Your Privacy

Order

To complete an order, our visitors must share with us contact information (name, e-mail and shipping address) and billing information (credit card number and expiration date). This information is used to create an account to process and ship your orders.

Newsletter

We invite visitors to subscribe to our Tea Muse newsletter, and ask for e-mail contact information to assist in its distribution. All customers receive updates of new Tea Muse issues automatically. Should you wish to not receive these, you may easily opt-out. Please see Choice/Opt-Out section for more info.

Tea-of-the-Month Club

We offer a number of tea-of-the-month clubs. Each allows our customers to receive teas automatically over a period of time. These are processed as any other order, with the exception that the delivery is not immediate, but is spread over many months. Again, all information gathered is for the sole purpose of fulfilling an order, and is not used for any other purpose or shared with any third parties.

Surveys

From time-to-time our site requests information from users by way of surveys. For example, our 'e-mail us' form has survey information. Participation in these surveys is always voluntary and the visitor therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested occasionally includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), tea preferences and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site. This information is used for aggregate analysis, and is not ties to any individual visitor or combined with any other information we may gather. Furthermore, the survey conducted by BizRate at the conclusion of a purchase is solely under the discretion of BizRate, and is governed by this company's own privacy statement.

Tea Reviews

We invite our customers to submit reviews of the products they have purchased earlier. This information is then displays on our site to aid other visitors' shopping experience. These submissions are always voluntary, and the only personal information requested is customer's name. To reward customers for taking the time to complete these, for each review submitted we deduct $1 off a subsequent order.

Tell-A-Friend

We invite our customers to mail friends an introductory free $5 gift-certificate. This is meant to encourage a visit to our store. To facilitate this, we ask for the name and e-mail address of the recipient. This information is used to electronically mail a unique certificate code, keep track and assure an accurate credit of five dollars at the time of the purchase. This information is not traded or shared with any third parties.

Live Help

To make shopping with us more enjoyable, we offer the benefits of a 'live help' feature. This allows a visitor to chat in real time with our customer representatives. The only information requested during a 'live chat' session is a visitor's first name. This information is used to visually differentiate the comments made by both parties, and is not stored, nor used in conjunction with any other personal information gathered by this site. The software that make 'live help' possible is the property of Live Person, Inc. Please be aware that Adagio Teas is not responsible for the privacy practices of this company.

Special Offers

Our customers will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our customers we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice/Opt-out section below.

On rare occasions it may be necessary to send out a strictly service-related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send you an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications. However, these communications are not promotional in nature, and are extremely infrequent.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of personal account data stored on the customer's hard drive containing info that will enhance the enjoyment of our site. For example, a cookie containing a record of past orders provides such useful features as an opportunity to easily reorder or refill any of our teas, and post reviews of the items previously purchased, as well as receive recommendation of the items we feel you will particularly enjoy.

You may control whether your computer will accept cookies (from Adagio Teas, BizRate or LivePerson) with the preference setting of your browser. If your browser is set to reject cookies, you may still visit and shop at our site. The only drawback is that some of the experience-enhancing features listed above will not be active.

Log Files

Logs are the information created and stored by the server and include such data as a visitor's IP (internet protocol) address, browser type, ISP (internet service provider), referring/exit pages, platform type, and date/time stamp. This information is used to analyze macro traffic trends, administer the site, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. None of the information collected in this matter may be used to ascertain the personal identity of any of our visitors.

Adagio Teas is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We do not sell or rent this information to any third party. The only two companies with whom some information is shared are Fedex and Verisign.

We use Fedex to ship orders, and Verisign gateways to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Correction/Updating Personal Information:

If your personal information changes or if you no longer desire our service, we provide an easy way to correct, update or remove your personal data. This may be accomplished with a visit to 'your account' page. We will happily assist you in this task. Simply drop us a note at [email protected].

Choice/Opt-out

We respect your privacy and give you an opportunity to opt-out of receiving our periodic announcements of sales, promotions and newsletter publication. This may be accomplished with a visit to 'your account' page. We will happily assist you in this task. Simply drop us a note at [email protected].

Adagio Teas takes every precaution to protect our customers' and visitors' information. When customers submit sensitive information via our site, your information is protected both on- and off-line.

All sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) submitted on our site is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL. You may visually verify that the site is secure by looking for the closed lock icon at the top of your browser.

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 visitors' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. And these employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage.

If you have any questions about the security at our site, please send an email to [email protected]. We will be happy to answer your questions.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will promptly post those changes on this page. We want our visitors to be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what 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. However, if you have deleted or deactivated your account information, you will not be contacted, nor will your information be used in this new manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

We keep your information private and protected, processing all orders through our secure server. We do not release an iota of this information to any third party.