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PRIVACY POLICY

Effective Date: December 21, 2009

Welcome to the www.GroupPurchasingSolutions.com website operated by Group Purchasing Solutions, LLC (“GPS,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). GPS is committed to respecting the privacy rights and concerns of all users of our www.GroupPurchasingSolutions.com website (the “Site”) (we refer to the Site and the services we provide as described in our Site collectively as the “Service”). As such, we have established and implemented this privacy policy to inform visitors to the Site, our members and other users of the Service how we use and protect the information we collect. If you have any questions regarding this information or our privacy practices, please see the section entitled “Questions or Comments” at the end of this privacy policy.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

This Privacy Policy is part of our Terms of Use.  Your continued use of the Service, this Site or your Membership (as defined in the Terms of Use) shall be deemed irrevocable acceptance of the terms in this Privacy Policy.  If you do not agree to (or cannot comply with) this Privacy Policy, as amended, you must stop using the Site and Services and, if applicable, cancel your Membership.  You will be deemed to have accepted this Privacy Policy, as amended, if you continue to use the Site or Services after any amendments are posted.  This license will terminate upon conditions set forth elsewhere within the Terms of Use or if you fail to comply with any term or condition of this Privacy Policy. In such event, no notice shall be required by GPS to effect such termination.

 GPS reserves the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time without providing notice to its users.

 Please also read the Terms of Use establishing the use, disclaimers and limitations of liability governing the use of the Site and the Service.

WHAT INFORMATION DOES GPS COLLECT?

GPS does not collect personally identifiable information unless our visitors voluntarily provide it to us. We do, however, collect certain types of information and ask for personal information in certain circumstances, such as when you set up a membership account. The following sections describe what type of information we collect, when we collect it and how we use it.

SETTING UP A MEMBERSHIP ACCOUNT

In order to use certain portions of the Service, including access to the Members Only areas of our Site you will have to register for and create a membership account.  Creating your membership account requires you to submit certain personal information. When you register and create a membership account, we require you to provide us the following information: Name, Address, Company Contact Name, Title, Contact Email, Password, and Contact Phone.  Your contact email address and password will be used to access and maintain your membership account.

If you are registering for a membership account, you may need to provide us with your credit card (or other allowed payment method) and other billing information. Any billing and credit card or other payment method billing information that you provide will be used to bill you for a recurring monthly membership fee. All credit card or other payment method and other billing related information you provide to us is maintained either by us or our third party payment processor as highly confidential, and except as provided in this privacy policy, we will not share such credit card or other billing related information to any third parties that are not involved in processing your membership account or providing our services.

COOKIES

Cookies are small bits of electronic information that a web site can transfer to a visitor’s hard drive to help tailor and keep records of his or her visit to the site. The use of cookies is standard on the Internet and many web sites use them. Cookies allow web site operators to better customize visits to the site to the visitor’s individual preferences. For example, by setting a cookie you would not have to enter information in the Site more than once, thereby saving time. We do not receive or record any personal information in the cookies we use.

Although most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, you can usually change your browser to prevent that or to notify you when you are sent a cookie. Even without accepting a cookie, you can still access the Service.

SWEEPSTAKES AND CONTESTS

We may offer contests and sweepstakes to our visitors from time to time. To enter each particular contest or sweepstakes, visitors must submit their email addresses and/or any other information required by the contest or sweepstakes rules. We may incorporate certain information from our visitors when they participate in contests or sweepstakes so we may better understand what types of contests or sweepstakes appeal to our visitors. We will only use such information in the aggregate and we will not connect such information to personally identifiable information, such as people’s names or email addresses.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

We provide customer service support through our website via a customer service request form available on the Site. In order to provide customer support, we will ask for your Contact Name and Contact Phone Number.  We also provide you with a field to describe your request.  Aside from this information, we do not ask for any other personal information to provide customer support. We only use information received from customer support requests, including email addresses, for customer support services and except for disclosures that may be made to certain of our Affiliate Partners in connection with your customer support request, we do not transfer or share this information with any third parties.

FEEDBACK AND CONTACT FORMS

We provide several areas on our website for you to submit feedback, opportunities and ideas to us, such as a general contact form, member ideas submissions, and inquiries regarding association partnerships, sales and vendor partnership opportunities.  When completing one of our Site feedback or other contact forms, you will be asked to provide your Company Name, Address, Contact Name, Contact Phone Number, and Website URL, as well as your suggestions and feedback. Participation in these matters is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The information you provide will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of the Service, and except for disclosures that may be made to certain of our Affiliate Partners in connection with your customer support request, will not be transferred to third parties.

TELL-A-FRIEND

On our Site, we provide a form where you may use our referral service to tell a friend about our Site.  In order to make a referral, we will ask you for your and your friend’s email address and telephone number. We will automatically send your friend a customizable one-time email or telephone call inviting him or her to visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us to request that we remove this information from our database.

HOW DO WE USE THE INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE US?

As stated above, if you have registered for a membership, we use your personal information such as your name, address, billing and mailing address and credit card number or other billing information for billing purposes when we charge you for the use of your membership, e.g., your monthly membership fee.  We will not use your credit card number or other payment method billing information in connection with any other purchases you may make through the Service, such as for the purchase of items from any of our Alliance Partners.  You will be required to submit your credit card or other acceptable payment method and billing information to such third party separately in order to complete any purchase.

We may (i) publish the corporate names and/or other business affiliations you provide in our members list which list may be published on the Site or otherwise be made publicly available anywhere in the world and (ii) use such corporate names and/or business affiliations for publicity or any other purposes without additional compensation.

We also will use your email address and/or telephone number to contact you when we provide customer support.
In addition, from time to time, we may also use your email address and mailing address to send you information on updates to the Service, and to alert you to offerings from other companies that we are affiliated with including our Affiliate Partners. We will assume you are interested in receiving emails and mail from us (or from companies who we may engage from time to time to act on our behalf) and allow you to “opt-out” if you are not interested.  To opt-out of receiving these communications, please see the Contact Us form per the instructions in the Members Only section. We will not ever sell your email address or send you offerings from companies that we are not affiliated with.

We also provide our members with the option to “opt-in” to receiving our GPS newsletters. If you elect to receive it, our newsletter will be delivered to your email address.  We collect aggregated information about the readers of our newsletters.

We may also provide aggregated information about our visitors, including the readers of our newsletter, to outside parties from time to time. For further details, please see the section below titled “Does GPS disclose the information it collects from its visitors to outside parties?”

We also use the information we collect to develop and tailor the Service and to shape the services we offer to our members.

HOW DOES GPS PROTECT CUSTOMER INFORMATION?

We take many precautions to keep your personal information secure from unauthorized access, such as encrypted transmission between your computer and our servers and internal corporate policies to limit access to systems that store your personal information. We continue to store your personal information for so long as it is necessary to provide you our service and periodically destroy old personal information in accordance with our company policies, including when it is no longer essential to our ability to offer you the same high quality service. In most cases, we will keep one archival copy of your information to allow us to comply with laws or respond to legal processes. Any credit card or other payment method billing information you supply us is transmitted and protected via Secure Socket Layer technology (“SSL”) and HTTPS protocol and then stored into our databases using industry standard triple encryption methods to be accessed only as stated above.

DOES GPS DISCLOSE THE INFORMATION IT COLLECTS FROM ITS VISITORS TO OUTSIDE PARTIES?

Except for the Suppliers who provide the Products and Services, and as described elsewhere in this privacy policy, GPS does not currently sell, trade, or otherwise transfer outside the company personally identifiable information that visitors voluntarily provide in any membership registration or feedback/contact form. This information is used to better understand how visitors use the Site, to support related transactions made on the site, and to better know our visitors and possibly tailor any specific features, promotions, or other notifications to them. However, this data in an aggregate form without any personally identifiable information may be provided to other parties, including the third party vendors who make offers available to members, for marketing, advertising, or other uses. 

Should you change your mind about the information you have provided to us, should you no longer wish to receive information from us, or should your information change, we have provided a way for you to correct, update or remove the personal data you gave us. For further details please see the section below titled “How do you change the information we have for you?”

In the event GPS goes through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another company, or selling a portion of its assets, visitors’ information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred. If as a result of the business transition information will be used for a purpose different from that stated or implied at the time of collection, users will be given a choice consistent with our notification of changes section.

Notwithstanding any other term of this privacy policy, we may release any personal information we obtain or collect when we believe its release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our Site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety.

HOW DO YOU OPT-OUT?

In order to opt-out to receiving email notifications and updates, please log-in to the Members Only area of the Site and select the “My Profile” option where you may elect to opt-out.

HOW DO YOU CHANGE THE INFORMATION WE HAVE FOR YOU?

To update, modify or delete the information that we have on file for your membership, simply go to the Members Only area of the Site, log in, and then modify your details and settings as necessary on the “My Profile” page. Please note that we require some personal information for billing purposes. If you wish to delete your name, telephone number, email address, billing or mailing address or, in the event you have purchased a membership, credit card number or other payment method information, you will be required to terminate your membership.

SUPPLIERS AND OTHER THIRD PARTY LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

In an attempt to provide increased value to our members and visitors and as part of the services we offer through the Service, we choose various third party web sites to link to, and frame within, the Site. We also participate in co-branding and other relationships to offer the Service and most importantly the discounts offered to users with Memberships which are redeemable at selected vendors.  In most cases, online purchases facilitated by the Service are subject to the privacy policies of the website where that transaction is conducted.  Even if the third party is affiliated with us, we have no control over these linked sites, each of which has separate privacy and data collection practices independent of us. Data collected by our co-brand partners or third party web sites (even if offered on or through our Site) may not be received by us. As such, we have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies or actions, and are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any such web sites. These linked sites are only for your convenience and you access them at your own risk. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of the Service and the links placed upon each of them and therefore request any feedback on not only the Service, but for sites each links to as well (including if a specific link does not work).

USING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN OTHER COUNTRIES

Your country's privacy laws may require your consent before your personal information can be exported to countries with weaker privacy laws. Our Terms of Use requires your consent to this practice so that we can enhance our service quality by operating in multiple countries. No matter where your information is processed, this privacy policy will remain in effect.

INFORMATION ON CHILDREN

The Service is not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect or maintain any personal information or non-personally-identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 nor is any part of our Site or Service directed to children under the age of 13. We will terminate any membership used exclusively by such children and will remove and/or delete any personal information we believe was submitted by any child under the age of 13.

NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES

By visiting the Site or using the Service, you consent to the collection and use of information by us as set forth in this privacy policy. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes within this page so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS

If you have any questions about our privacy practices or your dealings with the Service, please do not hesitate to contact:

Gerard Smith
President
Group Purchasing Solutions, LLC
620 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1100
Newport Beach, California 92660-8011
Phone: (949) 720-9425
Fax: (949) 720-9410