PRIVACY POLICY

Effective Date: February 11, 2011.

This website (“Site”) is operated by VORWERK, LLC. VORWERK, LLC including all of its affiliates (referenced herein as “VORWERK” or “we” or “us” or “our”), recognize the importance of protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy explains our information practices and how VORWERK collects, uses and discloses the personal information you may choose to provide to us, whether online or otherwise.

By using VORWERK’s website (or any of our affiliate’s international websites or applications) and any products, services software, tools, applications, features or functionality offered on or through the website or mobile application (collectively, the “Site” or “Sites”) you signify your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. Please note that if you choose to share information about yourself in an open format, such as through a Third-Party Site such as Facebook, we may consider some of that information to be public information—and not personal information.

This Policy went into effect on the date noted at the top of this webpage. We may update this Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will post the updated statement on this page and change the date at the top of this statement webpage. We encourage you to look for updates and changes to this statement by checking this date when you access our websites and mobile applications. We will notify you of any modifications to this statement that might materially affect the way we use or disclose your personal information prior to the change becoming effective by means of a message on this website.

 

COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

“Personal information” refers to any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household such as a real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, social security number, driver’s license number, passport number, or other similar identifiers.

Personal information does not include:

Publicly available information from government records.

• De-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the scope of privacy regulations (e.g., CCPA).

Information You Give Us

We collect personal information from you when you use our Sites or make contact with us through other sources (including through one of our retail partners or THERMOMIX Independent Consultants), such as when you: (i) visit / browse our Sites; (ii) complete forms on our Sites; (iii) attend and/or complete forms at an event; (iv) place or attempt to place an order; (v) register an account / as a customer; (vi) register as an Independent Consultant; (vii) email us; (viii) participate in promotions or surveys; (ix) communicate or coordinate with a customer service representative; (x) forward information to a friend; and (xi) event registration.

 

In particular, we may collect the following categories of personal information:

• Personal Identifiers: name, alias, address (billing/shipping/contact), email address, telephone number, credit card number, debit card number, Social Security number, signature, insurance policy number, and/or bank account number / routing number / name on account.
• Transaction History. products purchased, obtained, or considered.
• Communication data: audio and electronic content.

Information We Collect Automatically

We collect personal information about you

Some information We may use the collected information about you and the services you use to help us personalize and improve your experience. In particular, we may collect the following categories of personal information (independently or through marketing service providers):

• Device Identifiers: Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, operating system, domain name, unique device ID.
• Location data: physical location and inferred country.
• Internet or other similar network activity (through cookies, web beacons, and pixel tags): Browsing history, search history, information about your interaction with our Sites, application, marketing emails or advertisements.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

Some information we collect is publicly available. We may collect information about you from other data aggregation companies and organizations. By gathering additional information about you, we can correct inaccurate information, enhance the security of your transactions, and give you product recommendations and special offers that are more likely to interest you.

• Inferences drawn from other personal information: profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, and attitudes.

 

COLLECTION OF NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION

When you visit the Site, we (independently or through service providers) may collect certain non-personal information from you,

• Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager: We may also use Google Analytics and the Google Tag Manager, which are both web analysis services provided by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”). The information generated by the cookie regarding your use of the Site is usually transferred to a Google server in the USA and is stored there. You can prevent collection by Google of the data generated by the cookie and relating to your use of the Site (including your IP address), as well as processing of this data by Google, by downloading and installing the browser plug-in provided at the following link: Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
• Environmental Variables: We and our service providers may also collect certain environmental variables, such as your computer type (Windows or Macintosh), screen resolution, OS version, and Internet browser. These environmental variables are collected by most browsers and can be used to optimize your experience on the Site.

 

USE OF INFORMATION

We may use the above-mentioned categories of personal information for one or more of the following business purposes:

• To process your request for information (e.g., product/services, cooking demonstrations, Independent Consultant opportunities).
• To process product and service transactions and send notices about your transactions.
• To provide sales and customer service support, as well as quality assurance therein.
• To fulfill or meet the reason for which the information is provided. For example, if you provide us with your banking information to receive commission payments, we will use that information to transmit commission payments.
  • To provide targeted marketing and advertising, provide service update notices, and deliver promotional offers based on your communication preferences.
  • To provide sales support.
  • To permit emails to friends. We may provide functionality to permit you to send messages regarding Site-related content to a friend through the Site. If you wish to use this feature, you may provide us with your friend’s email address so that we can facilitate the sending of your message to your friend.
  • To verify your identity, including account related questions.
  • To send administrative communications regarding the Site, service-related announcements, etc., which are necessary to serve you, respond to your concerns and to provide the high level of customer service that VORWERK offers. Because this information may be important to your use of the Site, you may not opt-out of receiving such communications unless you explicitly withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information as outlined in this Privacy Policy.
  • To review/manage Site usage and operations, and for compliance with our Terms of Use and the law.
  • To address problems with the Site, our business or our services.
  • To contact you at any telephone number, by placing a voice call or through text (SMS) or email messaging, as authorized by our Terms and Conditions and the Independent Consultant Agreement.
  • To detect, prevent, or investigate security breaches, fraud, or other suspicious / prohibited/ illegal activity; or violations of our Independent Consultant Agreement or Consultant Handbook.
  • Maintain appropriate records for internal administrative purposes.
  • To provide important product safety information and notice of product recalls.
  • We use your IP address, and the IP addresses of all users, for purposes such as calculating Site usage levels, helping diagnose problems with the Site’s servers, administering the Site, analyzing trends, internal statistics / research, including suspicious activity detection and prevention, administering the Site, tracking traffic patterns, and gathering demographic information for aggregate use.
  • To improve our website and present its contents to you.
  • For testing, research, analysis and product development.
  • As described to you when collecting your personal information.
  • We may use these technologies to collect information for a variety of purposes such as to analyze how the Site is used, personalize your experience on the Site, or improve our content or offerings. Your browser may provide tools to block or delete cookies. However, if your browser is set to reject cookies or you manually delete cookies, you may have some trouble accessing and using some of the pages and features that are currently on our Site, or that we may put on our Site in the future. (cookies)

 

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

We may disclose the above-mentioned categories of personal information collected from and about any Site user in the following circumstances:

• Affiliated Entities. When disclosure to an affiliated entity is necessary for purposes of management and analysis, decision making, and other business purposes.
• Protect Lawful Interests. When disclosure is necessary to protect lawful interests, if we believe that the disclosure is required by law, is necessary to enforce our Site Terms of Use, or if we believe that the disclosure will help us protect the rights, property, or safety of VORWERK or our any third-party.
• Law Enforcement; Emergencies; Compliance. When disclosure is necessary to respond to legal process, such as a search warrant, subpoena or court order, and provide information to law enforcement agencies or in connection with an investigation on matters related to public safety, as permitted by law, or otherwise as required by law.
• Emails to Friends / “Expression of Interest” to become an Independent Consultant. When you express interest on your or a friend’s behalf. Please note that any personal information you provide in connection with sending messages regarding Site-related content to a friend through the Site, such as your name and your email address, will of course be disclosed to your friend.
• Assignment. When disclosure is necessary in the event of a business transaction, such as if our company is involved in a merger, acquisition, partial or total sale of assets including in bankruptcy, or other corporate change, your personal information may be shared with business entities or people involved in the negotiations or transfer.
• Communications to Independent Consultants. When disclosure is necessary to connect you with an Independent Consultant. For example, if you request to order products through an Independent Consultant or to otherwise interact with an Independent Consultant, VORWERK may provide your personal information (e.g., your name, phone number, email address and order information) with your agreement to such Independent Consultant to fulfill your request. Independent Consultants who receive your personal information may then use it for their own direct marketing purposes to contact you about additional offers that may interest you. If you are an Independent Consultant, we may disclose limited personal information to current and potential customers who are seeking the assistance of an Independent Consultant, to customers who buy products through you, and to other Independent Consultants. We may share information, including aggregate or de-identified information, with third-parties in our discretion, including but not limited to the types of sharing described above.
• Other Non-affiliated Parties, including service providers, such as:
  1. Suspicious Activity Prevention and Risk Management: to help prevent suspicious activity or assess and manage risk. For example, at the time of order, we may collect and share your email, phone number, billing and shipping addresses and device information (including IP address and geographic location) with our service provider.
  2. Shipping: in connection with shipping products you may have ordered through the Site.
  3. Other Service Providers: to enable service providers under contract with us to support our business operations, such as processing non-cash payments, sales/use tax calculations, bill collection, sending marketing communications, customer service, promotion/contest/sweepstakes administration, event management/planning, IT hosting, servicing products, conducting surveys, order fulfilment, data aggregation, and technology services. Our contracts dictate that these service providers only use your information in connection with the services they perform for us and not for their own benefit.

Please note that our service providers may be located in foreign jurisdictions, and your personal information may be subject to the laws of those foreign jurisdictions and accessible to law enforcement and other authorities.

 

YOUR CHOICES / PRIVACY RIGHTS

You may opt-out of receiving certain communications from us by updating your preferences (on any email received) or unsubscribing to the email received. We will endeavor to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you opt-out as described above, we will not be able to remove personal information from the databases of Independent Consultants or third parties with which we have already shared personal information (i.e., to which we have already provided personal information about you as of the date that we implement your opt-out request). If you wish to cease receiving marketing-related emails from such Independent Consultants or third parties, please contact such Consultants or third parties directly or utilize any opt-out mechanisms set forth in their respective privacy policies or marketing-related emails.

 

UPDATING AND ACCESSING YOUR INFORMATION

• Pursuant to data privacy regulations, you have the right to change and/or correct the personal information that you provide us by emailing us a

[email protected]

You also have the right to:

• Request details about the categories of personal information collected about you and, if permissible and practical, a copy of the personal information (data portability).
• Request that we delete any of the personal information that we collected from you, subject to certain exceptions. Once your request is verified, we will proceed with your request, unless an exception applies. We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:
  • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good 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.).
  • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
  • 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.

Exercising your Rights

To exercise your rights, as described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

• • Calling us at 888-867-9375.
  • Completing and submitting this Request Form.

 

• • Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable request related to your personal information.
  • You may only make a verifiable request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable request must:
  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify 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 request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format

• • We endeavor to respond to a verifiable request within 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. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable.

Right to Non-Discrimination for the Exercise of Your Privacy Rights

• • We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of the above described rights. This includes, but is not limited to: (i) denying good or services to you; (ii) charging you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through the use of discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties; (iii) providing a different level or quality of goods or services; or (iv) suggesting that you will receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

 

NOTICE TO NON-UNITED STATES OF AMERICA RESIDENTS

• • This Site and the products / services on this Site are targeted for users in the United States of America only. The products on this Site are advertised for sale in the United States of America only. Products will not be shipped outside of the United States of America.

 

SALE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

• • We do not and will not sell your personal information to third parties. As such, there is no need to submit a request for us to not sell your personal information. If you have any questions, please contact us at

[email protected]

• • .

 

SOCIAL COMMERCE AND OTHER THIRD PARTIES

• • We work with social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. All of these companies operate Third-Party Sites. We provide access to our Site by third-parties and business partners so that we can generate interest in our products among members of your social networks and to allow you to share product interests with friends in your network. The use of any features made available to you on our Site by a third party may result in information being collected or shared about you by us or by the third party. If you do not want us to be able to access information about you from Third-Party Sites, you must instruct Third-Party Sites not to share the information. We cannot control how your data is collected, stored, used or shared by Third-Party Sites or to whom it is disclosed. Please be sure to review the privacy policies and privacy settings on your social networking sites to make sure you understand the information they are sharing. If you do not want a Third-Party Site to share information about you, you must contact that site and determine whether it gives you the opportunity to opt-out of sharing such information. VORWERK is not responsible for how these third parties may use information collected from or about you.

YouTube

At various points on our website, we embed content from YouTube using YouTube API Services. YouTube is a service of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. When you visit a page with embedded YouTube content and a video is played, a connection is established between your device and YouTube’s servers. Your IP address, our website URL and, if applicable, your IP address. transmits further information to YouTube and uses cookies with your consent. If you are logged in to Google at the same time, the information will be assigned to your YouTube member account. You can prevent this by logging out of your member account before visiting our website.

Information on the processing of personal data by Google can be found here.

YouTube’s terms of use can be found here.

SECURITY

• • We maintain reasonable and appropriate measures designed to maintain the personal information we collect on this Site in a secure manner.

 

USE BY CHILDREN

• • We do not intend for our websites or online services to be used by anyone under the age of 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we may have collected information about your child, please contact us at

[email protected]

• • .

 

INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING

• • • We may partner with ad networks and other ad serving providers (“Advertising Providers”) who serve ads on behalf of us and others on non-affiliated sites. Some of those ads may be personalized, meaning that they are intended to be more relevant to you based on information Advertising Providers collect about your visits to this Site and other websites over time. You may visit

www.aboutads.info

• • • to learn more about this type of advertising and to opt-out of this form of advertising by companies participating in the Digital Advertising Alliance self-regulatory program. Note that electing to opt-out will not stop advertising from appearing in your browser or applications. It may make the ads you see less relevant to your interests. In addition, note that if you use a different browser or erase cookies from your browser, you may need to renew your opt-out choice.

 

THIRD-PARTY WEBSITES AND PLUG-INS

• • • This Site may contain links to third-party websites or applications that are not affiliated with VORWERK, and which may have privacy policies that differ from our own. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements before disclosing any personal information. Please contact those websites directly if you have any questions about their privacy policies. This Site may include social media tools, such as social networking and blogging tools offered by third-parties. If you use these tools to share information about your use of the Site, or otherwise interact with social media features on the Site, those third-party social media companies may collect information about you and may use and share such information in accordance with their own policies, including by sharing such information with the general public. Your interactions with third-party social media companies and the use of their features are governed by the privacy policies of the social media companies that provide those features. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policies of any social media accounts you create and use.

 

CONTACTING US

• • • If you have any questions, please contact us at

[email protected]

• • .