Privacy Policy

We want you to know exactly what happens to your personal information whenever you shop with Fone4U, whether that's browsing our website, buying a phone in one of our stores, trading in an old device, or getting something repaired.

This Privacy Policy explains, in plain language, what data we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have over your own information. If anything here isn't clear, just email us at support@fone4u.ie and we'll happily explain.

Fone4U is registered in Ireland, with stores in Ballina, Sligo, and Bray, and a registered office at 19 Grattan Street, Sligo, Co. Sligo. We handle your personal data in line with Irish and EU data protection law, specifically the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Short on time? Here's the quick version — the full policy below always takes precedence if anything differs.

Who we are: Fone4U, with stores in Ballina, Sligo and Bray, and a registered office at 19 Grattan Street, Sligo, Co. Sligo.

What we collect: your contact details, order history, trade-in or repair device information, basic browsing data, and your marketing preferences — only if you've opted in.

Why: to sell you products, provide trade-in and repair services, answer your questions, prevent fraud, and, only with your consent, send you offers.

Do we sell your data? Never. We don't sell your personal information to anyone.

Do we see your card details? No. Payments go through our secure payment provider — we never see or store your full card number.

How long do we keep it? Only as long as we actually need it, or as long as the law requires, such as for tax records.

Your rights: you can ask to see, correct, delete, or transfer your data, and opt out of marketing whenever you like — just email support@fone4u.ie.

Regulator: the Data Protection Commission, dataprotection.ie.

Data protection law requires us to have a proper legal reason for everything we do with your information. Here's how that breaks down at Fone4U:

Processing your order, payment and delivery — fulfilling our contract with you.

Handling trade-ins, repairs and warranty claims — fulfilling our contract with you.

Checking traded-in phones aren't reported lost or stolen — preventing fraud and, in some cases, a legal requirement.

Answering your questions and support requests — fulfilling our contract, or a genuine business need.

Sending order confirmations and service updates — fulfilling our contract with you.

Sending marketing emails or texts — only with your consent.

Understanding how people use our website — your consent via cookies, or a genuine business need.

Preventing fraud and protecting our legal rights — a genuine business need.

Meeting our tax and consumer protection obligations — a legal requirement.

Wherever we're relying on your consent — marketing emails being the obvious example — you're free to change your mind and withdraw that consent whenever you like. See "Your Rights" below for how.

If you post a review or public comment, please remember that once something is public, we can't control who reads, screenshots, or shares it. We may keep and display that content as part of our normal service — showing your review alongside a product, for example. If you'd like something you've posted taken down, email support@fone4u.ie and we'll look into it, provided there's no legal reason we need to keep it.

If another visitor's review or comment seems inaccurate, offensive, or breaches your rights, let us know at support@fone4u.ie. We'll investigate properly and may take the content down while we look into it.

Whenever you contact our support team — by phone, email, live chat, or through the website — we'll collect whatever information you share so we can help you properly. We also keep a record of that conversation, mainly so we can give you faster, better support if you get back in touch about the same thing later.

How We Handle Payments
We never see or store your full card details. When you pay, you're taken to the secure payment page of our payment providers—Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Maestro, and Discover—who process the transaction under their own privacy and security standards. Fone4U staff simply don't have access to your complete card information at any point.

Helping Prevent Fraud
Occasionally, a customer will ask their card issuer to reverse a payment without giving us the chance to sort out the issue first. In those cases, we may share relevant details with credit reference or fraud-prevention agencies, purely to help protect our business from fraudulent chargebacks.

Cookies and Similar Technology
Like most websites, ours uses cookies—small files that help us keep the website working properly, understand how visitors use our site, remember your preferences, and provide certain features. This includes Site Functionality (keeping the site working and keeping you signed in where needed), Website Improvement (helping us understand, in a general sense, how people use our site), Your Preferences (remembering the cookie choices you've already made), and Live Chat (supporting live WhatsApp chat functionality where available).

The first time you visit, we'll ask what you're happy for us to use. You can change your mind at any point through your cookie settings or your browser itself, though blocking certain cookies might mean parts of the site don't work quite as smoothly. For the full breakdown of individual cookies, see our Cookie Policy.

Analytics and Online Advertising
With your consent, we may use analytics tools to understand how our website is performing overall and remarketing tools to show you ads for our products elsewhere online. We don't control what these third-party tools do behind the scenes, so it's worth checking their own privacy policies if you want the full picture of how they handle data.

Sending Data Outside Ireland or the EU
Some of the tools and services we rely on may process data outside the European Economic Area, including in the US. When that happens, we make sure proper safeguards are in place—either through an approved data protection framework or Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission—so your information stays properly protected wherever it travels.