Legal
Privacy Policy
What we collect when you use the desk builder or get in touch, why, who it's shared with, and how to ask us to change or delete it.
01 Who this covers
This policy covers grainandsteel.co.za, including the desk, coffee table and workbench builders, the ready-made shop, the home page enquiry form, and the feedback form. It's operated by Alex van Heerden, trading as Grain & Steel, a small workshop in Pretoria, South Africa — occasionally with a friend helping with cutting, welding or delivery. Grain & Steel is the "responsible party" for your information under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), whether or not someone is helping Alex on a given order.
02 What we collect
We only collect what you type into the site, or what your device sends automatically while you browse. We don't ask for ID numbers, payment card details, or anything beyond what's needed to quote or build your desk.
| Where | What's collected |
|---|---|
| Desk, coffee table & workbench builders — "Send this build sheet" | Your name and phone/WhatsApp number (required); email, delivery timing and notes (optional); the build sheet itself — dimensions, materials, price — attached automatically. Reached either by designing from scratch or by opening a ready-made design from the shop. |
| Home page — "Ask us something" | Your name, email, optional phone, what your enquiry is about, and your message. |
| "Tell us straight" feedback form | Your comment; name and email/WhatsApp only if you choose to add them for a reply. |
| WhatsApp button | Opens WhatsApp with your build sheet and price pre-filled into a message to our business number — sent through WhatsApp, not through this site. |
| Automatic, from any visit | Standard technical data (IP address, browser, device type, pages viewed, approximate location) collected by the analytics tools below. |
03 Why we use it
- To quote, confirm and build your desk, and to arrange delivery — this may be Alex personally or someone helping in the workshop, but your address is only ever seen by us, never handed to a courier or any other outside company.
- To contact you back about an enquiry, order, or feedback comment.
- To keep records of orders for tax purposes, as South African law requires.
- To understand how people use the desk builder — where the price surprises someone, where a step is confusing — so we can improve it.
- To measure whether our advertising is reaching the right people.
We don't sell your information, and we don't add you to a marketing mailing list from an order or enquiry.
04 Analytics & tracking tools
This site uses a small number of third-party tools to understand traffic and behaviour. Each of them sets its own cookies or collects data under its own privacy policy — we don't control what they do with it beyond the settings below.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics | Counts visits and pages viewed, in aggregate. |
| Vercel Analytics | Basic, privacy-focused traffic and performance stats from our hosting provider. |
| Microsoft Clarity | Records how visitors move through the builder — clicks, scrolling, and session recordings of on-screen activity — so we can see where the tool is confusing. It does not capture anything you type into a password field, and we don't use it to identify you personally. |
| Meta Pixel (Facebook/Instagram) | Tells us when someone who saw a Grain & Steel ad later visits the site or sends a build sheet, so we can measure whether the ad worked. Meta may use this for its own ad-targeting purposes under its own policy. |
| Google Fonts | Loads the site's typefaces directly from Google's servers, which see the request (and your IP address) like any web request. |
You can block most of this with your browser's tracking-protection or an ad blocker without breaking the site.
07 How long we keep it
Information tied to a confirmed order — your name, contact details, build sheet and price — is kept for 5 years, in line with South African tax record-keeping requirements. An enquiry or feedback comment that doesn't turn into an order is kept only as long as it's useful for us to follow up, and deleted sooner on request.
08 Your rights (POPIA)
Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, you can ask us to:
- tell you what information we hold about you;
- correct it, if it's wrong or out of date;
- delete it, once there's no order or legal reason left to keep it;
- stop using it for a particular purpose (for example, to stop being contacted about an old enquiry).
Contact Alex directly (details below) to ask for any of the above. If you're not satisfied with how we've handled a request, you can complain to South Africa's Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).
09 Security
We take reasonable steps to keep your information safe — form submissions travel over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, and we don't store payment details ourselves at all. Payment happens on Yoco's own secure payment page, not on this site, and we never see your card details. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, but nothing here is more sensitive than a name, contact number and a furniture order.
10 Children
This site is aimed at adults ordering furniture and isn't directed at children. We don't knowingly collect information from children.
11 Changes to this policy
We may update this page as the site, or the tools it uses, change. The "last updated" date at the top will always reflect the current version.
12 Contact
For anything in this policy — including a request to access, correct or delete your information — contact Alex directly:
Phone / WhatsApp: 072 011 8629 · wa.me/27720118629
Workshop: Pretoria, South Africa
See also our Terms & Conditions.