While visiting our Internet site you may buy products and services, join our membership program, enter contests, sign up for gift registries, receive special discounts, fill out surveys, request to receive newsletters, e-mails or other promotional information from us and perform other activities.  During these processes, we collect information about you.  We use the information that we collect from you to fulfill your product/service purchases and requests and to create a more personalized online experience for you while you are on our Internet site.

Except as otherwise discussed in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you.  We encourage you to ask questions of us and others and give the appropriate consideration before you disclose your personal information to others.

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time, so please review it periodically..  Contact Us regarding any questions you may have regarding this Policy.

This Privacy Policy explains the following regarding the use of our Internet site:

1. Types of information we collect from you

2. Where we collect information from you and how we use it

3. Information collected by others from you

4. Sharing your information

5. Updating your Personally Identifiable Information

6. Your choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of your information

7. Security to protect against the loss, alteration or misuse of your information

8. Minimum age of use and children's privacy

9. "Cookies"

10. Privacy policies of third party sites accessible from our Internet site

11. Contacting us about your privacy questions or concerns

12. Changes to our Privacy Policy

1. Types of information we collect from you
   In order to better provide you with our products and services, we collect two types of information about you and other visitors: Personally Identifiable Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information.  Our primary goal in collecting information from you is to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience while using our Internet site and in your dealings with us.

   Personally Identifiable Information
   This refers to information that lets us know the specifics of who you are. Personal information is requested when you order a product or service, join our membership program, register for a Gift List, enter contests or sweepstakes, fill out surveys, send us feedback, etc .  This information might include your name, billing address, shipping address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card or other payment information, and product details.  With this information, we can fill your orders and better provide you with personalized services. 

   Non-Personally Identifiable Information
   This refers to information that does not by itself identify a specific individual. We gather certain information about you based upon where you shop on our site in several ways.  This information is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis.  This information may include the Web site's Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") that you just came from, which URL you next go to, what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol ("IP") address.  A URL is the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.  An IP address is an identifier for a computer or device on a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol ("TCP/IP") network, such as the World Wide Web. Networks like the web use the TCP/IP protocol to route information based on the IP address of the destination.  In other words, an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the web, allowing web servers to locate and identify your computer. Computers require IP addresses in order for users to communicate on the Internet, browse and shop.

    

2. Where we collect information about you and how we use it
   We use the customer contact information to fill orders, contact customers to inform them of their order status, to reply to requests for advice and other information, to send promotional information, to enhance the operation of our site and to administer our systems.

   Limited demographic data is also collected at our site from our content server, who provides us with the zip code and area code associated with a visitor's server, along with pages viewed on our site.  We review the actions of the our visitors on an aggregate basis to determine customers' preferences. We do research on our visitors' demographics, interests, and pages viewed based on the information provided to us during ordering, a promotion, from our server log files, from contests, drawings or surveys.  We will use this data to tailor the visitor's experience at our site, to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to statistically analyze site use, to improve our product offerings, and to customize our Internet site's content, layout, and services.

   We may also share your personally identifiable information with third parties who provide services to us and our customers and visitors.  Those third parties may include authorized contractors, temporary employees and consultants and other companies working with us (collectively, "agents").  Where we believe it to be appropriate (in our sole discretion), we will ask our agents not to disclose or use your personal information for purposes other than to provide services to you or Cottages and Gardens.

   We gather information from you in the following ways:

   Shopping
   We collect IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to gather broad demographic information, to enable ads to be served on our site, to report Non-Personally Identifiable Information to our advertisers and prospective Cottage Tenants, and to monitor the level of activity on our site.  We collect information from visitors to our site regarding the URLs they came from, their IP addresses, domain types (e.g., .com, .net or .org), the browser type used to come to the site, the country, state and telephone area code where their servers are located, the pages of our site that visitors viewed during their visit, and any search terms entered on our site.

   Ordering
   When you order from us, we collect personally identifiable information from you.  If you order one of our products or services, we will collect and maintain your name, e-mail address, billing address, shipping address, telephone number, product selections, credit card or other payment information, order number, referring URL, IP address and a password.  We collect this, and other information, as disclosed in this Policy, in order to fill your order, to communicate with you about your order and to send you promotional materials.  Before confirming your order, you will have the opportunity to review the product order form and make changes and additions to the information it contains and these changes will be automatically kept for future use.

   Gift Certificates
   If you purchase a gift certificate from our site, you will give us the recipient's name and e-mail address if you wish to send the certificate by e-mail. I f you wish to send a certificate by regular mail, you will give us the name, mailing information and phone number for the recipient.  The recipient information you give us will only be used to send the gift certificate and for no other purpose.

   Online Surveys and Polling
   In order to improve our services to you, we ask some of our customers to voluntarily complete surveys, which may be collected by an independent third party.  Individual survey answers are confidential, although Non-Personally Identifiable Information is collected and disclosed to third parties.  If you do not wish to participate in a survey, simply decline to participate when asked.

   Contests, Drawings and Sweepstakes
   When you enter a contest, drawing, sweepstakes or other promotion, we may ask you for contact information such as your name, address and e-mail address in order to administer the contest, to send you promotional e-mails, notify winners and make the winners' list publicly available pursuant to certain state laws.  Your consent to such promotional use and disclosure of this information is a condition of your participation.  As a condition of receiving any prize, you maybe required to submit an Affidavit of Eligibility, for us to ensure that you are eligible to receive the prize according to the Rules.

   Notifications by E-mail of New Articles & On Sale Items & Other Promotions
   We offer free e-mail notifications of new articles and on sale items appearing on our site as a service to our customers.  We will include you in these notifications only if you have told us to do so from the submission of the information from our site or you otherwise told us to include you.  Periodically, we will also send e-mail notifications of a general promotional nature.  To stop receiving any of these notifications, please Contact Us and tell us which notifications you no longer wish to receive.  You will be removed from our notifications list generally within 2-3 business days.

   Cookies
   We currently do not use cookies in the operation of our site.

   Contact Information and Third Party Data
   If you contact us by telephone, e-mail or letter, we may keep a record of your correspondence or comments.  If you report a problem with our site, we may collect such information in a file specific to you.  If you contact us through our feedback area or by calling one of our customer service representatives, we may ask for your name, e-mail address and/or telephone number in order to reply to you.  If other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or purchases on our site, we may keep the information in a file specific to you.  We use third parties as Cottage Advisors and other professional services to help us provide better customer service to you.  In order to help you most effectively, we may provide them with necessary information about you.

   Advertising 
   At this time, we do not include advertising on our site nor share any information with prospective advertisers. 

   We also track customers' traffic patterns throughout their online session, including which pages a customer views while using our Internet site. This information is ultimately stored in the form of product categories, and, in some cases, specific URLs.  We use your IP address to diagnose problems with our servers, software, to administer our site and to gather demographic information.

   We may share with third parties aggregated, but not an an individual's, statistics about pages viewed on our site, sales and other shopping information.

    

3. Information collected by others from you
   In addition to information we collect about you, one or more of the following may also be collecting information about you:

   Content Server:  We use a third party content server to serve content to our Internet site.  They may place their own "cookie" on your computer to help our Internet site run more efficiently, thereby improving your online visit with us.   We do not provide them with any of your Personally Identifiable Information.

   Surveys and Polling:  We may use a third party surveyor to run optional surveys for Cottages and Gardens.  That surveyor collects Non-Personally Identifiable Information for the sole purpose of providing reports to us about our shoppers' and visitors' interests and opinions.

   Links to Third-Party Sites:  Please be aware that our site may contain links to other sites on the Internet that are owned and operated by third parties.  The information practices of those websites linking from or to our site are not covered by this Policy.  These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal information.  Please review their privacy policies if you have any concerns.

    

4. Sharing your information
   Fulfillment: The information collected by Cottages and Gardens, is used only for the limited purposes of processing orders, keeping you informed about your order status, for statistical purposes, for improving our Internet site and its performance, to serve ads, and to notify you of products, articles or special offers that may be of interest to you.  We will disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties to charge your credit card, fill your order, deliver your order, provide customer service, provide you with credit and deliver promotional e-mails to you from Cottages and Gardens.  For example, we must release your credit card information to the card-issuing bank to confirm payment; and release your address and telephone information to the delivery service to deliver products that you ordered.

   Other Parties: We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others. We may provide non-personally identifiable information about our customers' sales, traffic patterns, and related site information to third party advertisers, but these statistics do not include any personally identifiable information.  We may release account information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions or to protect the rights, property, and safety of Cottages and Gardens, our users, or others.  If customers do not pay us for products ordered, we may submit their account information to a third party collection agency.

   Services Provided on Our Site:  Except as otherwise stated in this Policy, Cottages and Gardens does not disclose its customers' personally identifiable information to other merchants or vendors.

   Content Servers: Our content servers have permission to use their cookies' identification numbers and internal web site tracking features to serve content on our Internet site and to collect aggregated information to create statistics about our customers and visitors, traffic patterns, and related site information to third party advertisers.

   Compliance with Service of Process or Law Enforcement: Occasionally Cottages and Gardens may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide personally identifiable information to the appropriate governmental authorities.  We will disclose personally identifiable information upon receipt of a court order, subpoena, or to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation. Cottages and Gardens fully cooperates with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities.  We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful.

    

5. Updating your Personally Identifiable Information
   We believe you should have the ability to access and edit the personal information that you have provided to us.  During the online ordering process and other informational input areas on the Internet site, you can change, or delete any information that you previously submitted.  Just identify the desired changes in the comment boxes.  We encourage you to promptly update your information if it changes. You may ask to have the information on your account deleted or removed; however, because we keep track of past purchases and communications, you cannot delete information associated with past purchases and communications.

    

6. Your choices regarding collection, use and distribution of your information
   We may from time to time send you e-mail newsletters ("newsletters") or other communications regarding current promotions, articles, specials and new additions to the CottagesandGardens.com Internet site. You may unsubscribe from our newsletters or other communications by following the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the newsletters you receive from us or Contact Us.  We will remove you from our notifications generally within 2-3 business days.  Afterwards, you should not receive any newsletters or other communications unless you request us to add you to the notifications list by opening a new account, entering a contest, etc.

    

7. Security to protect against the lose, alteration or misuse of your information?
   At Cottages and Gardens, we have the utmost concern for protecting all of your personally identifiable information and that of our other customers and visitors.  We take several measures and precautions to provide the best security possible over your personal information including, but not limited to: state of the art Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology while submitting personally identifiable information from our Internet site, advanced firewall technology used by our content server provider and internet access provider, physical and electronic safeguards against unauthorized access of our computer system that maintains our customer database, established third party banking, merchant services providers and other processing agents for credit card transactions and established and reputable shipping and distribution organizations (primarily the United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service and Federal Express). 

    

8. Minimum age of use and children's privacy
   You must be at least 18 years old to have our permission to use this site.  We do not knowingly collect, use or disclose personally identifiable information about visitors under 18 years of age.

    

9. "Cookies" 
   We currently do not use cookies and we do not place cookies or any other information on your computer.

    

10. Privacy policies of third party sites accessible from our Internet site
    Other sites accessible through our Internet site have their own privacy policies and data collection, use and disclosure practices.  Cottages and Gardens is not responsible for the policies or practices of third party sites.  Please be aware that this site may contain links to other sites on the Internet that are owned and operated by third parties. The information practices of those web sites linked to CottagesandGardens.com are not covered by this Privacy Policy.  These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal information.  Please review third party's privacy policy.

     

11. Contacting us about your privacy questions or concerns
    If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, our practices relating to this site or otherwise, any dealings with us relating to this site or otherwise, then please Contact Us.

12. Changes to our Privacy Policy
    This Privacy Policy was last updated on December 31, 2007.  Whenever  changes are made to any terms or conditions of our Privacy Policy, the changes will be posted in this document (restated format) for your ongoing review.  This way, you will always know what information we gather, how we might use it and to whom we may disclose it.   We may change, modify, add or remove portions of this Privacy Policy at any time.