Information Collection and Use
MEI Company ("Us" or "We") is the sole owner of information collected on this site to purchase most products and services from MEI Company (refer to the next paragraph for the limited exceptions to this). We will not sell, share, or rent this information to any third parties, except as outlined in this policy. We collect information from our customers to process orders and better serve you with pertinent information, such as order confirmations, order status updates, and to provide you with information on products and services that are available from us or parties associated with us. We may also use such information to better understand the shopping experiences of you individually or in conjunction with a group of our customers. Information collected includes your name, shipping address, billing address, telephone numbers, e-mail address, and payment information such as your credit card number. We may also require you to submit a username and password of your choice for your future access to your account information. To safeguard that your user name and password remain confidential, DO NOT share this information with anyone. If you elect to receive our newsletter, surveys, or special promotions, your contact information will be used for the delivery of these items. However, if you elect not to receive newsletters, surveys, or special promotions, we may still periodically send other transactional communications to you that contain customer relationship information. This includes, for example, informational emails regarding changes in our policies, changes in our methods of conducting business, or requesting that you review the information we have on file for you or the options that you have previously selected regarding your transactions with us.
We may also gather or receive information on you from third party sources, such as marketing databases made available for commercial purchase. Our use of such information will comply with applicable law, the limitations imposed by the third party on us in connection with our receipt of such information from such third party sources, but not necessarily this privacy statement.
For certain services, MEI Company has agreements with select third party business partners in order to provide our customers with additional services that we otherwise do not offer. In these cases, we collect certain information from you to send to the third party service provider in order to activate or upgrade your account with the service provider. We do not provide any of your information to the third party service provider unless you first consent. Any information that we provide to the third party service provider with your consent is owned by that service provider, and it may use your information for service approval, activation, upgrade and for other purposes that it requires. You should consult the privacy policies of the respective third party service providers, since this MEI Company Privacy Policy does not cover the use of your information in these limited circumstances.
In addition, from time to time we may provide you with chances to enter into sweepstakes or contests. We conduct these sweepstakes and contests in partnership with select third parties. When you enter, we collect certain personal information from you, and as a condition of entry, you typically must agree to allow us to share your information with the third party in order to allow the third party to manage the prize fulfillment process on our behalf. Otherwise, we do not provide your information to the third party.
Order
Most of the information collected in the registration process will be used to process orders. During the order process, you will have to provide financial information such as your credit card number, expiration date, money order, wire transfer or check information. This information is used for billing purposes and to fulfill your order. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this contact information to get in touch with you. To properly process your credit card information, we must share your personal and financial information with the merchant bank for authorization and approval. This process is protected by an enhanced security system. See the Security section below for more details on security measures and procedures. We do not share your personal and financial information with any third parties, except those specified in the Sharing section of this policy.
Cookies
We customize certain Web page content based upon your browser type and other information provided by our cookie. We will not share any personally identifiable information provided by this cookie with any third party. We will, however, link data stored in cookies to the personally identifiable information you submitted while on our site. Some of our business partners use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies.
This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by MEI Company only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Log Files
We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. We do not link IP addresses to personally identifiable information, and we do not distribute or share IP information with any third parties.
Sharing
We may employ third party companies to perform functions on our behalf. These functions may include order fulfillment, package delivery, marketing assistance, postal and e-mail delivery, customer service, data analysis, and credit processing. The third parties we contract for these purposes have limited access to your personal information and may not use it for other purposes.
Also, as set forth above in the "Information Collection and Use" section, for certain services MEI Company has agreements with select third party business partners in order to provide our customers with additional services that we otherwise do not offer. Such services include wireless communication services and sweepstakes and contests. In these cases, and only with your advance consent, we will share information collected from you with the third party service provider in order to allow the service provider to activate or upgrade your account or in order to manage the prize fulfillment process.
In addition, we may frame or mask another web site so that the look, feel and interface simulate the experience of browsing a genuine MEI Company web page. Care and discretion is exercised when evaluating third party sites. We only brand third party sites if their organization applies security and privacy practices which we view are reasonably consistent, where appropriate, to our own commitment to safe online shopping.
As our business continues to evolve, we may acquire or sell business units or subsidiaries. Customer information is one of the business assets that would be transferred in these types of transactions. In such a situation, your personally identifiable information would only be used in a manner consistent with our pre-existing Privacy Notice.
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information i) as required by law, ii) when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site, iii) when we believe that your actions violate applicable laws, iv) when we believe that your actions violate MEI Company's terms and conditions that you agree to by using, accessing or purchasing from or through www.MEICompany.com (or its affiliated websites), v) when we believe that your actions violate any usage guidelines for specific products or services, vi) when we believe that your actions violate or threaten the rights, property, or safety of our company, our users, or others, or (vii) when you consent to allow your personally identifiable information to be shared or disclosed.
Be aware that when you volunteer information or create a public profile in the course of your participation in our community features such as forums, user opinions and reviews, chat rooms, photo sharing or other forms of public communication and interaction, you are also agreeing to allow certain aspects of your personally identifiable information to be made public. This includes your screen name, any address or personal information or images that you add to your signature or otherwise post to the public, and any content of any such post.
Finally, if you have elected to allow us to share your personally identifiable information at the time that you registered with us or provided us the information, or through a subsequent affirmative election through our website, we may later disclose such information to others in compliance with your election and this privacy statement.
Third Party Service Providers Disclosure
We use RegNow to facilitate our order and payment processing. When you place an order, you may be automatically transferred to RegNow web site. Please be aware that their privacy policy governs the use and collection of your personally identifiable information and is shared with us to fulfill the order.
Testimonials
The testimonials section of the MEI Company website is for the purpose of sharing positive experiences that you had with MEI Company, with certain products, with certain services, or with certain companies associated with MEI Company. The testimonials section is moderated to ensure accurate and positive testimonials. Published testimonials are genuine, but MEI Company reserves the right to edit or alter such to remove personal information, statements that may be a violation of law, or statements that may infringe on the rights of MEI Company or third parties. MEI Company reserves the right to post or remove any testimonial at its discretion.
By posting your comment(s) or testimonial(s) ("Testimonial") on our website, you give us permission to reprint or use the Testimonial in connection with our businesses (including but not limited to the marketing and selling of various products and services, as well as the marketing of MEI Company). You also are agreeing to the following: (1) The reprint or use of the Testimonial will be at our discretion and without compensation to you; (2) We may use the Testimonial with or without any pseudo (pen) name credit; (3) Our right to use the Testimonial is perpetual and may be assigned by us; (4) We may use the Testimonial locally, nationally or globally and such use may be made in any media, information or communication platform (including Internet advertising) currently in use or later developed; (5) You and not someone else composed and posted the Testimonial; (6) MEI Company may allow any of its parents, subsidiaries or affiliates to use the Testimonial in the same manner as set forth herein but in relation to their businesses and websites; and (7) We may edit or alter such Testimonial to remove personal information, statements that may be a violation of law, or statements that may infringe on the rights of MEI Company or third parties.
Other than your pseudo (pen) name, which we may or may not use, your personal contact information will not be disclosed in connection with our reprint or use of your Testimonial.
Links
This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that MEI Company is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this website.
Security
MEI Company takes precautions to protect its customers' information. When you submit personal information via the website, we follow policies and procedures designed to protect your information both online and offline.
Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our homepage.
If you have opted out of receiving communications from MEI Company, you will still be able to view news of policy changes at www.MEICompany.com.
Last Update
The Privacy Policy contained herein became officially effective 10-11-07.
MEI Company
2231 Crystal Drive, Suite 711
Arlington, VA 22202
(V1.00: 10-11-07)