Two taps, thirty days, and then it is genuinely gone.
No retention call, no offer, no form asking why. The only thing between you and deletion is a thirty-day window in which you can change your mind, and the seven years of order records that tax law will not let either of us delete.
What happens, in order.
You press it, and confirm once
Two taps. There is no survey, no discount and no telephone number to ring, because there is no telephone anywhere on this estate.
The account is suspended immediately
You are signed out everywhere, notifications stop, and nothing further is sent.
Thirty days pass
One email at the start and one at day twenty-five. Sign in during that window and it is simply undone.
Then it is deleted
Name, email, addresses, phone, preferences, check-ins, reading history, badges, streaks, matches and the bushel balance.
Backups catch up within ninety days
A backup that could be restored is not a deletion. Ninety days is the honest figure for how long the rotation takes.
What survives is anonymised
Order records for seven years with the person stripped out of them, which is what tax law actually requires.
What goes, what stays, and why.
| Data | On deletion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email, phone, addresses | Deleted | Nothing requires us to keep them |
| Bushel balance | Deleted, and it is worth nothing anyway | It has no cash value and cannot be paid out |
| Check-ins, badges, streaks | Deleted | Derived from you and of no use without you |
| Reading history | Deleted | Yours entirely |
| Order records | Kept seven years, anonymised | HMRC. The line items stay; the person does not |
| Provenance records for a holding | Kept, detached from you | Batch 0114 still happened. It just stops being yours |
| Consent withdrawals | Kept as a record | It is how we know not to contact you again |
| Anything in a courier’s system | Not ours to delete | Ask the courier. We will tell you which one |
Why there is no retention offer.
The standard cancellation flow puts three obstacles in the way: a survey, a discount, and a telephone call. All three measurably reduce cancellations in the quarter they are introduced, and all three produce a customer who will not come back and will tell people why.
This one has none of them. The commercial argument is that a friendly exit reduces chargebacks and win-back cost, which is true and is not the real reason.
The real reason is that making it hard would be a rotten way to treat somebody who has been paying you for two years, and that everybody involved knows perfectly well that it is a dark pattern rather than a service. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has views on this now, and it should not have needed to.
What you can remove piece by piece.
Deletable on its own
- Deleting the account entirely
- Deleting your phone number but keeping the account
- Deleting your reading history on its own
- Deleting badges and streaks on their own
- Removing an old address
- Withdrawing every consent while staying a member
Not deletable
- Deleting order records inside seven years
- Deleting a provenance record for a batch that shipped
- Deleting somebody else’s record of a gift you sent them
- Deleting the fact that you withdrew consent
Deleting the account does not cancel a holding.
A patch, a cask or a box is a purchase with a contract attached. Closing your account does not end it, refund it or make the produce go away — it just means we have nobody to send it to. Cancel or transfer the holding first, and if you would rather not deal with it, tell us and we will.
Deletion, questioned.
For thirty days, by signing in. After that there is nothing left to restore, which is the point.
No. One email at the start of the window telling you what will happen and when, and one at day twenty-five saying it is about to. Neither contains an offer.
Ninety days for the rotation to clear. Anybody claiming instant deletion including backups is either not taking backups or not telling the truth.
No. Their copy is theirs. Your name comes off it if you ask, and about one in twenty do.
Or just turn everything off instead.
Twelve notification switches, a quiet window, and a thirty-day pause.
