Our Payment Service Provider is Sage Pay (formerly Protx) – the largest independent payment service provider (PSP) in the UK. Sage Pay provides a secure payment gateway (Level 1 PCI DSS), processing payments for thousands of online businesses, including ours. It is Sage Pay’s utmost priority to ensure that transaction data is handled in a safe and secure way.

When you checkout from Little Sardines you will be transferred to our Sage Pay site to complete your purchase and enter your credit card details. No credit card details are visible or remain on Little Sardines servers. This way you can be 100% confident that your confidential card data is secure and not visible to anyone outside Sage Pay.

Sage Pay uses a range secure methods such as fraud screening, I.P address blocking and 3D secure. Once on the Sage Pay systems, all sensitive data is secured using the same internationally recognised 256-bit encryption standards. Sage Pay is PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant to the highest level and maintains regular security audits. They are also regularly audited by the banks and banking authorities to ensure that their systems are impenetrable. Sage Pay is an active member of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) that defines card industry global regulation.

In addition, you know that your session is in a secure encrypted environment when you see https:// in the web address, and/or when you see the locked padlock symbol alongside the URL.

So when buying through Little Sardines, you can be sure that you are completely protected to the highest current internet standards

More information about shopping securely with Sage Pay can be found at www.sagepay.com/shoppers

Customers purchasing directly from the Little Sardines store. When you place an order, you will be notified by email of estimated dispatch and delivery dates for your order. We will always dispatch your order as soon as it has gone through our picking, packing, labelling and dispatching processes. Most goods will be shipped by courier or Royal Mail on a next day service, but please allow 5-7 working days for delivery, unless advised otherwise. If the delivery is especially urgent please let us know by email or telephone, and we will do all we can to meet your requirements. In the event that an item you ordered is out of stock, we will notify you within 24 hours and give you an indication of when it will be available

Orders will generally be delivered during office hours and may require a signature. Please consider having it sent to a work address if this is more convenient for daytime delivery.

In the case of deliveries by Royal Mail, if there is no one to take delivery, a card will be left giving instructions on how to collect the package from your local sorting office or re-arrange delivery.

For deliveries by courier, if there is no one to take delivery a card will be left giving instructions on how to re-arrange delivery.

Further details on our delivery and returns can be found below. If you want to contact us directly, please call our customer services on 01628 940 118 or email us at cs@littlesardines.co.uk

Our registered customers using email birthday reminders If you are using our birthday reminder service, we will ensure the gift is delivered as close to the child's birthday as possible, regardless of when you place the order. This may mean the gift arrives a day or two early in some cases. Our standard process is to remind you 14 days in advance of the birthday. If you do not action this reminder we will send you one further reminder 7 days in advance (last chance saloon!). Of course if you want the gift delivered on a particular date (other than the birthday) then just let us know and we will do all we can to dispatch it for that date.

We charge a flat fee of £4.95 for delivery and packaging on all our toys and gifts. This also covers our larger items (up to 20kg), or if you order more than one item to the same address. If you are sending items to multiple addresses, the delivery charge will apply for each separate address. We will try to dispatch your entire order in one delivery but in some cases it may be sent it over more than one delivery. You will not incur any additional delivery charges if this does occur. Books and certain other items will incur a lower delivery and packaging charge of £2.50, to reflect the lower costs to us. If your order comes to more than £60 to one address we will waive the delivery charges entirely.

Delivery charges are always clearly shown during the checkout process and you can ‘enter your postcode’ and a get a delivery estimate for any item to any particular address before you proceed to our payment pages.

We reserve the right to charge more for delivery as appropriate in exceptional circumstances. For example, if the order is to be delivered to a remote area (see below), or for very large or valuable items. We will always contact you in advance to discuss the options before making additional delivery charges.

We go to a lot of trouble to ensure your child gets a gift they will like and appreciate every time. In the unlikely event that the gift is faulty we will immediately replace it, or refund you in full (your choice). We will not make a fuss about it, and we will ensure you are not out of pocket by also refunding any postage costs.

If you (or the recipient) simply decide you do not want a gift after you have purchased it, will still offer you a full refund of the product cost (excluding delivery charges). This is more than most of our competitors do, and shows our commitment to our customers and belief in our products. If you are returning an item it must be in ‘factory fresh’ condition, and returned to us within 14 days of receipt. We cannot offer refunds on toys that have been opened and played with (apart from those with manufacturing faults). Of course we will always uphold and honour our statutory obligations in relation to delivery and refunds, and nothing stated here affects your statutory rights in this regard.

We will generally credit any refund back to the original card with which you made the payment. If you would prefer another alternative refund method please let us know and we will do our best to action.

For all refunds please first email our refunds team at cs@littlesardines.co.uk You will then receive a reply with specific details of how to return the item.

Alternatively you can call our customer service and refunds team on 0845 095 1600 and ask for refunds.

You are free to cancel your order for any reason, at any time, before we despatch the goods to you. You simply let us know at cs@littlesardines.co.uk and we will refund you in full to your credit card or PayPal account as appropriate.

Once we have sent the goods out to you, you also have a statutory right, known as a ‘seven day cooling off period’ to cancel your order. If you wish to take advantage of this, you can cancel your order within seven working days, starting the day after you receive the goods. If you wish to do this please see our policy above on refunds.

Please also be assured we take your data and security very seriously. We will NEVER share or misuse your data for unauthorised marketing or other underhand purposes. We know how annoying this is, and it simply won’t happen with Little Sardines. We hate spam and junk mail as much as you do. We are building our business on trust and respect for our customers, and we give you our word that your information will NEVER be used in any improper way. The longer 'legal version' of our privacy policy is set out in more detail below.

Little Sardines is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

Little Sardines may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 1ST January 2010.

What we collect

As part of your dealings with Little Sardines, we may collect the following information:

your name
the name of children you buy gifts for and their date of birth
contact information including email address
demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

What we do with the information we gather

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

To give you the service you require. For example, to deliver a birthday present to a child on a particular date.
Internal record keeping
We may use the information to improve our products and services.
We may periodically send you email about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided. We will NOT junk mail you or share your details with any third parties for marketing purposes. You can opt in or out of promotional emails at any time via your account settings or by contacting us on cs@littlesardines.co.uk
From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone, fax or mail. We may use the information to customise the website according to your interests.

For Parents Concerning Privacy

Little Sardines require children to consult with their parents before supplying data or making purchases. However, we also believe that parents should supervise their children's on-line activities and consider using parental control tools available from on-line services and software manufacturers that may help provide a child- friendly on-line environment. These tools may also prevent children from disclosing on line their name, address and personal information without parental permission.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Cookie Policy

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Controlling your personal information

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:

whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used by anybody for direct marketing purposes if you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us at [email address]

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to 44 Under The Wood, Bisham, Marlow, Bucks, SL7 1RX, United Kingdom.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.