Privacy Policy

• We collect what an order actually needs: who you are, where it is going, and how to reach you about it.
• The website never asks for card numbers, because payment is arranged outside it.
• A prescription you upload is treated as sensitive and used only to review the order it belongs to.
• We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's advertising.
• Marketing email only goes to people who asked for it, and every message can unsubscribe you.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those five lines.

The storefront does not collect online card details. There is no card field anywhere in checkout. Payment is handled through the offline process communicated for the order, so no card number, expiry date, or security code is ever entered into this website or held by it.

A prescription is health information about a named person, so it gets narrower handling than the rest:

• It is used only to review the order it relates to and to follow up with you about that order.
• It is never used for marketing, never used to build a profile of you, and never published anywhere on the storefront.
• Access is limited to the people handling the order and the systems needed to store the file.
• It is kept only as long as we need it for that order and for the records we are required to keep, then removed.

Please do not send health details you were not asked for — in a review, in a product question, or in a chat message. If you do, we will remove them.

• Create and manage customer accounts and orders.
• Verify an offline payment and record it against the correct order.
• Review a prescription where the order requires one.
• Arrange delivery and communicate order, payment, cancellation, refund, and tracking updates.
• Respond to support, complaint, and privacy requests.
• Moderate and publish product reviews.
• Prevent misuse, investigate suspected fraud, and keep the storefront secure.
• Understand how the store is performing so we can fix what is not working.
• Send marketing email when you subscribe or otherwise provide valid consent.
• Keep the records we are required to keep, and handle disputes.

Where the law that applies to you requires us to have a legal basis for using your information, we rely on performing the contract for your order, on your consent for marketing email and non-essential cookies, on our legitimate interest in running and securing the store, and on compliance with obligations that apply to us.

We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone that produce a legal or similarly significant effect.

If you subscribe, we may send store updates and offers to the email address you provided. Every marketing message carries an unsubscribe link, and you can also ask us to remove you by email. Unsubscribing takes effect on our side rather than instantly, so a message already queued may still arrive.

Service messages about an order — confirmation, payment, dispatch, tracking, cancellation, refund — are separate from marketing preferences and are sent because they concern an order you placed. Unsubscribing from marketing does not stop them, and it should not: they are how you find out where your parcel is.

A cookie is a small file the site asks your browser to keep. We use them in three groups, and the banner you saw on your first visit is what decides which groups run.

Choosing "essential only" means the analytics and chat scripts are not loaded at all, rather than loaded and asked to behave. Your answer is stored in your browser, so clearing site data will bring the banner back. Browser settings can also be used to limit or block cookies generally, although some parts of the store will then work differently.

The chat window is provided by a third-party service on our behalf. When you open it, that provider processes the messages you send, the page you were on, and basic technical information in order to deliver the conversation to us. Please keep health details out of chat — email is the right place for anything sensitive, and the prescription upload is the right place for a prescription.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for their own advertising. We share only what is reasonably needed, and only with:

• delivery and logistics providers, to get the parcel to the address;
• hosting and infrastructure providers, which is where the store and its data run;
• email delivery providers, which send order and marketing messages;
• the live-chat provider, for conversations you start;
• analytics providers, where you allowed that group of cookies;
• fraud-prevention and security providers, to protect the store and its customers; and
• professional advisers, where we need advice on a specific matter.

Information may also be disclosed where the law requires it, or where it is needed to establish or defend a legal claim, or to protect customers, the store, or others from harm.

The store operates internationally, so information may be handled in a country other than your own. Where that happens we take reasonable steps to see that it stays protected to the standard described in this policy.

We keep information only as long as there is a reason to:

• Account information — while the account exists, and for a period afterwards for security and dispute handling.
• Order and payment records — for as long as needed to support the order and to meet record-keeping obligations.
• Prescription documents — for the order they belong to and any required record period, then removed.
• Support and chat messages — for as long as needed to resolve the matter and understand recurring problems.
• Marketing subscriptions — until you unsubscribe, plus a record that you did so, which is how we avoid emailing you again.
• Published reviews — while the review remains published.

Access to customer and order information is limited to the people who need it to do the work. Traffic to the storefront is encrypted in transit, passwords are stored in scrambled form rather than as text, and uploaded documents are held in restricted storage rather than anywhere public.

No online service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can say is that we do not hold what we do not need — and card details are the clearest example, because this store never takes them in the first place.

• Sign in to view and update your account details, addresses, and order history.
• Unsubscribe from marketing email from any marketing message, or by asking us.
• Change your cookie answer by clearing site data in your browser.
• Ask us what we hold about you, ask for a correction, or ask us to delete information we no longer need to keep.
• Ask us to stop using your information for a particular purpose, or to object to a use.

Write to care@essentialmedicine.store and describe what you want. We may need to check who you are before acting, so that we do not act on someone else's request about your data. The exact rights available to you depend on the law that applies where you live, and we will tell you if something you have asked for is not something we are able to do.

The storefront is not intended for children. People under 18 may not create an account or place an order. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will remove it.

An approved review is displayed on the product page together with the name supplied for publication and can be read by anyone, including search engines. Please do not include medical details, an order number, a phone number, an email address, or anything else you would not want visible.

This policy will change as the store changes. The version on this page is the current one, and the "last reviewed" date above tells you when it was last revised. Where a change materially affects how we use information you have already given us, we will make that clear rather than quietly update the page.

For privacy questions or requests, email care@essentialmedicine.store, or use Contact & support. If something in this policy is unclear, say so — that is useful to us, and we would rather rewrite a paragraph than have it misread.