What personal information we collect & how we use it

Order
To complete an order, our visitors must share with us contact information (name, e-mail and shipping address) and billing information (credit card number and expiration date). This information is used to create an account to process and ship your orders.

Newsletter
We invite visitors to subscribe to our newsletter, and ask for e-mail contact information to assist in its distribution. All customers receive updates of our newsletter issues automatically. Should you wish to not receive these, you may easily opt-out. Please see Choice/Opt-Out section for more info.

Surveys
From time-to-time our site requests information from users by way of surveys. For example, our 'e-mail us' form may have survey information. Participation in these surveys is always voluntary and the visitor therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested occasionally includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), opal/ jewellery preferences and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site. This information is used for aggregate analysis, and is not tied to any individual visitor or combined with any other information we may gather.

Special Offers
Our customers will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our customers we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice/Opt-out section below. On rare occasions it may be necessary to send out a strictly service-related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send you an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications. However, these communications are not promotional in nature, and are extremely infrequent.

Cookies
A cookie is a piece of personal account data stored on the customer's hard drive containing info that will enhance the enjoyment of our site.
You may control whether your computer will accept cookies with the preference setting of your browser. If your browser is set to reject cookies, you may still visit and shop at our site. The only drawback is that some of the experience-enhancing features listed above will not be active.

Log Files
Logs are the information created and stored by the server and include such data as a visitor's IP (internet protocol) address, browser type, ISP (internet service provider), referring/exit pages, platform type, and date/time stamp. This information is used to analyze macro traffic trends, administer the site, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. None of the information collected in this matter may be used to ascertain the personal identity of any of our visitors.

With whom this information is shared
Melbourne Opal Centre is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We do not sell or rent this information to any third party. The only two companies with whom some information is shared are Site-Ezy and Westpac Bank.

We use ____ to ship orders, and _____ gateways to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

How you may affect the collection, use and distribution of your information

Correction/Updating Personal Information:
If your personal information changes or if you no longer desire our service, we provide an easy way to correct, update or remove your personal data. This may be accomplished with a visit to 'your account' page. We will happily assist you in this task. Simply drop us a note at contact@melbourneopals.com.au

Choice/Opt-out
We respect your privacy and give you an opportunity to opt-out of receiving our periodic announcements of sales, promotions and newsletter publication. This may be accomplished with a visit to 'your account' page. We will happily assist you in this task. Simply drop us a note at contact@melbourneopals.com.au

What security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information

Melbourne Opal Centre and our technology partner Site-Ezy take every precaution to protect our customers' and visitors' information. When customers submit sensitive information via our site, your information is protected both on- and off-line.

All sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) submitted on our site is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL. You may visually verify that the site is secure by looking for the closed lock icon at the bottom of either a Netscape or Microsoft browsers.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our visitors' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. And these employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment.

If you have any questions about the security at our site, please send an email to contact@melbourneopals.com.au. We will be happy to answer your questions.

Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will promptly post those changes on this page. We want our visitors to be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what 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 will 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 deleted or deactivated your account information, you will not be contacted, nor will your information be used in this new manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.