Privacy Statement

Because this web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices. This privacy statement discloses the privacy practices for Monterey Gourmet and its web site http://www.montereygourmetshops.com. This web site has agreed to notify you of:

1. What personally identifiable information of yours or third party personally identification is collected from you through the web site
2. The organization collecting the information
3. How the information is used
4. With whom the information may be shared
5. What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
6. The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under Monterey Gourmet control
7. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Information Collection and Use

Monterey Gourmet is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. Monterey Gourmet collects information from our users at several different points on our website.

Orders

We request information from the user on our order form. Here a user must provide contact information (like name and shipping address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customer’s orders. If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the user.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of cookie may be disabled by the user in any area of our web site which uses cookies. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to enter shipping information more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site. The only drawback to this is that the user will be have to re-enter their shipping information. Cookie information is only transmitted using secure connections between your computer and our web servers.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Sharing

We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.

We use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we Monterey Gourmet are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Newsletter

If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address.

Surveys & Contests

From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.

Security

This website takes every precaution to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line.

When our order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just ‘surfing’.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’ information is protected. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment.

If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to security@montereygourmetshops.com.

Special Offers

We send all new mailing list customers a welcoming email to verify their e-mail address. Established mailing list members will receive information on products, services, special deals, etc. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see our choice and opt-out below.

Choice/Opt-out

Our users are given the opportunity to ‘opt-in’ to having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for the information. For example, our order form has an ‘opt-out’ mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but don’t want any marketing material, can keep their email address off of our lists.

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to unsubscribe in the subject line in the email or email us at  unsubscribe@montereygourmetshops.com

Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.