Welcome to West Distribution Incorporated!
Your privacy is important to us. West Distribution Incorporated., its subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, "West Distribution Incorporated", "us", "we")
are committed to maintaining the privacy, security and accuracy of the
personal information they collect, use and disclose in accordance with
applicable legislation. This privacy policy (the "Privacy Policy")
is a statement of principles and guidelines concerning the protection
of personal information of our individual clients, individual service
providers and other individuals ("you") (with the exception of
our personnel, whose personal information is collected, used and
disclosed in accordance with our Personnel Privacy Policy).
CONSENT
BY SUBMITTING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO West Distribution Incorporated OR ITS AGENTS,
YOU AGREE THAT WE MAY COLLECT, USE AND DISCLOSE SUCH PERSONAL
INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY, THE PRIVACY
PREFERENCES YOU HAVE MADE KNOWN TO US AND AS PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY
LAW. Subject to legal and contractual requirements, you may refuse or
withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time
by contacting us. If you refuse or withdraw
your consent, we may not be able to provide you or continue to provide
you with certain services or information that may be of value to you.
1. Who are we?
2. What personal information do we collect?
3. Why do we collect your personal information?
4. To whom do we disclose your personal information?
5. Control of your personal information
6. Where is your personal information stored?
7. How can you access your personal information?
8. How do we protect your personal information?
9. Privacy and our Websites
10. Changes to the Privacy Policy
11. Contact Us
Appendix 1: What are "fair information practices"?
1. Who are we?
West Distribution Incorporated Inc. is the "parent" wholesale division of a group of websites focusing
on specialty product distribution.
This Privacy Policy applies to our collection, use and disclosure of
personal information regarding the clients and consumers of our
products and services, including our online and print publications and our individual service providers.
2. What personal information do we collect?
Canadian privacy legislation defines personal information broadly as
information about "an identifiable individual" or as information that
allows an individual to be identified. The types of personal
information that we may collect from you from time to time include:
your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, your forwarding
address (e.g. during a vacation), previous address(es), payment
information (for billing purposes), your mailing preferences (such as
"no scents", "no wrappers", etc.), delivery instructions, and
individual customer service preferences (such as "do not solicit"). In
addition, from time to time, we may ask you to provide us with more
detailed information regarding your interests, occupation, and
background. For example, we sometimes ask our customers to complete
surveys in order to get a better sense of who they are and what issues,
products or services may be of interest to them and our readership.
Finally, from time to time, we may acquire demographic and other
information about you (e.g. your occupation and interests) from an
outside organisation, but only if you have previously agreed to allow
such an organization to disclose the information to companies such as
West Distribution Incorporated.
3. Why do we collect your personal information?
We collect your personal information for the purposes listed below:
(a) To provide the product, service or information you requested
If you are a customer, we use your name and
address (postal and/or e-mail) in order to deliver the product, service
or information you requested and to follow up with you about the
transaction (i.e., send a bill, etc.).
(b) To process payment
Your credit card number, debit card number, or banking information for
pre-authorized payments is used only for processing payments and for
presenting you with payment options - not for marketing purposes.
(c) To send you information
From time to time we may send you further information about offers, or other products produced under its name.
(d) Other purposes
In addition, from time to time, we may use your personal information for the following purposes:
- to detect and protect West Distribution Incorporated and other third parties against
error, fraud, theft and other illegal activity, and to audit compliance
with West Distribution Incorporated policies and contractual obligations;
- to understand your needs and preferences, including to contact and
communicate with you and to conduct surveys, research and evaluations;
- to engage in business transactions, including the purchase, sale,
lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal,
securitization or financing involving West Distribution Incorporated;
- for any other purpose we may indicate to you from time to time.
4. To whom do we disclose your personal information?
We may disclose your personal information to the following third parties in the following circumstances:
- (a) Disclosure to Service Providers
We may disclose your personal information to other companies that
provide services on our behalf, including fulfillment contractors, auditors, our software developers
(including website developers and hosts), data processing, document
management and office services. In addition, we may disclose your
personal information to an organization or individual retained by
West Distribution Incorporated to evaluate your creditworthiness or to collect debts
outstanding on an account or to our auditors. We will only provide
those companies the information they need to deliver the service and
they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.
- (b) Disclosure to Affiliates and Business Units
We may disclose your personal information to any of the companies and
business units that form part of the West Distribution Incorporated group (i.e.
amongst West Distribution Incorporated, its subsidiaries and affiliates) in
order to serve you better and to provide you with information about our
group's products and services.
- (c) Disclosure to Trading Partners
We do not disclose personal information to Trading Partners
- (d) Disclosure in Business Transfers
West Distribution Incorporated may be involved in the sale or transfer of some or all
of its business. As part of that sale or transfer, West Distribution Incorporated may
disclose your personal information to the acquiring organization, but
will require the acquiring organization to agree to protect the privacy
of your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this
Privacy Policy.
- (e) Law Enforcement and Legal Disclosure
West Distribution Incorporated may disclose your personal information to a government
institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the
information or where West Distribution Incorporated has reasonable grounds to believe
the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful
activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a
court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of
information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of
records and information, or to West Distribution Incorporated's legal counsel.
If you would prefer for us NOT to share your information as described above in sections 4(a)-4(d), simply inform us (see "Contact Us" below).
5. Control of your personal information
At West Distribution Incorporated, we want you to be able to maintain control over
how we use your personal information. In particular:
- You
may have the right to "opt out" of some or all of the identified
purposes, uses and disclosures listed in sections 3 and 4 above.
- You
always have the option to instruct us not to use your name, address,
e-mail address, etc. beyond providing you with the product, service or
information you requested. See "Contact Us" below.
- E-mail communications will always include an identification of the sender and an "Unsubscribe" option.
As mentioned above, we may not be able to provide you with our services
if you withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information.
6. Where is your personal information stored?
Your personal information is stored in secured locations and on servers
controlled by West Distribution Incorporated, located either at our offices or at the
offices of our service providers. For access to your personal
information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact
information in the "Contact Us" section below.
7. How can you access your personal information?
Upon written request, subject to certain exceptions, West Distribution Incorporated
will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your personal
information and will give you access to that information. Access
requests should be sent to our Privacy Officer, using the contact
information in the "Contact Us" section below.
8. How do we protect your personal information?
We make every reasonable effort to protect against the loss, misuse,
and alteration of personal information under our control. Our security
policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary.
Only authorized employees and suppliers have access to your personal
information. Where information is sent to a third party for processing,
we make sure, through our contracts with them, that all your
information is kept secure. We keep your information for the time we
are providing you with a product or service, and for a reasonable time
thereafter in the event that you wish to resume service.
We operate secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall
and password protection systems. Credit card information is processed
using industry-standard encryption and security. We do not collect
personal information from bulletin boards or forums. However, we cannot
guarantee that personal information voluntarily disclosed in chat rooms
or discussion boards will not be collected and used by others, which
may result in unsolicited messages to you from other parties.
9. Privacy and our websites
West Distribution Incorporated sometimes collects personal information through its
various websites. In this section, we provide you with additional
information regarding such collection.
Cookies - When an individual visitor accesses the West Distribution Incorporated websites, we
may use a browser feature called a "cookie" to collect information such
as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses,
the domain name of the websites from which the visitor came, date and
duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our
websites, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a
small text file containing a unique identification number that
identifies the visitor's browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to
our computers each time our websites are visited. Unless a visitor
specifically informs us (e.g. by enrolling for our services or sending
us correspondence from the websites), we will not know who the
individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes
described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information
and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial
relationship to measure the use of our websites and to improve the
functionality and content of the websites. Visitors can reset their
browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or
refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept
cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features
available on our websites.
Online Communications - In order to provide our website visitors with a product, service or
information, visitors may voluntarily submit personal information to us
for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information,
subscribing to, reviewing or downloading a publication, participating
in contests and surveys. If you are known to West Distribution Incorporated as a
registered user of an online service, we may combine and store personal
information about your use of our websites and the online information
you have provided with certain other online and offline information we
may have collected.
E-Mail Communications -
Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail
communications to you with information that may be useful, including
information about the products and services of West Distribution Incorporated and
other third parties with whom we have a relationship. We will include
instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if
recipients decide they do not want to receive any future marketing or
promotional e-mails from West Distribution Incorporated.
Also, if
you send us an email message, we may retain that message and your email
address, as well as any response we send you.
Advertisers -
If you submit some of your personal information on any West Distribution Incorporated
website to request information from a third party (such as an
advertiser), we are not responsible for any use of your personal
information by such third party. Hence, we suggest that you first learn
more about such third party's privacy policies prior to submitting your
personal information by visiting its website or contacting it by postal
mail or telephone.
Opinion Polls -
Opinion polls on our websites are anonymous. We do not correlate votes
submitted via such polls with names or individual email addresses,
unless otherwise disclosed at the point of collection.
Chat Rooms and Bulletin Boards - Some of West Distribution Incorporated's websites offer chat rooms and bulletin
boards. Only individuals 18 years of age or older may participate in
our chat rooms and bulletin boards. The voluntary disclosure of
personal information in a chat room or on an bulletin board is not
governed by this Privacy Policy. Any communications which are part of
chat rooms or discussion boards are public and not private and you
provide such information at your own risk. Although it is prohibited to
use our forums as a source of email addresses for sending unfounded or
unsolicited messages or spamming, others may still capture your email
address and send you email messages if you post your email address and
we cannot control such actions by others. We advise you to remain
prudent and attentive at all times when you are on line on the Internet.
Searches - For your convenience, search functions are sometimes provided on our
websites. We keep logs of the words searched to learn more about what
kind of information our visitors are seeking, and thus improve our
services.
Hyperlinks - For your
convenience, West Distribution Incorporated's websites sometimes contain hyperlinks
to websites managed by third parties. By activating these hyperlinks,
you will leave West Distribution Incorporated's websites for those of the third
parties, which may have different privacy policies and practices than
West Distribution Incorporated. West Distribution Incorporated cannot be held liable for the use of
such third party websites.
Advertising to Children - We believe that none of West Distribution Incorporated's websites appeal directly
to children of 13 years old or less. We do not knowingly direct our
advertising at children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law.
Individuals Under 18 -
No personal information should be submitted or posted on our websites
by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent's or
guardian's permission. We may request name, address, phone number,
email address and date of birth from an individual under 18 years of
age for contest participation so that we may notify him or her if
selected as a winner. In the event we do so, we will request their
parent's or guardian's consent prior to collection.
No information collected from online guests under 18 years of age is
used for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever by
West Distribution Incorporated. Unless otherwise disclosed at collection, we do not
provide any personal information collected through any West Distribution Incorporated
website from individuals under 18 years old, regardless of its source,
to any third party for any purpose whatsoever.
10. Changes to the Privacy Policy
West Distribution Incorporated reserves the right to modify or supplement this
Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy,
we will post such change on our websites and make such revised policy
and change available upon request to the West Distribution Incorporated Privacy Officer. However, West Distribution Incorporated will obtain the necessary consents
required under applicable Privacy Laws if it seeks to collect, use or
disclose an individual's personal information for purposes other than
those to which consent is obtained unless otherwise required or
permitted by law.
Prior to January 1, 2004 some West Distribution Incorporated websites may have
collected personal information, such as e-mail address, using privacy
policies which differ from the statement above. In such cases where
information has already been provided, customers will be contacted and
informed of the new policy practices before any new use is made of
their personal information.
11. Contact Us
West Distribution Incorporated has appointed a Privacy Officer to oversee
compliance with this Privacy Policy and applicable Privacy Laws. You
can contact the West Distribution Incorporated Privacy Officer at:
West Distribution Incorporated
Langley Crossing RPO, Box 45003, 101-6339 200th St.
Langley, BC V2Y 0C9
Phone: 1-888-649-7068
info@westdistribution.com
Appendix 1
What are "fair information practices"?
In
Canada, "fair information practices" with regards to your personal
information are reflected in a series of principles developed by the
Canadian Standards Association and incorporated into Canadian privacy
legislation, designed to ensure that companies treat your personal
information fairly, protect its confidentiality and provide the means
by which individuals can maintain a reasonable level of control over
how their personal information is collected, used and disclosed.
West Distribution Incorporated collects, uses and discloses your personal information
by employing "fair information practices" as described in the following
ten privacy principles:
Principle 1 - Accountability
West Distribution Incorporated is responsible for personal information under its
control and has designated a Privacy Officer who is accountable
for West Distribution Incorporated's compliance with this Privacy Policy and the
Privacy Laws. Contact information for the Privacy Officer is
provided in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy. In addition, our accountability for the
personal information we collect continues even if we disclose it to
other organizations. For example, whenever we disclose your information
to another organization (such as to one of our service providers), we
will put in place contractual and other safeguards to help ensure that
they appropriately protect your personal information.
Principle 2 - Identifying the Purposes for Collection of Personal Information
West Distribution Incorporated will identify the purposes for which your personal
information is collected at or before the time the personal information
is collected. Some of the identified purposes for which
West Distribution Incorporated typically collects, uses and discloses personal
information are described in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy. If we
intend to collect, use or disclose your personal information for
additional purposes, we will either revise this Privacy Policy (and
provide you with notice) or seek your consent.
Principle 3 - Obtaining Consent for Collection, Use or Disclosure of Personal Information
We will obtain your informed consent for the collection, use, or
disclosure of your personal information, except as permitted by law.
For example, we ask that you provide us with your consent to collect,
use and disclose your personal information for the purposes described
in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy. You may withdraw consent at any
time to some or all of the purposes indicated, subject to legal or
contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. Please note, however,
that in some circumstances, we may not be able to provide you with our
services if you withdraw your consent to our use of your personal
information.
Principle 4 - Limiting Collection of Personal Information
West Distribution Incorporated will limit the collection of personal information,
both the amount and the type of information, to that which is necessary
for the purposes identified by West Distribution Incorporated. In addition,
West Distribution Incorporated will collect your personal information by fair and
lawful means, and not by misleading or deceiving you about the purpose
for which information is being collected.
Principle 5 - Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention of Personal Information
West Distribution Incorporated will not use or disclose personal information for
purposes other than the identified purposes for which it was collected,
except with your consent or as required or permitted by law.
West Distribution Incorporated will retain your personal information only as long as
necessary to fulfil the identified purposes.
Principle 6 - Accuracy of Personal Information
West Distribution Incorporated will endeavour to ensure that your personal
information will be as accurate, complete and up-to-date as is
necessary for the purposes for which it is to be used. West Distribution Incorporated
will update personal information as and when necessary to fulfill the
identified purposes or upon notification from the subject individual.
West Distribution Incorporated will not routinely update personal information, unless
such process is necessary to fulfill the identified purposes. If ever
your contact and/or other personal information changes, please feel
free to contact us, so that we can update our records.
Principle 7 - Security Safeguards
West Distribution Incorporated will protect your personal information by security
safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. For
example, the computer servers on which we store your personal
information are protected by firewalls and other industry standard
security features. In addition, your personal information is only made
available to our employees and service providers who have a "need to
know" in order to offer you our services or otherwise fulfil the
purposes identified in Section 3 above.
Principle 8 - Openness Concerning Policies and Practices
West Distribution Incorporated will make readily available to you specific
information about our policies and practices relating to the management
of personal information. For example, the most recent version of this
Privacy Policy will always be available on the West Distribution Incorporated website
at www.westdistribution.com and upon request to the Privacy Officer using the contact information in the "Contact Us" section.
Principle 9 - Individual Access to Personal Information
Upon written request, subject to certain exceptions, West Distribution Incorporated
will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your personal
information and will give you access to that information. If access is
denied, West Distribution Incorporated will notify you in writing, give reasons for
the denial, and inform you of the recourses open to you. If access is
granted, West Distribution Incorporated will give you a reasonable opportunity to
review your personal information. You will be able to challenge the
accuracy and completeness of the information and have it amended as
appropriate.
West Distribution Incorporated
Phone: 1-888-649-7068
e-mail: info@westdistribution.com
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