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Ordering & Payment Payment is through Paypal’s secure shopping cart. Customers can pay either by Paypal or by debit or credit card. You do not need a Paypal account! You can pay using Visa, Visa Delta, Visa Electron, Switch/Maestro, Solo, MasterCard and American Express. The only odd one out at present is American Express Corporate, which won't work with Paypal. Paypal will do any necessary currency conversions automatically. For the benefit of US customers, £1.00 is, at the time of writing, approximately equal to $1.90. For an up-to-date conversion of all currencies, please click here. Payment is simple. Just follow the simple steps below. When you add an item to the shopping cart, or when you click on 'View Cart', you are taken to this page:
To pay for the items, click 'Proceed to checkout'. This takes you to the page below:
The above form is a standard, on-line credit card payment page using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. It is highly secure, and all purchases are protected. Your credit card details go Paypal, who then contact your credit card company and make the payment for you. This is an instant process. Once payment is made, Paypal tells us what you want, where to send it to, and that you've paid. It also sends you an email confirming your transaction. Your credit card details, however, do not come to us, and we do not store the financial details of any customer. Customers can also pay by cheque or international money order; however, you will need to allow time for the funds to clear which, with British banks, normally takes three working days. Privacy Statement We do not store your credit card information. We never see your credit card information; it never leaves the banking system. We take your privacy seriously. There are no cookies, no adware, no spyware, no web bugs, no ActiveX controls (contrary to IE warnings), and no lurking script modules designed to spy on visitors' personal information anywhere on this site. Apart from the Javascript slide displays and some navigation scripts, the only scripts we have are Google Analytics, which analyses traffic, and the Neoworx map on the front page, which is there for the interest and amusement of visitors. Neither of these scripts collect personally identifiable information. The only personal information that we have on record is the information that you provide so that we can send your purchase to you, and which appears on your invoice. Invoices are kept for accounting and administrative purposes, as required by law. Information on customers will never be passed on to third parties, such as data mining companies, by either sale or rent. For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998, the data controller is Caroline Hardy Designs. In compliance with the law, customers can, if they wish, ask for a copy of the information that we hold one them; you only have to ask. However, we will not supply personal information - not even a copy invoice - to anyone without first asking them for proof of their right to it. That includes the police. We will comply with law enforcement, but only if they provide a valid warrant or, in the case of UK police, apply Exemption 29 under the Data Protection Act. However, Exemption 29 only applies if a UK police force needs information in a specific case for the prevention or detection of crime, or for the apprehension or prosecution of offenders. It cannot be used by the police as a 'fishing exercise', and the police have to satisfy the data controller that they have a very specific need for the records. No information will be surrendered unless those criteria are met. It is worth checking our privacy statement periodically. We may, for example, establish a mailing list for those interested in new developments, in which case we will have to revise our statement slightly in order to take account of the mailing list. The principal will remain however that you can have access to any personal information of yours that we have. We do use an offsite guestbook which is hosted at Guestbooknet.com. Since Guestbooknet.com are a separate company, our privacy policy, and thus our liability, does not extend to them. We have, however, made every effort to ensure that the guestbook is as safe and as private as our site. Should anyone have any verifiable information to the contrary, or if they can suggest a fully configurable guestbook that we can install on our site, contact me. Neoboard is produced and hosted by Neoworx. Paypal's privacy policies for various countries is to be found here. Deliveries Items that are ex-stock will normally be despatched within one working day after payment has cleared. Commissioned items will obviously take longer.< Delivery in the UK is normally FREE. Craft items are sent by 2nd class post. Heavier items, such as quilts, and more expensive items are sent by standard parcel post and insured. Delivery takes 3-5 days. We can accomodate customers who need items more urgently, but it may involve using a courier (depending upon weight), in which case there may be a charge. If you need your item delivered more rapidly, contact me. Items for overseas despatch are, with the exception of quilts and throws, FREE when sent by surface mail. They are, with the exception of kits and craft items, insured. According to the Royal Mail, delivery times for surface mail are as follows:
They may, on the other hand, take less time, but this cannot be guaranteed. Obviously there may be occasions when customers want their purchase sooner, such as birthdays or bridal accessories. We can get it there on time but since this may involve using an international courier, contact me for a quote. Finally, quilts and throws will have to be couriered to overseas customers, due to international restrictions limiting the weight of parcels going by post to 2kg, with the exception of printed matter. For most US customers, this typically costs about $80 (shipping to New York costs about $72), including trackback, insurance and customs clearance. Returns Policy I pay every attention to quality at every stage, and everything is made by hand. In the unlikely event of any defect in workmanship, please contact me. If you are really unhappy with your purchase, send it back, and I will refund your money. Aftersales Care When looked after correctly, my quilts and throws should last several lifetimes; they are the heirlooms of tomorrow. However, accidents happen. If one of my quilts becomes damaged and you need help or advice in repairing it, or advice on cleaning and maintaining it in top condition, contact me. Caroline And Finally - About Us Caroline Hardy Designs was started in 2006, as a collaboration between two friends, Caroline Hardy and Kevin Jones. Caroline Hardy is the creative heart of the business. Caroline was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 1974. After growing up in Bewdley she gained a BSc in Applied Zoology from Leeds University. In the course of her graduate studies, she spent a year in Canada, studying at McMaster University before spending some time travelling along the north-west coast and the Rockies. She studied for her MSc in 1997 at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London, England. Caroline learnt to patchwork and to quilt from her great-aunt and her mother; it is something of a tradition in her family. After finishing her post-graduate studies she moved to Derbyshire, where she rediscovered her love of textiles and art. Several commissions followed, including a quilt for the bedroom of the houseboat Yoghurt. Caroline’s unique appreciation of the textures and colours of fabrics form a personal language, which gave rise to the logo “Speaking with colour.” In the near future she intends to expand her business to include hand-dyed, hand-woven and hand-felted items. She discusses her ideas on her blog, The Occasional Purl. Caroline currently lives on a smallholding in the Amber Valley in rural Derbyshire, where she grows dye-plants, and cultivates culinary herbs for sale. Kevin Jones is Caroline's webmaster and business manager. He was born in Exeter, Devonshire, in 1955. He was educated in Sheffield and Old Coulsdon, Surrey. Kevin originally studied molecular biology at what is now the University of Westminster, but dropped out after his second year to pursue other interests. He has since had a wide variety of jobs, such as working as an engineer for the chemical industry, as a PA in the MOD at the start of the first Gulf War, in the DoT Press Office at the height of the roads protests, as a finance officer in HM Treasury and at the Home Office, and in a mental institution. Kevin has remarked that there are more similarities between these positions than are at first apparent. He has also run his own business as a weaponsmith; his reproduction Japanese swords acquired a very good reputation. Kevin gained a BA in Archaeology and History at Birkbeck College in 2001. He gained his MA in Archaeology in 2003, having submitted a dissertation that challenged the conventional interpretation of Celtic and Romano-Celtic pagan iconography. In his spare time Kevin is a musician, photographer, writer, martial artist and healer. He has travelled extensively in America and Europe, and has visited parts of Canada, including spending two weeks camping alone in the Rockies. His favourite occupation is watching cats. His occasional, and often whimsically humourous, blog has nothing to do with the business. Both Kevin and Caroline have a firm belief that ethics and business should go hand in hand. They also know there is nothing more infuriating than dealing with a faceless business that never lets you talk to a real person. They welcome all enquiries, and are prepared to answer any questions anyone might have.
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