Privacy Policy

Protecting your privacy is a commitment for La Maison du Chocolat (“LMC,” “we,” “us” and “our”). This privacy policy (the “Policy”) describes how we collect, use, and share your Personal Information (defined below), including information provided by you through our https://www.lamaisonduchocolat.com/en_us (collectively, the “website”), at our retail stores, on-site events, or conferences, and through other LMC platforms in the USA. 

By visiting our website, submitting information, and/or purchasing any products you agree to let us collect and use your Personal Information as described in this Policy. Therefore, before you provide us with any Personal Information, you should read through this Policy in its entirety and understand its terms. 

We may modify or update this Policy from time to time. We encourage you to revisit this page often to remain fully informed of our Policy or you can contact us at any time to obtain the latest copy of this Policy.

This Policy describes:

• Personal Information We Collect;
• How We Collect Your Personal Information;
• How We Use Your Personal Information;
• How We Disclose Your Personal Information;

• How We Protect Your Personal Information;
• Ability to Access, Update and Correct Personal Information;
• California Privacy Rights;
• General Data Protection Regulation;

• Changes to the Policy;
• Questions About This Policy.

PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

LMC collects information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to any individual or a household (“Personal Information”). LMC also collects non-Personal Information that cannot be linked or associated with any individual person or household. When non-Personal Information is combined with other information so that it does identify an individual person, we treat that combination as Personal Information. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of Personal Information about you, which we have grouped together as follows:

• Audio and Visual Information such as call recordings and videos, recorded screencasts from customer service sessions, and image files attached to articles, posts, or comments in ZenDesk’s Help Center Functionality and Community Forum functionality.

• Contact Information such as your billing address, delivery address, email address, telephone numbers, and, for business-to-business users, company name and legal entity name.
• Financial Information such as credit or debit card information, payment details, bank account details, amount of transaction and category and ID of merchant, or other payment information.
• Identifiers such as your first name, last name, alias, username or similar unique personal identifier, account name, marital status, title,  loyalty card number, online identifier, country, and/or date of birth.

• Profile Data such as user name, password, gift messages, LinkedIn information, employment information, posts and comments within ZenDesk’s Community Forum, data provided to customer support (e.g. subject of inbound phone calls and emails, ticket comments, ticket tags, ticket custom fields and audit events) and communication preferences.
• Internet and other electronic network activity information such as internet protocol (IP) address, device type, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, connector data that is ingested into ZenDesk’s Analytics functionality from other ZenDesk services and functionality as part of the ZenDesk integration (such as Suite or Support), operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our website and other LMC platforms.
• Commercial Data details about the products you have purchased, payments you have made, and/or other details of products and services you have purchased from us in the past, purchase or product preferences, personal interests, feedback, reviews, and survey responses.
• Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, such as age and gender.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and services, such as statistics regarding the opening of and clicking on emails sent by LMC and activity on the site (pages viewed, products seen, abandoned baskets, etc.) and information entered into third party messaging channels enabled within LMC platforms.
• Marketing and Communications Information such as marketing campaign data, clickthroughs, clickstreams, referring URL, Google Analytics ID, dashboard email content from ZenDesk’s Analytics functionality, your preferences and consent in receiving marketing from us and our third parties, email and text communications, and your communication preferences.
• Inference Data including inferences drawn from the Personal Information identified above.

Retention. For each of these categories of Personal Information, we will retain the information as long as is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, to comply with applicable laws and regulations, and/or to support any claim, defense, or declaration in a case or before a jurisdictional and/or administrative authority, arbitration, or mediation panel.

If You Do Not Provide Personal Information. Where we need to collect Personal Information by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you do not provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with products or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

Information You Provide To A Third Party. The website may include links, plug-ins to websites operated by third parties such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube (“Third-Party Site(s)”). LMC does not control any Third-Party Sites and is not responsible for any information they may collect. The information collection practices of a Third-Party Site are governed by its privacy policy. It is your choice to enter any Third-Party Site. We recommend that you read its privacy policy if you choose to do so.

Children’s Privacy. The website is intended for adult use only and is not directed towards children, minors, or anyone under the age of 18. If you are under the age of 13, you are not authorized to provide us with any Personal Information. If the parent or guardian of a child under 13 believes that the child has provided us with any Personal Information, the parent or guardian of that child should contact us at the email address below and to have this Personal Information deleted from our files.

HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Information You Provide To Us:

LMC may collect Personal Information from you that you voluntarily provide to us in various ways, including, but not limited to:

• Create an account with us
• Apply to our Chocolate Circle loyalty club
• Place an order or purchase products from us or otherwise visit our website, retail stores, or other LMC platforms
• Register and attend an event or class
• Sign up to receive newsletters
• Respond to surveys or marketing emails
• Call, email, text, or otherwise communicate with us and/or third parties contracted by LMC
• Otherwise interact with our website, retail stores, or other LMC platforms

Information We Collect When You Use Our Services

Automated technologies or interactions. As is true of most websites, we receive and store certain types of Personal Information whenever you interact with us online. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. When you access and use our website and platforms from your mobile devices, we receive data from that mobile device. This may include your device ID, location data, IP address and device type. You may manage how your mobile device and mobile browser share location information with us, as well as how your mobile browser handles cookies and related technologies by adjusting your mobile device privacy and security settings. Please refer to instructions provided by your mobile service provider or the manufacturer of your device to learn how to adjust your settings.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies. We and our service providers use cookies, pixels, and other tracking technology to recognize your browser or device and to capture and remember certain information about your activities on our website. For example, cookies gather information about how long you spend on a web page so that we can understand what web pages are of interest to users. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off cookies by adjusting your browser settings. If you turn off your cookies, some of the features of the website may not function properly.

Information We Collect From Third Parties

We collect Personal Information from various third parties, including those listed below. The collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information received from third parties is governed by the privacy policies listed on the website where the information was submitted by the user. Third parties may send their own cookies and pixel tags to you, and may collect information and use it in a way inconsistent with this Policy. Please carefully review these third-party privacy policies to understand how your information may be collected, used and disclosed by these third parties.

Third Party Service Providers. We collect Personal Information from service providers including payment processors, website hosting providers, electronic commerce providers, fulfillment centers, shipping providers, email service providers, SMS marketing providers, product review platforms, and social media platforms.

Third Party Advertising Partners. We collect Personal Information received from third party advertising partners, including partners who host and manage various online advertisements and ad platforms.  This may be combined with the website analytics data described below.  

Third Party Retail Partners. We collect Personal Information received from third party retail partners to facilitate the sale and shipment of our products through online stores.  

Third Party Cookies.  We engage third-party service providers, including Google and Facebook, to serve interest based ads to you about our products and services as you browse the Internet. These third-party providers may use their own cookies tags to track your online activities and purchases in order to deliver targeted advertising based on your interests.  Please read our Cookie Policy here for more information.  

Google Analytics. We use third party cookies provided by Google Analytics to assist us in better understanding our website visitors. These cookies collect IP address and usage data, such as the length of time a user spends on a page, the pages a user visits, and the websites a user visits before and after visiting our website. Based on this information, Google Analytics compiles data about website traffic and interactions, which we use to offer better user experiences and tools in the future. For information on how to opt-out from Google Analytics, visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.  

Your ‘Do Not Track’ Browser Setting. Some web browsers incorporate a Do Not Track (“DNT”) feature that signals to the websites that you visit that you do not want to have your online activity tracked. At this time, our website does not respond to DNT signals. Other third party websites may keep track of your browsing activities when they provide you with content, which enables them to customize what they present to you on their websites.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION 

We will only use your Personal Information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your Personal Information in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to provide products or services to you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Purposes For Which We Will Use Your Personal Information

Our primary purpose in collecting Personal Information is to provide you the products and services that you have ordered or requested with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience.  

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your Personal Information, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your Personal Information for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your Personal Information. Please contact us if you need details about the specific lawful ground we are relying on to process your Personal Information where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

HOW WE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We disclose your Personal Information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this Policy and with our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors in order to provide you with our goods and services and perform any contract we enter into with them or you. We do not retain your Personal Information for a duration that is longer than reasonably necessary for the disclosed purpose.

Information You Instruct Us to Share. You may be presented with an option on our website to have us send certain information to third parties or give them access to it. If you choose to do so, your Personal Information and other information may be disclosed to such third parties and all information you disclose will be subject to the third-party privacy policies and practices of such third parties.

User Disclosures.  Some Personal Information is disclosed as a matter of course as a result of your use of the website.  For example, if you choose to review a product or participate in our community forum.   Any Personal Information shared via any public forum on our website will become public information.  

Service Providers.  We may use third-party service providers to perform certain business services and may disclose Personal Information to such service providers as needed for them to perform these business services.  Service providers are only allowed to use, disclose or retain the Personal Information to provide these services and are prohibited from selling Personal Information.   Business services provided include, but are not limited to, hosting services, communications services, website development services, collection services, payment processing services, accounting and audit services, compliance services, quality control services, analytics services, call center services, and marketing services.

We use the Google reCAPTCHA tool to protect our website from various types of abusive processing attempts.  In order for this tool to work, reCAPTCHA analyzes various information that it collects from each visitor, which may include the IP address, mouse movements, length of stay, and other information gathered by Google.  By using reCAPTCHA, this data is sent to Google and used to determine whether the visitor is a natural person or an abusive automated program (e.g. bot).  You can find more information about reCAPTCHA at https://www.google.com/recaptcha.  All information captured by the Google reCAPTCHA tool is subject to Google’s Terms and Privacy Policy.

Internal Third Parties. We may share Personal Information with our parent company, subsidiaries, successors, assigns, licensees, affiliates, or business partners and others, including where disclosure of your Personal Information is needed to protect the employees, independent contractors, officers, directors, members, users, or shareholders of LMC who may use the Personal Information for the purposes described above.

Categories of Personal Information that have been disclosed for a business purpose in the past twelve months include:

• Audio and Visual Information
• Contact Information
• Financial Information
• Identifiers
• Profile Data
• Internet and other electronic network activity information
• Transaction Data
• Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law
• Usage Data
• Marketing and Communications Information
• Inference Data

Business Transactions. We may do business with third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your Personal Information in the same way as set out in this Policy.

Legal Process. Subject to applicable law, we may disclose information about you (i) if we are required to do so by law, regulation or legal process, such as a subpoena; (ii) in response to requests by government entities, such as law enforcement authorities; (iii) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical, financial or other harm, injury or loss; or (iv) in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual unlawful activity.

Personal Information Sold or Shared. We have not sold any Personal Information in the past twelve months.   We have shared Personal Information in the past twelve months with our third party advertising partners to serve ads to you about our products and services as you browse the Internet.  “Sharing” is defined under California privacy law as “renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s Personal Information by the business to a third party for cross-context behavioral advertising, whether or not for monetary or other valuable consideration, including transactions between a business and a third party for cross-context behavioral advertising for the benefit of a business in which no money is exchanged.”  This sharing means that these third-party service providers may use their own cookies or tags to track your online activities and purchases in order to deliver targeted advertising based on your interests.  You can opt of sharing through the Do Not Share My Personal Information link. Additionally, if your browser supports it, you can turn on the Global Privacy Control (GPC) to opt-out of the “sharing” of your Personal Information. Learn more at the Global Privacy Control website.  LMC has no actual knowledge of any sales or sharing of Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age.

COMMUNICATIONS AND OPT OUT 

By establishing an account, making a purchase, or registering to receive our newsletter, you may consent to receive periodic commercial/promotional email communications from us. You may opt-out of receiving such promotional communications at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions in a promotional email or by emailing lamaisonduchocolat-compliance@savencia.com. This opt out will not apply to operational or informational emails related to your account and purchases. You may continue to receive promotional email messages for a short period while we process your request.

For individuals in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or the United Kingdom, please see the Section entitled EEA and United Kingdom Privacy Rights in particular the Marketing paragraph of that Section for information relevant to them.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

LMC transmits information via industry standard secure server (SSL). This SSL creates the secure and encrypted https:// website address for our important pages like My Cart and the Checkout area. When you see the https:// website address, you know the information you are in-putting is protected and secure. We also comply with payment card industry data security standards that require merchants to implement security measures for credit card information. We never have access to your credit card information, as it is tokenized following PCI-compliant standards.

We have implemented and maintain generally accepted industry standards to protect against the unauthorized access, use, modification, destruction or disclosure of your Personal Information both during transmission and once we receive it.   However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure.

ABILITY TO ACCESS, UPDATE AND CORRECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

LMC wants your Personal Information to be complete and accurate. You represent and warrant that all information you provide in connection with your use of the website will be complete and accurate, and that you will update that information as necessary to maintain its completeness and accuracy. To confirm the completeness and accuracy of, or make changes to, your Personal Information, please contact us at lamaisonduchocolat-compliance@savencia.com.

CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS 

California Consumer Privacy Act. The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides California residents with specific rights regarding their Personal Information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Upon verification of your identity you may:

• No more than twice in any 12-month period, request disclosure of the following information:
  1. Categories of Personal Information we collect.
  2. Categories of sources from which Personal Information is collected.
  3. Categories of Personal Information sold or disclosed to third parties.
  4. Categories of third parties with whom such Personal Information is sold or disclosed.
  5. Business or commercial purpose for collecting, sharing, or selling Personal Information.
  6. Specific pieces of Personal Information we collect.
• Request deletion of your Personal Information, subject to the exceptions provided by law.
• Request to correct inaccurate Personal Information.
• Opt-out from having your Personal Information sold to or shared with third parties, if applicable.
• Limit use and disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information for any purpose other than the pre-approved business purposes identified in the privacy law if we process any such information, which we currently do not.  

Requests to know or delete can be submitted by calling our toll-free number 1-800-322-2743 or by completing our online form.  You can opt out of having your Personal Information sold to third parties by clicking on the “Do Not Share My Personal Information” link.  Additionally, when we detect a GPC signal from a user’s browser within California, we stop sharing the user’s Personal Information. You can learn more about the GPC and how to enable it in your browser from the Global Privacy Control website.

Please note that these rights apply only to California consumers, job applicants, employees, and business contacts. Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your Personal Information. Except where you have provided an agent with a Power of Attorney pursuant to Sections 4000 – 4465 of the California Probate Code, when using an authorized agent you must: (1) provide the agent with signed permission clearly describing their authority to make a request on your behalf; (ii) verify your own identity; and (iii) directly confirm that you have provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request. That agent must also be able to verify their identity with us and provide us with their authority to act on your behalf.

The verifiable consumer request initiated by you or your authorized agent must:

• Include your full legal name, email, and phone number, which we will need to contact you in order to verify that you are the person about whom we collected Personal Information or an authorized representative.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with Personal Information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the Personal Information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. One of our representatives will contact you in order to verify your identity. You may need to provide additional information in order to verify your request. Depending on the nature of the request, we may require additional verification actions be taken, including but not limited to providing a signed declaration under penalty of perjury that you are the consumer whose Personal Information is the subject of the request. We will only use this information to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

• Complete the transaction for which we collected the Personal Information, provide a product or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
• Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
• Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
• Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
• Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 seq.).
• Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
• Comply with a legal obligation.
• Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded.

The CCPA provides the right to be free from discrimination if you choose to exercise your rights under the statute, and we will not discriminate by:

• Denying you products or services.
• Charging you different prices or rates for products or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Providing you a different level or quality of products or services.
• Suggesting that you may receive a different price or rate for products or services or a different level or quality of products or services.

Other California Privacy Rights. California residents have the right to receive information that identifies any third party companies or individuals that LMC has shared your Personal Information with in the previous calendar year, as well as a description of the categories of Personal Information disclosed to that third party. You may obtain this information once a year and free of charge by contacting us at the address below.

GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION

General Data Protection Regulation. This section is relevant to you as long as you are enrolled in LMC's worldwide loyalty program. The implementation of the loyalty program and the associated commercial prospecting requires the processing of your data in France within LMC France acting as data controller. Information is also shared with all our subsidiaries (WW loyalty program).

The rights resulting from GDPR are therefore applicable to you. The relevant data protection policy is available here.

The information collected on this website is hosted by Linkbynet.   Linkbynet is a hosting provider established in the European Union and therefore complies with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Linkbynet has settled its own data protection standards that you can access and benefit from here:  https://www.linkbynet.com/privacy-policy#.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

LMC may modify or update this Policy from time to time. We encourage you to revisit this page often to remain fully informed of our Policy or you can contact us at any time to obtain the latest copy of this Policy.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS POLICY

For questions or comments regarding our Policy, you can also email us at lamaisonduchocolat-compliance@savencia.com 

Effective January 1, 2023

Last Update: January 1, 2023