Privacy Policy

1. What we collect#

Account data: your email address, name (optional), and a securely hashed password — we never store your actual password.

Delivery data: for any address you save or use — recipient name, phone number, street address, any delivery notes or gift message you write, and whether a bouquet may be left in a safe place or must be handed over. If you are sending a gift, this includes the recipient's details, not just yours — and, for a gift subscription, the recipient's email if you give it.

Order and subscription history: what you ordered, when, its price, and its delivery/fulfilment status.

Payment references: identifiers issued by Stripe that point at your customer record and at each payment or refund. We hold these so we can bill a renewal, match a payment to an order, and refund it. We do not hold your card number, expiry, or security code at any point — those are entered on Stripe's checkout page and stay with Stripe.

Waitlist: if you ask us to tell you when we deliver to your postcode, your email address, your postcode, and when you asked and confirmed. We use it for that one email and nothing else, and delete it when we start delivering to your postcode, when you remove yourself, or 24 months after you confirmed.

Marketing preference: whether you have opted in to marketing emails, and when — captured separately from account creation, never assumed.

Newsletter: if you sign up to our newsletter (on our website or a gift page), your email address, when and where you signed up, when you confirmed, and if you unsubscribe, when — so that we never email you again after you have asked us not to.

How you found us: the marketing channel of your very first visit (e.g. a specific ad campaign), if any, captured once at signup.

Technical data: if analytics are enabled on the site you are using, standard web analytics data (pages viewed, general location, device type) via Google Analytics.

Security data: your IP address and basic request data (such as the page requested and your browser type) are processed to keep the service secure and to limit repeated requests (rate limiting). They are kept in short-lived server logs.

2. Why we process it, and on what basis#

To create your account and fulfil your orders and subscriptions — this is necessary to perform our contract with you.

To send you marketing emails — only with your separate, explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time.

To keep financial and order records for as long as required by tax and commercial law in Australia — a legal obligation, not a choice we make.

To keep the service secure and prevent abuse.

3. Cookies#

A session cookie keeps you signed in — strictly necessary, and not used for tracking.

A first-touch marketing-attribution cookie remembers, for 30 days, the campaign that brought you to the site the first time, so we can tell which channels actually lead to a subscription. It is never overwritten once set on your first visit.

If Google Analytics is enabled on the site you are using, it sets its own cookies under Google's own terms — you can opt out of Google Analytics generally using Google's browser add-on.

4. Who we share it with#

Our courier/delivery partners — only the recipient's name, phone, address, delivery notes and safe-place/handover choice needed to complete a specific delivery.

Our florist partners — the recipient's name, suburb and postcode, and the gift message you write, so the florist can make the bouquet and hand-write the card. Florists never receive a phone number or street address.

Render, our hosting provider — our servers and database run on Render's infrastructure in Frankfurt, Germany.

Sentry, our error-monitoring provider (if enabled) — technical details of an error so we can fix it. We strip personal details (names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, gift messages) before anything is sent.

Zoho Mail (EU data centre) — hosts the hello@flowersociety.com.au mailbox, so emails you send us are stored there.

Resend, our transactional email provider — to send order confirmations, delivery updates, and (with your consent) marketing emails.

Google — for sign-in with Google (if you choose that option) and for site analytics (if enabled).

Stripe, our payment processor — to take a payment, bill a subscription, and return a refund. Your card details are entered on Stripe's own checkout page and go directly to Stripe: we never receive or store your full card number. We keep only Stripe's own references to you and to each payment (identifiers, not card data), so that we can bill a renewal you have agreed to, match a payment to an order, and issue a refund against it.

We do not sell your personal data to anyone.

5. International transfers#

Our database and servers are hosted by Render in Frankfurt, Germany, our hello@ mailbox is hosted by Zoho Mail in its EU data centre, and our error monitoring (Sentry) stores its data in its EU (Germany) region, so your personal data is stored outside Australia. Some of the other providers above (Stripe, Google, Resend) may also process data outside Australia, including in the United States. Where that happens, it relies on that provider's own safeguards (such as their published cross-border data-handling terms) rather than one we have negotiated ourselves.

6. How long we keep it#

Customer accounts are kept while you use the service, unless you ask us to erase yours.

Gift recipients' details (name, phone, street address, email, gift message and delivery notes) are automatically de-identified 24 months after the recipient's last delivery.

Newsletter sign-ups are kept while you stay subscribed. If you unsubscribe, we keep only your email address and the date, on a do-not-email list, so we can honour that choice.

Order and subscription records are financial records with their own retention duty under commercial and tax law — we keep the financial facts of an order (amount, date, status) for at least 6 years, comfortably longer than the ATO's 5-year Australian record-keeping minimum, even after an account has been erased at your request.

7. If you are a gift recipient, not a customer#

If someone sent you flowers through Flower Society, we hold your name, phone number and delivery address (and your email, if the sender gave it) for the purpose of that delivery, even though you never created an account. We received these details from the sender, not from you. We may contact you about the delivery itself — for example on the morning it is due — but never to market to you unless you sign up to our newsletter yourself. Your details are de-identified 24 months after your last delivery. You have the same rights described in section 8 below over that data — to exercise them, email hello@flowersociety.com.au.

8. Your rights#

Access and export: you can download a copy of your profile, addresses, subscriptions and orders, in your account settings.

Erasure: you can request your account be anonymised at any time, also from your account settings. We clear your name, email, password, address book and delivery details; we do not delete the underlying financial record of past orders, for the retention reason in section 6.

Correction: if any of your details are wrong, you can update most of them in your account settings, or ask us to correct them.

Objection to marketing: you can withdraw marketing consent, or unsubscribe from our newsletter with one click from any newsletter email, at any time; we stop within 5 business days at the latest and keep processing your orders normally.

Complaint: tell us first at hello@flowersociety.com.au. We acknowledge a complaint within 2 business days and aim to resolve it within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC, oaic.gov.au).

9. How to exercise your rights#

Export and erasure are self-service, from your account settings, and take effect immediately. For anything else — including a gift recipient's request — email hello@flowersociety.com.au.

10. Security#

Passwords are stored using a strong one-way hash, never in plain text. Access to customer data by our own staff is role-restricted and every staff action that changes a record is logged.

11. Children#

The service is not directed at, and accounts may not be created by, anyone under 18.

12. Changes to this Policy#

We may update this Policy as the service or the data we collect changes. We will post the updated version here with a new "last updated" date.

13. Contact#

Questions about this Policy, or a request not covered by the self-service tools above, can be sent to hello@flowersociety.com.au. We acknowledge requests within 2 business days and respond within 30 days.