Privacy Policy

1. Scope

This policy applies to personal information handled by The Totagars' Co-Operative Sale Society Ltd. (“TSS”, “we”, “us”) — at the Super Market counters in Sirsi, through this website, through our billing system, and through the messages we send you about your purchases.

It does not cover the practices of the banks whose counters and ATMs operate on our premises, or of any third-party website we link to. Those organisations have their own policies.

2. What we collect

You are not obliged to give us personal information to shop at the Super Market. A cash purchase over the counter can be made without giving us your name. Some facilities — a member account, account debit, rate alerts, an emailed invoice, an online order — cannot be provided without it.

3. Payment information

What we do keep is the information needed to reconcile the sale and to serve you if something goes wrong: the transaction reference, the amount, the status, the payment method and, where the gateway supplies it, the last four digits of the card. Cash and card-machine transactions at the counter are recorded against the invoice in the same way.

4. Why we use it

• To complete your purchase, raise a valid invoice and collect payment.
• To meet obligations under tax, GST and co-operative society law, and to keep the books and audit trail that law requires.
• To operate member accounts, account debits and member schemes under the society's bye-laws.
• To handle returns, replacements, refunds, warranty claims and complaints.
• To send you the transactional messages you have asked for — invoice copies, order updates, and arecanut and grocery rate alerts.
• To detect and prevent fraud, theft and misuse of the billing system, and to secure our premises and systems.
• To understand which departments and stock are performing, using aggregated figures.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not rent or trade contact lists.

5. WhatsApp & SMS messages

Where you have given us your mobile number, we may send invoices, order updates and rate alerts by SMS or WhatsApp. These are sent through the messaging platform's own infrastructure, which processes the number and message content in order to deliver it.

You can stop these at any time by replying STOP, by telling any counter, or by contacting us on the details below. Stopping alerts does not stop messages that are strictly necessary to complete a transaction you have made.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal information only where it is necessary, and only with:

• Payment gateways and banks, to process and settle payments and to investigate disputed or reversed transactions.
• Messaging providers, to deliver SMS and WhatsApp messages you have asked for.
• Service providers who host or maintain our systems, under contract and only on our instructions.
• Auditors and professional advisers, including the society's statutory and internal auditors.
• Government authorities, regulators and courts, where the law requires it or where it is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.

Our systems and records are held in India.

7. Cookies

This website uses a small number of cookies:

• Session cookies, which keep a signed-in staff session active. These are required for the billing system to work.
• Security cookies, including the CSRF token that protects forms against forged requests.
• Preference cookies, which remember choices such as display theme.

The public pages of this site do not run advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Fonts and photographs are loaded from Google Fonts and from tssindia.in; those requests are subject to the providers' own policies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser, but the billing system will not work without the session and security cookies.

8. How long we keep it

• Invoices, tax and accounting records — for the period required by tax, GST and co-operative society law, currently at least eight years.
• Member account records — for as long as membership continues, and afterwards for the period the society's bye-laws and applicable law require.
• Payment references — for the period needed to reconcile settlement and handle chargebacks, and thereafter as part of the accounting record.
• Contact preferences and alert subscriptions — until you withdraw them.
• Website technical logs — for a short period, normally not more than 12 months.

9. How we protect it

Access to the billing system requires a credential and a one-time verification code; a session that has not completed that verification is signed out. Access is limited to the staff whose role requires it, and activity is logged. Traffic to this site is encrypted with TLS. Payment credentials are handled by the gateway and never stored by us.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to affect you, we will inform you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

10. Your rights

Subject to the record-keeping obligations described above, you may ask us to:

• confirm what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct information that is inaccurate or out of date;
• delete information we no longer have a lawful reason to keep;
• stop sending you alerts and other non-essential messages;
• withdraw a consent you previously gave, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.

Write to the Grievance Officer below. We may ask you to verify your identity before we act, so that we do not disclose your information to somebody else. We respond within 30 days. We cannot delete an invoice or accounting entry that the law requires us to retain.

11. Children

We do not knowingly open accounts for, or collect personal information from, children under 18. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete what we are not required to keep.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The current version and its date are shown at the top of this page. Where a change materially affects how we use your information, we will make that clear on this page.

13. Contact & grievances

We acknowledge privacy complaints within 48 hours and aim to resolve them within 30 days.