Mid-America Appliance Parts Center Privacy Statement
Version 1.1 - March 1, 2004
Printable Version

Overview

Privacy is of great concern to most users of the Internet, and is a critical part of an enjoyable and satisfactory user experience. We at Mid-America Appliance Parts Center are acutely aware of and sensitive to the privacy concerns of our subscribers and other visitors to our Web site. Whether you are a customer of ours, or a visitor to our site, we assure you that we do not collect personal information from you unless you provide it to us. If you are a retail customer purchasing items from our secure server, you may be asked to provide certain personal information, which we will use for the limited purpose of authenticating your identity and payment information, in order to complete your online transaction. If you are enrolling in Mid-America Appliance Parts Center 's Contractor Account Program, you may be asked to provide certain personal information in order for us to create your company's account with us. You should be assured that we do not provide information about our customers or site visitors to anyone outside our organization, and we do not sell information on our customers or site visitors to anyone.

This Privacy Statement applies to Mid-America Appliance Parts Center 's websites www.midamericaparts.com and www.memphisparts.com . Many of our Affiliates and Partners maintain their own privacy policies that may be viewed on their Web sites. We strive to provide our visitors and subscribers with the highest level of privacy possible, and therefore require that our Affiliates and Partners offer no less protection than that offered in this Privacy Statement. In addition, each of our Affiliates and Partners must meet the data protection requirements of relevant national law.

Please note that our site contains links to other sites. Mid-America Appliance Parts Center is not responsible for the privacy practices, privacy statements, or content regarding these other sites.

Information We Gather from You

Personal Information

We do not collect any personal information from a visitor to our site unless that visitor explicitly and intentionally provides it. Under no circumstances do we collect any personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health, or sex life. If you are simply browsing our site, we do not gather any personal information about you.

There are two ways in which you may explicitly and intentionally provide us with and consent to our collection of certain personal information:

E-mail Request for Information

We use links throughout our site to provide you with the opportunity to contact us via e-mail to ask questions, request information and materials, or provide comments and suggestions. You may also be offered the opportunity to have one of our representatives contact you personally to provide additional information about our products or services. To do so, we may request additional personal information from you, such as your name and telephone number, to help us satisfy your request.

Enrollment

If you choose to enroll for our newsletter or for a corporate charge account, we will request certain information from you. Depending on the type of product or service that you request, you may be asked to provide different personal information. For certain products and services, we may require your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card number, bank account information, IP address, and/or social security number. Other products and services may require different or supplemental information from you in order to apply. For a detailed listing of the type of personal information requested for our various products, please refer to the information page for the particular product or service.

Statistical Information About Your Visit

When you visit our site, our computers may automatically collect statistics about your visit. This information does not identify you personally, but rather about a visit to our site. We may monitor statistics such as how many people visit our site, the user's IP address, which pages people visit, from which domains our visitors come and which browsers people use. We use these statistics about your visit for aggregation purposes only. These statistics are used to help us improve the performance of our Web site. This information is not shared with any third party.

Use of Cookies

We only use "cookies" as described in this Section. A "cookie" is a piece of information that our Web site sends to your browser, which then stores this information on your system. If a cookie is used, our Web site will be able to "remember" information about you and your preferences either until you exit your current browser window (if the cookie is temporary) or until you disable or delete the cookie. Many users prefer to use cookies in order to help them navigate a Web site as seamlessly as possible. You should be aware that cookies contain no more information than you volunteer, and they are not able to "invade" your hard drive and return to the sender with personal or other information from your computer.

Our uses of "cookies" are limited to the following specific situations. The first situation is with respect to temporary cookies. There are two instances in which we use temporary cookies. First, if you come to our site from one of our business partners, our Web server may also send your browser a temporary cookie that reflects an "origination code" for that business partner. We use this information for statistical and marketing purposes. Second, if you are using Mid-America Appliance Parts Center 's Customer Login to log into an access-controlled section of our site, we set a temporary session cookie to establish that you have been authenticated. The information contained in these cookies consists of random data that is used by the server to authenticate the browser requests to the server for that particular session. It does not include any type of personally identifiable information. This bit of information is erased when you close your current browser window. If you choose not to accept a temporary cookie, you will not be able to navigate in these online applications.

The second situation in which we may use cookies is when you visit our Web site and request documentation or a response from us. When you are filling out a form you may be given the option of having our Web site deliver a cookie to your local hard drive. If you are a corporate customer with a user name and password, you may be given the option of having our Web site deliver a cookie to your local hard drive to assist you with logging into our site. This type of cookie is not temporary, although you can always delete or disable it through your browser preferences. If you choose not to accept a this type of cookie, you will still be able to use our Web site. You might choose to receive this type of cookie in order to save time in filling out forms and/or revisiting our Web site. We only send this type of cookie to your browser when you have clicked on the box labeled "Please remember my profile information" when submitting information or communicating with us. Even if you choose to receive this type of cookie, you can always set your browser to notify you when you receive any cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it in each situation in which one is sent. To find more information about cookies, if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer® as your browser, go to the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm?RLD=291 or if you are using Netscape Navigator® as your browser, go to the Netscape Web site at http://home.netscape.com/security/basics/privacy.html#cookies

How We Use and With Whom We Share the Information We Gather

We assure you that the information we gather from you is used by us only as explained below.

Sending you responses and updates

We generally respond to any e-mail questions, requests for product or service information, and other inquiries that we receive. We may also retain this correspondence to improve our products, services, and Web site, and for other disclosed purposes. Frequently we retain contact information so that we can send individuals updates or other important information about our services and products. Occasionally these updates or other important information may be sent out by third parties on our behalf. Please be assured that any third party who contacts you in this capacity has executed a confidentiality agreement with us that contains a provision ensuring the privacy and security of any transferred information and limits the third party's use of the shared information to sending updates or providing services on our behalf. In situations where you have supplied your information in connection with a question or request for information about a product or service offered by a Mid-America Appliance business partner, we may also send the information you have supplied to the Mid-America Appliance business partners that offer such products or services. Please be assured that these Mid-America Appliance business partners have agreed to ensure the privacy and security of any transferred information and may only use the shared information to send you information about products or services about which you asked.

Facilitating the support of our products and services

We may use the information you submit to contact you to discuss the support of our account services. We may also provide the information you have submitted to us to a Mid-America Appliance Parts Center business partner, representative or Affiliate business partner, representative or Affiliate can contact you and facilitate the support of our services. Our Affiliates are either connected to our network using a certificate-based public key infrastructure that permits interoperable and secure electronic commerce and communications, or are payment services affiliates connected using SSL, and in both cases they help us provide our customers with support, assistance, and the provision of our products and services. To find out the names and locations of the business partners, representatives and/or Affiliates to whom we have provided access to your information, please contact us at the address given at the end of this Privacy Statement.

Validating your identity

Certain types of accounts require that we compare some of the information in your application to information contained in a third-party database or with some other third party source. We do this in order to authenticate your identity and other attributes, and also to prevent identity theft. We have confidentiality agreements in place with these third-party databases restricting the disclosure of your information.

Processing payments

If you use our secure server for online transactions, we may provide your personal information to appropriate financial institutions, processors, and third parties under contract with Mid-America Appliance Parts Center or our Affiliates for providing a subset of the payment services (for example, credit authorization and fraud screening). For financial institutions and processors, the use of personally identifiable consumer information is governed by federal and state privacy laws. For other third parties under contract with Mid-America Appliance Parts Center, the use and distribution of your personal information will be used by such entity for its internal use related to fulfilling the transaction services for Mid-America Appliance Parts Center, will be treated as confidential by this entity, and will be transferred between Mid-America Appliance Parts Center and this entity only via encrypted means

Disclosure by Law and Protection of Mid-America Appliance Parts Center and Others

If we are required by law to disclose certain information to local, state, federal, national or international government or law enforcement authorities, we will do so (for example, we may disclose the identity of purchasers of certain products to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Export Administration, as required under the terms of our export licenses). In addition, Mid-America Appliance Parts Center may share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or suspected fraud, or enforce or apply Mid-America Appliance Parts Center 's agreements and policies.

Surveys

From time-to-time we may request information from customers via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use of and satisfaction with this Web site, and improving our customer service and product offerings.

Your Ability to Opt-Out of Further Notifications

From time-to-time, we notify our subscribers of new products and announcements. If you would like to opt-out of being notified, please contact us at the address given at the end of this Privacy Statement. You may also email us at info@midamericaparts.com. Please use word "Remove" in the subject line.

Please note that if you are ordering products using our secure server, the information you provide to us is used only to assist in making your online purchase, facilitating the support a product or service, or as required by law. We do not use this information to send you further notifications or communications other than those needed to support the product. Since we do not send you non-essential communications using your transaction information, there is no need to indicate an opt-out preference.

Our Security Procedures

We consider the protection of all personally identifiable information we receive from our Web site visitors and subscribers as critical to our corporate mission. Please be assured that we have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of any information we receive from you. As with any transmission over the Internet, however, there is always some element of risk involved in sending personal information. In order to try to minimize this risk, we encrypt all information that you submit in ordering one of our products using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. Our security procedures are also subject to at least an annual audit by VeriSign, Inc.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

If a material change is made to this Privacy Statement and/or the way we use our customers' personally identifiable information, then we will post prominent notice of the nature of such change on the first page of this Privacy Statement and also on our home page.

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