- you withdraw your permission;
- you object to us processing your personal information;
- you ask us to stop processing your personal information (although we are entitled to store your personal information, we cannot process it further if you ask us not to);
- we move or transfer your personal information to another organisation; or
- you object to us processing your personal information if we are processing it:
- based on our legitimate interests (our business purposes)
- for direct marketing; or
- for scientific or historical research and statistical purposes.
You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They can investigate whether organisations are keeping to data-protection law. For more information, visit ico.org.uk.
- What choices do I have?
We may use your personal information to contact you about our services.
If you do not want to receive marketing material (including special offers and discounts), you can let us know in-store.
You can choose to stop receiving marketing emails from us by following the unsubscribe link and instructions in the marketing emails we send you.
- Updating our Privacy Policy
We may update our privacy policy from time to time. Any updates will take effect as soon as they are posted on our website.
- Contact us
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or you would like to change any of the preferences you have chosen, write to Data Protection Officer, Data Protection Office, 160 Eureka Park Upper Pemberton, Kennington, Ashford, England, TN25 4AZ.
Last updated January 2026