The essentials
Shelby’s Auctioneers Ltd is responsible for the personal information you give us. We use it to answer your enquiries, carry out clearances and valuations, run our auctions, pay sellers and keep the records the law asks of us. We don’t sell it.
Who sees it. Our own team, and the companies that help us run the business, such as the provider of our online auction and bidding platform, SmoothByte IT (who build and look after our website), our hosting and email providers and our accountants. If you register to bid through our website, fraud checks are shared with other auction websites that SmoothByte IT looks after. Authorities such as HMRC or the police only when the law requires or allows it.
How long we keep it. Enquiries sent through our website are deleted after 12 months. Records of work we do and sales we run are kept for 6 years after the end of the financial year, because the law requires it.
Your rights. You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Email info@shelbysauctioneers.net or ring 0113 250 2626 and we’ll reply within one month.
Cookies. Our website only uses the cookies it needs to work, stay secure and let you bid. No analytics or advertising. Our cookie policy lists every one.
Who we are
This policy explains how Shelby’s Auctioneers Ltd (“Shelbys”, “we”, “us”) collects and uses personal information, which means any information that identifies you or can be linked to you. We are the controller of that information: we decide how and why it’s used, and we’re responsible for looking after it under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations).
- Shelby’s Auctioneers Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 08892150
- Registered office: Unit 1, 281 Tong Road, Leeds, LS12 4NQ
- Saleroom and office: Unit 1, Old Corporation Yard, 281 Tong Road, Armley, Leeds, LS12 4NQ
- Email: info@shelbysauctioneers.net
- Phone: 0113 250 2626, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
This policy covers our website, our saleroom and office, our online auctions, and our house clearance and valuation work. The provider of our online auction and bidding platform, Facebook, Google and the other services we link to have their own privacy policies, which apply when you use them.
What we collect and why
What we collect depends on how you deal with us. Read the parts that apply to you.
Everyone who visits our website
Our web server and its security firewall record technical details of each visit: your IP address, the date and time, the pages you ask for, the page you came from and your browser type. We use these records to keep the website secure, stop attacks and put faults right.
When you look at our auctions, catalogues or lots, or you’re logged in, the page connects to the bidding system of the provider of our online auction and bidding platform so it can show live auction information and whether you’re logged in to bid. This means the platform provider receives your IP address and browser details and sets its own cookie. Photos of lots are loaded through the platform’s content delivery network (Fastly), which also receives your IP address and browser details.
When you start filling in one of our forms, Cloudflare’s Turnstile service checks that you’re a person and not a spam robot. To do that it receives your IP address and technical details of your browser.
The website uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies that it needs in order to work. We don’t use analytics, advertising or social media tracking on our website. Our cookie policy lists every one.
If you get in touch, or ask for a quote or valuation
When you contact us by phone, email, letter, social media or through our website, we keep what you tell us so we can reply, give you a quote or valuation and arrange a visit. Our website forms ask for:
- your name and email address, and your phone number and postcode if you give them
- what your enquiry is about and your message
- for a house clearance quote: the type and size of the property, its postcode, what needs clearing and when, and your connection to the property (for example family member, executor or solicitor)
- for a valuation: what kind of valuation you need and a description of the items
- for a call back: the best time to ring you
- any photos you choose to send, and how you heard about us if you tell us
Enquiries sent through the website are stored on the website and emailed to our office inbox. Any photos you send are attached to that email. We also send you an automatic email to say we’ve received your enquiry. These emails pass through Brevo, our email service.
Most photos are re-saved by the website, which removes hidden details such as the place the photo was taken. Very large photos and iPhone HEIC photos are kept as you sent them, so they may still include that location. Please leave people, personal papers, and medicines and medical equipment out of the picture where you can.
To stop spam, the website also keeps a scrambled code made from your connection’s IP address. It is used only to count how many messages come from the same connection, and it is deleted after 7 days.
We don’t ask for information about anyone’s health, and we’d rather you didn’t send it. If you tell us something like this (for example that someone needs extra time to move out), we’ll only note what we need to plan the work sensitively and won’t use it for anything else. If you’ve told us something about your own health, we’ll ask you to confirm you’re happy for us to keep a note of it.
House clearances and estates
When we clear a property for you, or for someone who has died, we need the name and contact details of the person instructing us, the address and how we get in, what should be kept, sold, donated or cleared, and the records of what we take, what sells and the money owed either way.
If you’re an executor, an administrator or a solicitor acting for an estate, we may ask for evidence that you can deal with the property and its contents, such as a grant of probate or a letter from the solicitor handling the estate. We may also be told about family members or beneficiaries, for example who personal items should go back to. If you’re a solicitor, estate agent or landlord, we use your work contact details to deal with you and your client.
Data protection law doesn’t apply to people who have died, but we still treat their information with care and respect. Information about a person who has died is often also about living people, such as family members, the people they lived with, executors or beneficiaries, and the law protects their information in the usual way.
Homes often hold letters, bank statements, photographs, passports, computers and phones. Please take out anything you want to keep, or tell us about it, before we start. If we come across personal papers or devices during a clearance, we put them to one side and ask you what you’d like done with them. We don’t sell computers, phones or other devices that may hold personal information unless they have been wiped or the storage has been removed and destroyed.
Valuations
For a free verbal valuation we need your name, your contact details and a description or photos of the items. For a formal written valuation for probate, an estate or insurance, we also record the address we visit, a description of each item, the values we give and your payment. An insurance valuation lists valuable things kept at your home, so we only give it to you, to someone you ask us to send it to (such as your insurer or solicitor), or where the law requires.
If you sell through us
To sell items for you we need your name, address, phone number and email address, a list of the items, any reserves we agree, the results of the sale, the fees we charge and what we pay you. If we pay you by bank transfer, we need your bank account details; if we pay you by cheque, we use your name and address. The law requires us to keep accounting records of these payments.
If you register to bid or buy
Our online auctions run on an online auction and bidding platform provided by a company based in Israel. You can register on our website or directly on the platform. Either way, your bidding account is held by the provider of our online auction and bidding platform, which is responsible for it under the provider’s own privacy notice (shown when you create a bidding account; we can send you a copy on request).
If you register through our website, we pass your details to the provider of our online auction and bidding platform to create your account: your name, email address, phone number, password, billing address and, if it’s different, your delivery address. We don’t keep your password. The platform provider may send a text message to check your phone number.
When you register for our sales, the platform provider shares your details with us, including your name, email address and country, and the phone number and address we need for invoices and delivery. We use them, along with your bids and purchases, to approve you to bid, run the sale, send invoices, take payment, arrange collection or posting, and sort out any problems. If you leave an absentee bid with our office, we note your name, contact details, the lots and your maximum bids.
When you accept our terms and conditions on our website before bidding, it records which version you accepted and when, with your email address, IP address and browser type, as a record of what you agreed to.
You can pay by cash, bank transfer or card. If you add a card to your bidding account, you type it into a secure form provided by Stripe, the platform provider’s card payment company, so your card details go to Stripe and not to us or our website. Card payments at our office are handled by our card payment provider. We don’t keep full card numbers.
When you collect, we check that your invoice has been paid. If you ask us to post your items, we give your name, address and phone number to the courier.
Fraud checks when you register or log in
To stop fake accounts and fraud, our website checks registrations and logins. When you register or log in through our website, it records your IP address, your browser type, a random code stored in your browser, and technical details of your browser and device, such as screen size, number of processor cores, graphics hardware, connection type, colour settings and how your browser draws images, plays sound and does calculations. Together these act as a device “fingerprint”. The registration form also looks at things like how quickly it was filled in. We use these details only to spot fake or fraudulent accounts.
These records, with your name and email address, go to a fraud-checking service run by SmoothByte IT, the company that built and looks after our website and its bidding software. SmoothByte IT looks after the websites of other auction houses too, and the service compares records across those websites to spot warning signs, such as one device being used with lots of different email addresses. If a check flags a registration or login, it may be blocked.
SmoothByte IT and we are jointly responsible for this shared fraud-checking service. If your details or device are linked to fraud or abuse on one of these websites, a registration or login may also be blocked on the others, and we may be told about warning signs recorded on other auction websites that use the service. Contact us to find out more about how this arrangement works.
We also keep a copy of your bidder profile with SmoothByte IT (your name and email address, and your phone number, address and country if your account on our website holds them) so it can support our website and spot duplicate accounts.
If you think you’ve been blocked by mistake, or you’ve registered but can’t log in or bid, ring us on 0113 250 2626 and a member of our team will look into it. You can also register directly on the platform. If you tell us through our website that your account email hasn’t arrived, your name, email address, phone number and IP address are sent to the platform provider’s support team so they can help.
Your watch list and bidding activity
When you’re logged in, our website keeps a list of the last 20 lots you looked at and any lots you add to your watch list. The platform provider also tells our website when you’re outbid on a lot or have set an alert on it. We keep these records, together with the lots you bid on and win, to run those features and to understand which kinds of items attract bidders. SmoothByte IT keeps copies so it can run and support our website, give us reports and, as part of the fraud-checking service, spot accounts that are being misused. These records are not used for marketing, and we don’t use them to make decisions about you.
Sale alerts and auction invitations
Sale alerts. If you sign up on our website, we ask for your first name, surname and email address. We use them to email you about upcoming sales. We may first send you an email asking you to confirm that you want to sign up. We also add your name and email address to our auction mailing list, which is run by the provider of our online auction and bidding platform, so that you hear about upcoming sales. That provider receives only your first name, surname and email address. Our mailing list is held by Brevo, our email service, and our website’s own copy of your sign-up is deleted 12 months after it has reached Brevo. If you unsubscribe, we remove you from our lists, and you can also unsubscribe from any auction mailing list email.
Our sale alert emails contain a tiny image and tracked links that tell us whether an email was opened and which links were clicked. We use this to see which sales interest people, and only with the consent you give when you sign up. You can turn images off in your email program, and you can unsubscribe at any time with the link in every email or by contacting us. We keep a note that you’ve unsubscribed so we don’t email you again.
Auction invitations. When you register to bid through our website, the form lets you choose whether we may send you invitations to new auctions. If you choose to receive them, we (through the provider of our online auction and bidding platform) may email you about our sales. Every invitation lets you opt out, and you can ask us to stop at any time. If you registered directly on the platform, the provider’s own privacy notice (shown when you create a bidding account; we can send you a copy on request) explains the emails it sends.
Visiting the saleroom
Our office and saleroom are open by appointment. When you book a visit to drop off, collect or talk to us, we note your name, your phone number and what the appointment is for.
Social media and reviews
If you message us on Facebook or WhatsApp, or leave a review on Google or Facebook, we see what you send or post and use it to reply. Meta and Google are responsible for how they use your information on their own services. Facebook gives us statistics about visits to our Facebook page, and Meta and we share responsibility for those statistics under Meta’s Page Insights Controller Addendum.
Our lawful bases
The law only lets us use personal information when we have a lawful basis for it. These are the ones we rely on.
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Reply to enquiries, give quotes and valuations | Taking steps you ask for before a contract. When someone enquires for another person (such as a solicitor or relative), our legitimate interest in answering enquiries. |
| Carry out clearances and valuations, sell items, run auctions, invoice, take payment, pay sellers, arrange collection or posting, and keep a record of the terms you accepted | Contract |
| Keep accounting, tax and VAT records; identity checks where anti-money laundering rules apply; comply with court orders and legal notices | Legal obligation |
| Help the police and other authorities prevent or detect crime, for example enquiries about stolen goods | Legitimate interests (preventing and detecting crime), which the law recognises as a legitimate interest |
| Keep the website, our forms and our auctions secure, including spam checks and the shared fraud-checking service | Legitimate interests: protecting our customers, the other auction houses that use the shared fraud checks, our business and our website from fraud, spam and attacks |
| Recently viewed lots, watch list and bidding records | Legitimate interests: providing the watch list and recently viewed features you choose to use, and understanding which items attract bidders so we can plan our sales |
| Sale alerts by email, including adding you to our auction mailing list and seeing whether emails are opened and which links are clicked | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Auction invitations to registered bidders | Legitimate interests: telling our bidders about new sales, as the electronic marketing rules allow for customers who are given a simple way to say no |
| Health information you tell us about yourself | Your explicit consent, which we ask you to confirm |
| Deal with complaints, claims and money owed, and take advice from our accountants, solicitors and insurers | Legitimate interests: running our business properly and protecting our legal rights |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we’ve weighed them against your interests and rights, and you can object (see your rights).
Do you have to give us your information?
No, but without a way to contact you we can’t reply, and without the details we ask for we can’t quote, carry out work, sell for you or approve you to bid. The platform provider needs the details on its registration form to create a bidding account.
Who we share it with
We never sell your information or pass it to other companies for their marketing. We share it only with the people and companies below, and only what they need.
| Who | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The provider of our online auction and bidding platform | Runs our online bidding platform and catalogues, and holds your bidding account under its own privacy notice. If you sign up for sale alerts, it also receives your first name, surname and email address for our auction mailing list. Photos of lots are delivered through its content delivery network, Fastly | Israel; its systems run on Amazon Web Services and Fastly, including in the USA |
| Stripe | Handles card details you add to your bidding account | See Stripe’s privacy policy |
| SmoothByte IT | Builds and looks after our website and bidding software and arranges its hosting. Also runs the fraud-checking service shared with other auction websites, for which SmoothByte IT and we are jointly responsible | UK; its servers are in Germany |
| Other auction houses that use SmoothByte IT’s fraud-checking service | Are warned about, or block, registrations linked to fraud | UK |
| Our website hosting company | Stores the website and its database, engaged by SmoothByte IT | Germany |
| Brevo (Sendinblue SAS) | Sends our website’s emails, including the email confirming we’ve received your enquiry, and holds and sends our sale alerts | France and Belgium |
| Microsoft | Provides our office email (Microsoft 365) | See information that leaves the UK |
| Cloudflare | Runs the Turnstile spam check on our forms. Cloudflare also uses the technical details it receives to keep Turnstile working and secure, under its own Turnstile privacy policy, and not to identify or target you | USA |
| Our bank and card payment provider | Process payments and refunds | As set out in their own privacy notices |
| Couriers | Deliver items you’ve asked us to post | Wherever the parcel is going |
| Our accountants, solicitors and insurers | Advise us, prepare our accounts and deal with claims | UK |
| HMRC, the police, courts and other authorities | When the law requires or allows it, for example tax enquiries or investigations into stolen goods or fraud | UK |
| Anyone you ask us to share with | For example your solicitor or insurer receiving a valuation | As you choose |
Information that leaves the UK
Some of the companies we use are based outside the UK or use servers abroad. We only allow this where UK law protects your information:
- Our website is hosted in Germany, which UK law recognises as protecting personal information adequately. SmoothByte IT’s fraud-checking service also runs on servers in Germany.
- The provider of our online auction and bidding platform is based in Israel, which the UK recognises as providing adequate protection. The provider is responsible for the servers and networks it uses, including Amazon Web Services and Fastly in the USA.
- Brevo is in France and stores data in France and Belgium, which UK law also recognises. Where Brevo’s support teams or suppliers outside Europe can see data, Brevo uses the legal safeguards in its data processing terms, such as standard contractual clauses.
- Cloudflare is in the USA and is certified under the UK-US “data bridge” (the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework), with standard contractual clauses as a back-up.
- Microsoft and Stripe: where they store or access information outside the UK, they do so in countries UK law recognises or under contract terms approved for UK transfers.
Contact us if you’d like more detail about these safeguards.
How long we keep it
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Enquiries sent through our website, and any photos with them | 12 months, then deleted automatically |
| Website enquiries marked as spam | 30 days |
| Scrambled IP codes used to stop form spam | 7 days |
| Enquiry emails and photos in our office inbox that don’t lead to any work | Up to 12 months |
| Messages through social media | As long as needed to reply, then with your customer record or deleted within 12 months |
| Appointment notes | Until the appointment has taken place, then kept with your customer record if it relates to a sale or job |
| Records of clearances, valuations, sales and purchases, including invoices, payments, written valuations, absentee bids, the terms you accepted and sellers’ payment records | 6 years from the end of the financial year they relate to, or longer where HMRC rules require it |
| Evidence that you can act for an estate | With the records of the job |
| Personal papers and devices found during a clearance | Until returned to you or securely destroyed as you ask |
| Sellers’ bank details | Only while we need them to pay you; after that, only as part of our payment records |
| Identity checks under anti-money laundering rules, where they apply | 5 years after the sale or our business relationship ends |
| Fraud-check records from registrations and logins, and the copy of your bidder profile kept with SmoothByte IT | 2 years after your last registration attempt or login |
| Watch list, bidding activity and interest records | 2 years after your last activity, apart from what we keep as sales records |
| Recently viewed lots | Your last 20 lots, older ones replaced as you browse |
| Technical records of bidding notifications from our online bidding platform | Up to 90 days |
| Sale alert sign-ups | Held in Brevo and on our auction mailing list until you unsubscribe, then a note is kept so we don’t email you again. Our website’s own copy is deleted 12 months after it reaches Brevo |
| Website server and firewall logs, and technical logs from our bidding software | Up to 90 days |
| Brevo’s records of emails sent (who to, when, whether delivered) | 3 months |
| Records of data protection requests and complaints | 6 years |
| Your bidding account | Set by the provider of our online auction and bidding platform; see its own privacy notice (we can send you a copy on request) |
When the time is up, we delete the information or remove anything that identifies you. We may keep something longer if we need it for a legal claim or an investigation, or if the law requires it.
How we keep it safe
Our website uses an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. Its forms are protected against spam and abuse, and photos you send are kept in a private area of the website that can’t be opened from the internet. Only our team and SmoothByte IT can sign in to see enquiries. The companies that handle information for us must keep it secure under their contracts with us or with SmoothByte IT. The provider of our online auction and bidding platform is responsible for the security of your bidding account, so please keep your password to yourself.
Email isn’t completely secure. Please don’t send bank details, identity documents or passwords by email or through our forms. If we need them, we’ll tell you the safest way to give them to us.
Automated decisions
The only decisions made automatically are the spam and fraud checks described above, which can stop a form being sent or a registration or login going through, including where the shared fraud-checking service has seen warning signs on another auction website. If that happens to you, ring us and a member of our team will look at it with you, listen to your side and review the decision. We don’t use your information to make any other automatic decisions about you.
Your rights
You have the right to:
- get a copy of the personal information we hold about you
- have anything wrong or incomplete corrected
- have your information deleted, where we no longer have a good reason to keep it
- ask us to limit what we do with it, for example while we check that it’s accurate
- object to us using it where we rely on legitimate interests, and stop us using it for marketing at any time (see below)
- receive the information you gave us in a common electronic format, or have it sent to another organisation, where we use it under a contract or your consent
- ask for a member of our team to review a decision made automatically, such as a blocked registration, and tell us your point of view
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it (this doesn’t affect what we did before)
Your right to object: where we use your information because of our legitimate interests, you can object at any time, and we must stop unless we have strong legitimate grounds. You can always stop us using your information for marketing.
To use any of these rights, email info@shelbysauctioneers.net, ring 0113 250 2626 or write to us at the saleroom. You don’t need to fill in a form, and there’s normally no charge.
We’ll reply within one month. If your request is complicated, or you’ve made several, we can take up to two more months, and we’ll tell you why within the first month. We may need to check who you are first, and the time limit starts once we have what we need. For your bidding account itself you can also contact the platform provider directly; ask us and we’ll put you in touch.
Complaints
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your personal information, please tell us first. Email info@shelbysauctioneers.net with “Data protection complaint” in the subject line, ring 0113 250 2626 or write to us at the saleroom. We’ll confirm we’ve received your complaint within 30 days, look into it without delay, and tell you what we found and what we’ve done.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on its helpline, 0303 123 1113 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm).
Children
Our website and services are for adults. The bidding platform’s terms require bidders to be 18 or over, and we don’t knowingly collect information from children. Under our terms, children under 14 can’t attend our auctions, and anyone aged 14 to 18 must be with a responsible adult at all times on viewing and sale days.
Changes to this policy
We’ll update this policy when the way we use personal information changes, and the date below will show when that was. If a change affects you significantly, we’ll tell you directly where we can.
Last updated: 13 October 2026.
Contact us
Questions about this policy or your information: email info@shelbysauctioneers.net, ring 0113 250 2626 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm) or write to Shelby’s Auctioneers Ltd, Unit 1, Old Corporation Yard, 281 Tong Road, Armley, Leeds, LS12 4NQ.