Privacy policy
User Privacy Notice
Melanie Wholesale Inc is committed to your privacy. This privacy notice explains our collection, use, disclosure, retention, and protection of your personal information.
Scope
This privacy notice applies to any MelanieUSA website, application, service, or tool (collectively "Services") where this privacy notice is referenced, regardless of how you access or use them, including through mobile devices.
Personal information we collect
What is personal information?
Personal Information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
We do not consider personal information to include information that has been anonymized or aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise.
We collect personal information from you when you use our Services.
Learn more: Personal information we collect
We collect personal information from you and any devices (including mobile devices) you use when you: use our Services, register for an account with us, provide us information on a web form, update or add information to your account, participate in a community board discussion chat, or when you otherwise correspond with us.
Some of this personal information, such as a way to identify you, is necessary to enter into our User Agreement. The provision of all other personal information is voluntary, but may be necessary in order to use our Services, such as the bidding, buying or selling information needed to conclude a transaction.
We may also collect personal information from other sources, as described below.
Personal information you give us when you use our Services or register for an account with us
- Identifying information such as your name, addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses when you register for an account with us
- Bidding, buying, or selling information you provide during a transaction, or other transaction-based content that you generate or that is connected to your account as a result of a transaction you are involved in
- Other content that you generate, or that is connected to your account (such as adding items to your basket, adding items to your Watch List, creating collections, and following other collections and sellers)
- Financial information (such as credit card or bank account numbers) in connection with a transaction
- Postage, billing and other information used to purchase or send an item, as well as, where postal services are provided through one of our programs, information required to clear customs (such as Tax ID or other identification numbers) and relevant postage information (such as tracking numbers and tracking updates)
- In some instances, when you use our Services, you may provide age, gender, interests and favorites
- You may also provide us other information through a web form, by updating or adding information to your account, through your participation in community discussions, member-to-member communications, chats, dispute resolution, or when you otherwise communicate with us regarding our Services
- Additional information we are required or authorized by applicable national laws to collect and process in order to authenticate or identify you or to verify the information we have collected
Personal information we collect automatically when you use our Services or register for an account with us
- We collect information about your interaction with our Services, your advertising preferences, and your communications with us. This is information we receive from devices (including mobile devices) you use when you access our Services. This information could include the following: Device ID or unique identifier, device type, ID for advertising, and unique device token
- Location information, including location information from your mobile device. Keep in mind that most mobile devices allow you to control or disable the use of location services by any application on your mobile device in the device's settings menu
- Computer and connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, your IP address, your browsing history, and your web log information
Personal information we collect using cookies and similar technologies
- We use cookies, web beacons, unique identifiers, and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions you take when using our Services, within our advertising or email content
Personal information collected from other sources
- We supplement the personal information we collect directly with information collected from third parties and add it to your account information. For example, we collect and use demographic and other information that is publicly available in an applicable jurisdiction, additional contact information, credit check information, and information from credit bureaus, as allowed by applicable national laws
- Social Media: We allow you to share information with social media sites, or use social media sites to create your account or to connect your account with the respective social media site. Those social media sites may give us automatic access to certain personal information retained by them about you (e.g., content viewed by you, content liked by you, and information about the advertisements you have been shown or have clicked on, etc.). If you provide us with access to any site with video content, then you agree that we can share your video viewing with, or obtain information about your video viewing from, third-party social media sites for at least two years or until you withdraw authorization or connection to the social media site. You control the personal information you allow us to have access to through the privacy settings on the applicable social media site and the permissions you give us when you grant us access to the personal information retained by the respective social media site about you. By associating an account managed by a social media site with your account and authorizing us to have access to this information, you agree that we can collect, use and retain the information provided by these social media sites in accordance with this privacy notice. We may also use plug-ins or other technologies from various social media sites. If you click on a link provided via a social media plug in, you are voluntarily establishing a connection with that respective social media site
- If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorization. You should inform them how we collect, use, disclose, and retain their personal information according to our privacy notice
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to provide and improve our Services, provide you with a personalized experience on our sites, contact you about your account and our Services, provide you customer service, provide you with personalized advertising and marketing, and to detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities.
Learn more: How we use your personal information
We use the personal information we collect from you for a range of different business purposes and according to different legal bases of processing. The following is a summary of how and according to which legal bases we use your personal information.
We use your personal information to fulfill a contract with you and provide you with our Services, to comply with our legal obligation, protect your vital interest, or as may be required for the public good. This includes:
- To provide payment processing and account management, operate, measure and improve our Services, keep our Services safe, secure and operational, and customize site content that includes items and services that you may like in response to actions that you take
- To contact you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to resolve a dispute, to collect fees or monies owed or as otherwise necessary to provide you customer service
- When contacting you for such purposes as outlined above, we may contact you via email, telephone, SMS/text messages, postal mail, and via mobile push notifications
- When contacting you via telephone, to ensure efficiency, we may use autodialed or pre-recorded calls and text messages as described in our User Agreement and as authorized by applicable law. Message and data rates may apply
- To provide other services requested by you as described when we collect the information
- We use general location information to provide you with location based services (such as advertising, search results, and other personalized content)
- To prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraud, security breaches or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities
- To enforce our User Agreement, this privacy notice, or other policies, and to monitor restrictions on offers to buy or sell outside of Melanie Wholesale Inc and member-to-member communications for violations of our policies or applicable laws
We use your personal information to pursue our legitimate interests where your rights and freedoms do not outweigh these interests. We have implemented controls to balance our interests with your rights. This includes to:
- Improve our Services, for example by reviewing information associated with stalled or crashed pages experienced by users allowing us to identify and fix problems and give you a better experience
- Personalize, measure, and improve our advertising based on your advertising customization preferences
- Contact you via email or postal mail in order to offer you coupons, discounts and special promotions, poll your opinions through surveys or questionnaires and inform you about our Services, as authorized by applicable law
- Contact you about public policy matters, or other current events, related to your ability to use our Services. This could include an invitation to join a petition, letter writing, call or other sort of public policy related campaigns
- Deliver targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences
- Measure the performance of our email marketing campaigns (e.g. by analyzing open and click rates)
- Measure sellers' performance (e.g. by using shipment tracking information that sellers and shipping providers send or provide through Melanie Wholesale Inc)
- Monitor and improve the information security of our site and mobile applications
With your consent, we may use your personal information to:
- Provide you with marketing via telephone calls, SMS or text
- Provide you with marketing from other Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family members
- Provide you with marketing from third parties
- Customize third party advertising you might see on third party websites
- Use your precise geo-location to provide location based services
- Use your sensitive personal information to facilitate transactions in certain categories
You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
We may use technologies considered automated decision making or profiling. We will not make automated-decisions about you that would significantly affect you, unless such a decision is necessary as part of a contract we have with you, we have your consent, or we are required by law to use such technology.
Your choices about how we use your personal information
You have choices about how we use your personal information to communicate with you, to send you marketing information, how we provide you with customized and relevant advertising, and whether you want to stay signed into your account.
Learn more: Your choices about how we use your personal information
Communication preferences
You can control your email communication preferences in the Communication Preference section within your Profile. There, you can also control your member-to-member communications preferences setting and choose which newsletters and promotions you want to receive.
Marketing
If you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe via the link in an email you received, indicate your communication preferences using the method described within the direct communication from us or contact us as described in the Contact Us section below. Keep in mind, we do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent.
Staying Signed in
When you sign in to your account on our Services, we give you the option to stay signed in to your account for certain amount of time. If you are using a public or shared computer, we encourage you not to choose to stay signed in. You or any other user of the computer/browser you signed in on will be able to view and access most parts of your account and take certain specific actions during this signed in period without any further authorization. The specific actions and account activities that you or any other user of this computer/browser may take include:
- Bid, buy or make an offer on an item
- Check out or add items to your cart
- Purchase an item with PayPal using Faster Checkout (if enabled in your account)
- View the activity header
- View the My Profile page
- View or edit the Watch List or order details
- View the profile page
- Send member-to-member messages
- Conduct after-sale activities, like leaving Feedback, canceling orders, requesting returns or submitting claims
If you attempt to change your password, User ID, update any other account information or attempt other account activity beyond those listed above, you may be required to enter your password.
You can typically end your signed in session by either signing out and/or clearing your cookies. If you have certain browser privacy settings enabled, simply closing your browser may also end your signed in session. If you are using a public or shared computer, you should sign out and/or clear your cookies when you are done using our Services to protect your account and your personal information.
Ways you can access, control, and correct your personal information
We respect your right to access, correct, request deletion or request restriction of our usage of your personal information as required by applicable law. We also take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate and up to date.
- You have the right to know what personal information we maintain about you
- We will provide you with a copy of your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format on request
- If your personal information is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to ask us to update it
- You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information
- You can also ask us to delete or restrict how we use your personal information, but this right is determined by applicable law and may impact your access to some of our Services
Learn more: Ways you can access, control, and correct your personal information
Access, correction, and deletion of your personal information
You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing in to your account. Please, update your personal information immediately if it changes or is inaccurate. Keep in mind, once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it.
We will honor any statutory right you might have to access, modify or erase your personal information. To request access and to find out whether any fees may apply, if permitted by applicable national laws, please contact us following the instructions in the Contact Us section below. Where you have a statutory right to request access or request the modification or erasure of your personal information, we can still withhold that access or decline to modify or erase your personal information in some cases in accordance with applicable national laws.
If you request that we stop processing some or all of your personal information or you withdraw (where applicable) your consent for our use or disclosure of your personal information for purposes set out in this privacy notice, we might not be able to provide you all of the Services and customer support offered to our users and authorized under this privacy notice and our User Agreement.
Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable national laws.
How we might share your personal information
We may disclose your personal information to other members of the Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family or to third parties. This disclosure may be required for us to provide you access to our Services, to comply with our legal obligations, to enforce our User Agreement, to facilitate our marketing and advertising activities, or to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities related to our Services. We attempt to minimize the amount of personal information we disclose to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose. We do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your consent.
Learn more: How we might share your personal information
We may disclose your personal information to the following parties for the following purposes:
Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family members, who may use it to:
- Provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions, and customer support)
- Help detect, investigate, mitigate and prevent potentially fraudulent and illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, and data security breaches
- Provide you personalized advertising
- Improve their products, sites, applications, services, tools, and marketing communications
- Members of our Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have consented to receive such communications from them or if otherwise permitted by the law
Service Providers and financial institutions partners as follows:
- Third party service providers who help us to provide our Services, payment processing services, assist us in providing customize advertising, to assist us with the prevention, detection, mitigation, and investigation of potentially illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, fraud and/or security breaches, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs, co-branded credit cards and other business operations
- Third party financial institutions with whom we partner to offer financial products to you, for them to provide joint content and services (such as, registration, transactions and customer support). These third party financial institution partners will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services
- Third party shipping providers (e.g., DHL, UPS, USPS, etc.) with whom we share delivery address, contact information and shipment tracking information for the purposes of facilitating the delivery of items purchased and other delivery related communications
- Third party providers of websites, applications, services and tools that we cooperate with so that they can publish or advertise your listings and their content on their websites or in their applications, services and tools. If we transfer personal information along with the content of your listings to third party providers, this will be solely on the basis of an agreement limiting use by the third party provider of such personal information to processing necessary to fulfil their contract with us and obligating the third party provider to take security measures with regard to such data. Third party providers are not permitted to sell, lease or in any other way transfer the personal information included in your listings to third parties
Law enforcement, legal proceedings, and as authorized by law
- To comply with our legal requirements, enforce our User Agreement, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property or safety
- To law enforcement or governmental agencies, or authorized third-parties, in response to a verified request or legal process relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that exposes us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability. We will only disclose information we deem relevant to the investigation or inquiry, such as name, city, state, postcode, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP address, fraud complaints, bidding and listing history
- To credit agencies or bureaus as authorized by applicable national laws (e.g. information on late or missed payments or other defaults on your account that may be reflected in your credit report or file)
- To third parties involved in a legal proceeding, if they provide us with a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal basis, or we otherwise believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity
Other MelanieUSA users as authorized by you or your use of our Services
- When transacting with another user, the other user may request that we provide him/her with information about you necessary to complete the transaction, such as your name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address, or other information from you needed to promote the reliability and security of the transaction
- If a transaction fails, is put on hold, or is later invalidated, we may also provide the other user with details of the unsuccessful transaction
- The other user receiving your information should only use it for purposes related to the transaction. Unless you have consented to receive marketing from them, they should not contact you for marketing purposes
- Contacting users with unwanted or threatening messages is a violation of our User Agreement
Change of ownership
If we are subject to a merger or acquisition with/by another company, we may share information with them in accordance with our global privacy standards. Should such an event occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy notice with respect to your personal information. If we intend to handle your personal information for any purposes not covered in this privacy notice, you will receive prior notification of the processing of your personal information for the new purposes.
How long we keep your personal information
We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Services you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our policies.
Learn more: How long we keep your personal information
Our specific retention times for personal information are documented in our regional records retention schedules. How long we retain personal information can vary significantly based on context of the Services we provide and on our legal obligations. The following factors typically influence retention periods:
- How long is the personal information needed to provide our Services? This includes such things as maintaining and improving the performance of our products, keeping our systems secure, and maintaining appropriate business and financial records. This is the general rule that establishes the baseline for most of our data retention periods
- Is the personal information sensitive? If so, a shortened retention time is generally appropriate
- Have you provided consent for a longer retention period? If so, we will retain data in accordance with your consent
- Are we subject to a legal, contractual, or similar obligation to retain your personal information? Examples can include mandatory data retention laws in the applicable jurisdiction, government orders to preserve data relevant to an investigation, or personal information retained for the purposes of litigation
After it is no longer necessary for us to retain your personal information, we will dispose of it in a secure manner according to our data retention and deletion policies.
Cookies & Similar Technologies
When you visit or interact with our sites, services, applications, tools or messaging, we or our authorized service providers may use cookies and other similar technologies to help provide you with a better, faster, and safer experience, and for advertising and marketing purposes. You can read our full User Cookie Notice for more information.
How do we protect your personal information
We protect your personal information using technical and administrative security measures to reduce the risks of loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure and alteration. Some of the safeguards we use are firewalls and data encryption, physical access controls to our data centers, and information access authorization controls.
Global Privacy Standards
We have established a set of global privacy standards for all Melanie Wholesale Inc. companies known as our Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs). They are our commitment to protect your personal information and honor our privacy obligations within our Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family.
Data Controllers and Data Protection Officers
Learn more about who is your data controller, and is responsible for the collection, use, disclosure, retention and protection of your personal information in accordance with our global privacy standards, this privacy notice, as well as any applicable national laws.
Learn more: Data Controllers and Data Protection Officers
If you reside in the United States, you are contracting with Melanie Wholesale Inc., 242 47th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220, USA and, if you use our payments services, also with Melanie Wholesale Inc., 242 47th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220, USA for such payments services.
Your data controller may transfer data to other members of the Melanie Wholesale Inc. corporate family who have signed our BCRs, as described in this privacy notice.
We may process and retain your personal information on our servers in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world where our data centers are located.
Where we have a legal obligation to do so, we have appointed data protection officers (DPOs) to be responsible for the privacy program at each of the respective data controllers. You can contact any of our DPOs via the Contact Us information detailed below in this privacy notice.
Other important privacy information
This section describes some additional privacy information related to your use of our Services that you may find important.
Learn more: Other important privacy information
When you share your personal information on our sites or applications – what happens?
Other users have access to the information you share on MelanieUSA. For example, other users can see your purchases, the sellers and collections you follow, storefronts, feedback, ratings, product reviews and associated comments. Other users can also see any information you chose to share in your profile or your collections.
When you use our Services, your public user ID may be displayed and available to the public and associated with all of your public MelanieUSA activity. Notices sent to other users about suspicious activity and notice violations on our sites may refer to your public user ID and specific items. If you associate your name with your user ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name may then be able to identify your MelanieUSA activities.
To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users' contact, shipping and financial information as necessary to facilitate your transactions and collect payments. However, when users are involved in a transaction, they have access to each other's name, user ID, email address and other contact and shipping information.
Your responsibilities over transactional information you receive through MelanieUSA
When you transact with another user, we enable you to obtain or we may provide you with the personal information of the other user (such as their name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address) to complete the transaction. Independent from us, you are the controller of such data and we encourage you to inform the other user about your privacy practices and respect their privacy. In all cases, you must comply with the applicable privacy laws, and must give the other user a chance to remove them from your database and them a chance to review what information you have collected about them.
You may use the personal information that you have access to only for MelanieUSA transaction-related purposes, or for other services offered through MelanieUSA (such as escrow, shipping, fraud complaints, and member-to-member communications), and for purposes expressly consented by the user to whom the information relates.
Unwanted or threatening email
We do not tolerate abuse of our Services. You do not have permission to add other users to your mailing list (email or postal), call, or send him/her text messages for commercial purposes, even if this user purchased something from you, unless the user has given his/her explicit consent. Sending unwanted or threatening email and text messages is against our User Agreement.
Communication tools
We may scan messages automatically and check for spam, viruses, phishing and other malicious activity, illegal or prohibited content or violations of our User Agreement, this privacy notice or our other policies.
Children's Privacy
Our websites are general audience websites and not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from users deemed to be children under their respective national laws.
Third Party Privacy Practices
This privacy notice addresses only our use and handling of personal information we collect from you in connection with providing you our Services. If you disclose your information to a third party, or visit a third party website via a link from our Services, their privacy notices and practices will apply to any personal information you provide to them or they collect from you.
We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your personal information once you provide it to a third party and we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your trading partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your personal information. This is true even where the third parties to whom you disclose personal information are bidders, buyers or sellers on our site.
Contact Us
If you have a question or a complaint about this privacy notice, our global privacy standards, or our information handling practices, you can reach the Global Privacy Office in writing at: Melanie Wholesale Inc, Attn: Legal - Global Privacy Office, 242 47th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220, USA.
You can find more information on how to contact us and our data protection officers at our MelanieUSA Contact US.
Your right to file complaints with a data protection supervisory authority remains unaffected.