Privacy Policy

Order

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

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

Surveys

From time-to-time our site requests information from users by way of surveys. For example, our ‘order received’ page invites customer feedback. 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.

Reviews

We invite our customers to submit reviews of the products they have purchased earlier. This information is then displayed on our site to aid other visitors' shopping experience. These submissions are always voluntary, and the only personal information requested is customer's name.

Referrals

We invite our customers to mail friends an introductory free $10 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 in 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.

Information Sharing

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 companies with whom some information is shared are those involved in the task of delivering customers’ orders, such as USPS, UPS, Fedex, DHL and Lasership or processing payments, such as PayPal. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

We may also share this information with third party service providers to serve online personalized messages and offers on our behalf. You can always opt out of these by unchecking the "email marketing" box in your account page.

How you may affect the collection, use and distribution of your information

Updating 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. If you require assistance, please email us 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. If you require assistance, please email us at [email protected].

Protection Methods

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 displayed by 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. The entirety 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.

Notification of Changes

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.