Customer Confidentiality

[PerplexingQuestion]

Is it a breach of customer confidentiality to confirm if someone has or hasn't bought a product from my company?

X was claiming to have bought from me when they hadn't. Z asked if X had bought from me and I said no.

Then later, X sent me an email enquiring about my product.

Now X are saying I have broken customer Confidentiality. Is this true? If someone isn't a customer, do you have a duty of Confidentiality to them?

If X wasn't a customer then I don't see how customer confidentiality applies.
I'm not a lawyer though

How weird is that?! Gosh, curious to know what the product is! It's weird of Z to ask and weird of X to claim they bought from you, but not sure where the client confidentiality stands because they didn't buy something from you do it's not like they did?!

Really really strange. Doubt customer confidentiality applies to someone who was never a customer. Again, not a lawyer tho.

ok, let me explain a bit more without saying too much.

A health professional recommended a school buy my product.

School chose not to BUT told a parent that they had.

Parent (who I don't know) doesn't understand what's happening so checks with health professional.

health professional asks me if school bought. I say no.

health professional asks me again several times over the next few weeks. So I assume there are huge problems between school and parent. But I know nothing at all.

Eventually school enquires about my product. I reply with a standard template letter which they don't respond to.

But I also tell the health professional that the school enquired about my product.

School then write me a very nasty letter saying they want to cancel their order because I breached customer confidentiality.

BUT there is no order. They got nowhere near placing an order.

So I want to know for the future. Can I say if a school has bought my product or if they have enquired about it or not?

"But I also tell the health professional that the school enquired about my product."

I think that might be the problem point. You weren't passively responding; you were "taking sides".

Nevertheless, unless you are the only supplier of this product/ service, I don't see how any confirmation/ denial from you could be meaningful. (If you ARE, do you think the school is trying to pass off a fake product as your product, the one the health professional recommended? And does the health professional's recommendation have any legal standing?)

I am the only UK supplier of this product.

The school was just out and out lying to the parent. Saying they were doing something for their child when they weren't.

I don't think the health professional's recommendation has any legal standing.

This will all blow over. I'm sure they had no intention of ever buying and are just using this as an excuse to not buy.

But I want to know for next time what I can and can't say if someone, particularly a health professional, asks me if a certain school has my product.

Not that this has happened before. So I suppose it might never happen again anyway.

Are you a member of any professional associations, which might advise you? Or have you any (legal) insurance? An insurer would certainly have an interest in making sure you weren't prosecuted (assuming such a step would indeed be possible for a non-client!)

Or perhaps the parent company could field any future enquiries for you, and take any hit?

No professional association.

Not sure what my insurance covers - but there's absolutely no way this is going to get legal. Why would a school pursue it legally? And what could they pursue?

Parent company wouldn't know who I had or hadn't sold to.

So I guess I just need to be more careful next time, and say nothing.

Although hopefully this situation won't ever rise again.

But I would like to know, legally, if I can confirm or deny who my customers are - particularly if somebody is falsely claiming to have bought my product.

I meant that the parent company would handle the interaction, requesting the information from you, and you would confirm/deny to them, and let them reply. They no doubt have deeper pockets than you, and it sounds as though they are in a different country, which would make it less worthwhile for someone to sue them.

However, I imagine if you are directly asked to deny a purchase, that would be all right, especially if it's a therapeutic/ medicinal something, with no generic equivalent. You might argue that you want to prevent anyone from passing off fake goods as genuine. However, you'd probably have to add the caveat that they could have bought second-hand/ internationally, blah, blah, blah (whatever applies).

This all may be too arse-covering, but you do seem very worried!