Our Commitment to Your Privacy
CheapRates.org is committed
to making your online shopping experience as convenient and as safe as possible.
Please read our Privacy Policy to learn more about our commitment to protecting your information.
First, a little bit about ourselves: CheapRates.org is a
portal website to multiple partnered vendors who provide you great opportunities to
receive 'cheap rates.' cheaprates.org, as a portal site, has
taken certain steps to ensure that your data is properly collected, handled,
and protected when you search for cheaper rates.
Registration: Registration
is simply a way to enhance customer interaction within our network of partnered sites.
The only information this site collects is 1-your email address (if you sign up
for our newsletter) and/or 2-the first six digits of your phone number, which
will help us customize our presentation to better serve your needs. Your
email address will be stored in our servers and accessed only to send you the
email newsletter. The first six digits of your phone number - used exclusively
in our Best Rate Calculator -
are stored in a browser cookie, and will be utilized to hold data for the user’s next visit
to this site.
If you subscribe to our newsletter, you will be emailed a weekly publication
directly from the Dollar Stretcher - the authors of our newsletter. Users who
no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials from
CheapRates.org may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to
unsubscribe in the subject line in the email.
Customer Service: Our
customer service page will require ONLY your name, email address, and phone number. This information
is required to research your request and to reply with an answer to your inquiry. Your information
is entered into a database housed on our server to ensure that your inquiry is tracked and answered
in a timely fashion. We also use this data to re-open trouble tickets that were entered in the
past.
Refer-A-Friend: The
refer-a-friend feature of this site allows you to send an email announcement to your friends,
family, and associates. This email will suggest and encourage the recipients to visit this
website and to sign up for our discounted product offerings. The email addresses you enter
are not stored anywhere and are discarded once the original email is sent.
Order Forms:
When you find a product you wish to order, we will send you directly to a third party
site managed and maintained by the corresponding product vendor. Here you are requested for
contact information (like name and shipping address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration
date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill your orders.
If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used
to get in touch with you. Though the order forms are not hosted or maintained by
CheapRates.org directly or covered by our privacy s
tatement, we have carefully screened
each one for security and have deemed them safe, as each order form is protected
with 128-bit Verisign encryption.
Cookies: A cookie is a
piece of data stored on the user’s hard drive containing information about the user.
Cookies can also enable us to track and target the
interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.
Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while
on our site. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, you will not have to log in a
password or phone number more than once, thereby saving you time and making your
online shopping experience more enjoyable. If a user rejects the cookie, they may still
use our site without any negative results whatsoever.
Log Files: We
use IP addresses and/or referring URLs to analyze trends, administer the site, track users'
movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
IP addresses and referring URLs are not linked to personally identifiable information.
Sharing:
As we stated in our order forms and registration
declaration above, we are a portal website. Consequently, we work with
other companies to provide your information to vendors who provide the cheap rates.
All orders use outside shipping companies to ship orders, and credit card processing
companies to bill users for goods and services.
Links:
This
web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that CheapRates.org
is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other
sites, though we have screened each company for appropriate
security and information privacy practices. We encourage our users to be
aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and
every web site that collects personally identifiable information.
This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this
Web site.
Security:
This website takes every precaution
to protect our users’ information. When users
submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both
online and off-line. We coordinate with our partnered sites to assure a
secure and seamless experience when submitting your sensitive information to their sites.
If you have any questions about the security at our
website, you can send an email to staff@cheaprates.com
Correction/Updating Personal Information
If
a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as your email or phone number),
or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to
correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us.
This can usually be done by contacting our Customer Support Department.
Choice/Opt-out:
Our users are given the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having their information
used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for
the information.
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials
may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to
unsubscribe in the subject line in the email.
Users of our site are always notified if their information is being collected by any
outside parties. For instance, we use pop-up windows when moving to a new site.
We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with
services that require an outside party, or not.
Notification of Changes:
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those
changes on our
Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we
use it, and under circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a
manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we would notify
users by way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this
different manner. However, if you have opted out of all communication with the site, or
deleted/deactivated your account, then you will not be contacted. Nor will
your personal information be used in this new manner. We will only
use information in accordance with the privacy policy
under which the information was collected.
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