Your privacy is very important to Direct Brands. This privacy policy spells out Columbia House's commitment to respecting the privacy of the members of the Columbia House Clubs and visitors to our Club website. We reserve the right to change this policy, which we'll do through Club mailings or online posting. Whether you enroll online, offline or just visiting, we are very careful with what we do with your information. Collection of information is usually grouped into two categories: personal, which is information identifiable to a specific member, and aggregate, which is general demographic information that does not identify any individual member. Personal information may include your name, email address, mailing address, credit card information and phone number. We may also collect certain demographic information such as your genre preferences, age, gender, geographical location, language, time zone, income and education (some of the information we ask for may be optional). Columbia House may use or disclose aggregate information for any purpose.
We will not disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent.
How we use our members' personal information:
Club Offers and Special Promotions
Columbia House first uses your personal information to process and review your application for enrollment. We will use the information you provide to keep you informed of application and order status. If your application is not completed, if we require additional information or if we want to provide you with alternative offers, we may contact you based on what you already have provided. Once you have joined, we use your information to process your orders and personalize Columbia House mailings and the columbiahouse.com website based on your interests, including making you aware of special offers, newsletters and commercial offerings that may be of interest. Columbia House mostly does this by the periodic mailings sent to your postal address or to your email address. As a Club member you agreed to receive these mailings, and it is how your membership works. However, you do have the right to opt out of some of our emails by visiting the Email Preferences area of this website. Our Director's Selection and Reminder emails are part of being a member of our Club, and you may not opt out of receiving them. In order to provide services that better meet your needs, we also may supplement the information that you provide to us with other information that we receive from third parties.
We maintain a list of member-provided email addresses for the purpose of sending order confirmations and status reports, reminders, promotional information about Club news, products and special offers. If you provide us with your email address through our website, by phone or by mail, you will receive our free electronic newsletters. All Club members also have the option of signing up for this and other Club newsletters. If you wish to have your name removed from our promotional email list, or if you want to sign up for additional Club newsletters, please visit the Email Preferences section of the My Account area of our site. If you change your mind about receiving email or a particular newsletter, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails. We also may call you with special offers, for example, to join one of our other Clubs. If you do not wish to receive such phone calls please write to us, including any and all Club account numbers you have, at: Columbia House, P.O. Box 91601, Rantoul, IL 61866-8601, or give us a call at the number provided in your Membership Agreement.
We never sell or rent your name and email address to other online marketers of products or services without your consent. However, Columbia House may send email communications to members on behalf of these outside parties. If you do not want your name, address, email address or other personal information to be used for such purposes, please visit the Email Preferences section of the Account Info area of our site. If you change your mind, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails.
Sweepstakes
In our periodic mailings to our members, whether by email or postal mail, we may include sweepstakes and contest entry opportunities. While we believe these are exciting opportunities to win great prizes without any further obligation on your part, we also understand that you may not want to hear about all the details. If you do not want to receive details about sweepstakes or contests by email (you will still get sweepstakes by postal mail), please email us from the email address you want excluded at dvdnosweeps@columbiahouse.com. This is only for our members to opt out of sweepstakes email. Members who wish to opt out of receiving sweepstakes entry opportunities via postal mail (you will still get sweepstakes email) should write to us, and include any and all Club account numbers you have, at: Columbia House, P.O. Box 91601, Rantoul, IL 61866-8601. Please contact us via both methods to opt out of receiving sweepstakes offers through both email and postal mail. For both our members and visitors, we may use information you provide us when registering for these sweepstakes to administer prize awards, or to make offers about our services. Please check the official rules for each sweepstakes for more privacy information.
Other uses of your information
In the daily course of business, we may use your information to assist you if you have questions or problems, or to perform normal business operations, such as billing, collection and accounting. If you provide personal information in an application that is eventually rejected, we retain that information in case you apply again.
Columbia House uses industry-standard procedures and safeguards designed to protect the privacy of all personal information. All Columbia House employees with access to personal information are required to follow specific practices concerning its proper handling. Our vendors and their employees who may need access to member information, such as customer service and fulfillment vendors, are held to strict confidentiality requirements. At times we may retain third parties to analyze data we collect on our Club and website, and to administer the services provided (such as shipping, web hosting, etc.), solely to help us provide and improve our products, services and websites. These suppliers and other third parties are not authorized by us to use your personal information in any other way. We may have to use personal information to investigate complaints and protect Columbia House and its members, in compliance with the law, your Membership Agreements and Columbia House policies. Columbia House may release your information if required to do so by law, including inquiries that are subject to a subpoena, court order or warrant or to cooperate with or participate in legal investigations, enforce our user agreements or protect the rights, property or safety of Columbia House or other persons or entities.
Our online technology
Columbia House uses industry-standard technologies to make our website a safe and secure environment for making purchases online. When you make a purchase or join our Club using your credit card, the transactional information, including your credit card number, is stored on our server for archival purposes only. That information is encoded with 128-bit encryption. Your credit card information is encrypted and protected during transmission using Secure Sockets Layering ("SSL") technology. We use this SSL technology to help prevent such information from being intercepted and read as it is transmitted over the Internet. The encrypted data goes to a secure site where your information is stored on restricted-access computers located at restricted-access sites. For your shopping convenience, once you have entered your member ID and password and you check out, the site displays the last four digits of your credit card number so you always know which card you used. We also offer SSL encryption on new member applications. Please be careful whenever sending personal information to us via the "Contact Us" feature on this website or by email. For example, do not send us your account password or credit card information via these methods, as they may not be a secure means of transferring information.
In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your personal information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, to the extent we have your email address, we may notify you by email.
When you visit this site, we may collect technical information that does not, by itself, identify a specific individual. This information may include, for example, the address ("URL") of the website that you came from before visiting this site, which pages you visit on this site, which computer platform, monitor, web browser and related software and settings you used to view this site and any search terms you have entered on this site or a referral site. This technical data is aggregated and used to measure and improve the effectiveness of this site. We may collect your IP (Internet Protocol) address and/or domain name to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our site, see where our site traffic is coming from and identify our users. We may also collect other information via this site, such as site usage activity and preferences, also known as demographic or profile data. We may combine these types of technical data with your personal information. We may conduct some or all of these activities through our third party service providers who provide these services on our behalf.
Our website uses "cookies" and similar means to gather information. A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server if permitted by your browser settings. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you. Cookies are also used to recognize members' preferences, store session information (such as items that consumers add to their shopping cart), and past activity at our site in order to provide better service, easier access when members return to our site, and to enable delivery of offers which may be of interest to you. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of this or other websites you visit. The use of cookies is an industry standard-you'll find them almost everywhere on the Internet. Once we know it's you, we can customize your online visit. We can show you hot new releases based on your preferences, alert you to new website features or tell you about your Director's Selection. We may also evaluate our content and services and tailor our website, for members and visitors, based on other information we collect such as pixel tags (or clear gifs), and the type of Internet browser or operating system you are using. We may also use pixel tags in emails that we send to you. This information is collected in the aggregate, but we may tie it to your personal information through cookie use as described above. Cookies and/or pixel tags may be placed by our third party service providers, who provide these services on our behalf.
Naturally, we also pay attention to what you buy, we keep track of your shopping, purchases, traffic patterns, the pages you visit, and related site usage inside our website. This helps us to understand your entertainment preferences more fully and to present you with better recommendations, more relevant offers, important news about movies and other announcements we think may interest you. We may conduct some or all of these activities through our third party service providers who provide these services on our behalf. If a member enters our pages from the site of one of our partners, our system will recognize the path the visitor has taken. Columbia House advertises on such partners' sites or we've entered into a promotional partnership with them. We track the number of visitors to see the success of our online marketing or promotional campaign. These partners will not know your personal information, unless you are notified in advance, if you have given it to them separately or consented to give it to them through us. In cases where such partners have access to your information, we contractually bind them to keep your information confidential or to handle it in accordance with their posted privacy statements.
We also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure and enhance advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and pixel tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personally identifiable information to them through an ad or email message). We encourage you to read these businesses' privacy policies if you should have any concerns about how they will care for your personal information. If you would like more information about this practice and your choices, click here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp.
Access to Your Membership Information
For members who have registered online, please visit the "My Account" section at the Columbia House website. If you're not an online member, if you wish to change information offline, or if there are circumstances in which you wish to have your spouse, relative, or other trusted friend have access to your information, please write to us at Columbia House, P.O Box 91601, Rantoul, IL 61866-8601, or give us a call at the number provided in your Membership Agreement.
What if you're not a Club member, but you've heard from Columbia House?
If you're not a member but you've been contacted by Columbia House, we may have received your information in a few different ways. First, another member may have referred you under our "Tell A Friend" or "Sign Up A Friend" programs. For the online program, members will give us your name and email address in order for them to customize an invitation for you to join one our Clubs. You also may receive similarly customized email reminders from your friend about this invitation. If your friend has submitted your information offline, you will hear from us offline as well. Either way, if you apply for membership, your information will be used in accordance with the rest of this privacy policy. If you choose not to apply online, your email address will not be retained. Similarly, a member may have shipped a gift or other merchandise to you through us and provided your personal information for that purpose. You may have received an offer from us, whether through postal mail, by phone or by email. If you were a prior member of a Direct Brands Club, we may have invited you back. (We may also invite you to join another one of our Clubs if you're already a member of another Club. Please read above for how we handle that information.) Direct Brands may also have received your information from one of our partners or from the mailing, opt-in emailing, or phone lists of a reputable company. Unless we are using an opt-in only list in our marketing efforts, Columbia House will screen our lists with the Direct Marketing Association ("DMA") preference lists before we send such offers. Direct Brands is a proud member of the DMA.
If our Company Changes
Please note that because a customer information database is customarily considered a business asset, BMG Columbia House shall have the right to transfer it in a merger, sale of some or all of its company, consolidation, change in control, reorganization, liquidation or in an action for bankruptcy. In the event all or part of our company is sold or dissolved, we will transfer information we have about you to one or more third parties with a requirement that such third parties treat your personal information substantially in accordance with our privacy policy as it exists at the time of the transfer. If we close down one of our services or shut down a website, we will keep your information secure and will only use it, again, in accordance with the terms of our then current privacy policy.
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of such updates by posting the updated policy on this site, and, depending on the nature of the change, we may also notify you by email. Please check back here occasionally. You will always find the latest version posted here.
If you still have questions
Please contact Customer Service by writing to Columbia House, P.O. Box 91601, Rantoul, IL 61866-8601, calling the phone number provided in your Membership Agreement or visiting the Customer Service area of our website.
Date of Last Update to Privacy Policy: January 03, 2010
