Collection: OUR PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated: November 15, 2022. If you keep using the Tea Forté website after this date, you're letting us know that you're okay with the updates.

What's changing? We’re adding more details about how and why we collect information about you, who we may share information with, and further explained your rights regarding our use of your information.

What if I don’t agree with the changes? If you are not comfortable with the changes, you should not use or browse our website. But before you do that, please get in touch with us so we can answer any questions you have. You can reach us at info@teaforte.com

Tea Forté Inc. (“we,” “our,” “us” or “Tea Forté”) is committed to ensuring that you are aware of how information about you is collected and used through your use of this website (“Site”). We appreciate your trust that we will be sensible about how we use information that we may collect. This Privacy Policy details what types of information we collect and for what purposes as well as what rights you may have.

How Tea Forté Collects and Uses Your Information.

In general, we will collect information about you as follows:

• Purchases. When you order products from us, we will collect your name, address, email address, and payment information in order to fulfill your order. We make certain third-party payment service processors available to you to process your credit card transactions, such as Amazon Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Shop Pay.  If you wish to use one of these services, your personal information will be collected by such third party and will be subject to their privacy policy. We have no control over and are not responsible for this third-party collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information. You must be 18 or older to authorize a purchase through our Site. We will never ask for your credit card information via email or any online chat program. If someone contacts you asking for credit card information claiming to be from Tea Forté, please contact us directly at (800) 721-1149 or info@teaforte.com to advise us of the circumstances.
• Employment Applicants. If you apply for employment through our Site, you may provide information about yourself including your name and contact details (e.g. your address, email address and telephone number) and your job title and resume. We use this information to evaluate your application for employment.
• We may send occasional updates and promotional offers to your email address if you make a purchase or sign-up to our newsletter. If you wish to be permanently removed from that list please visit unsubscribe. Please note that some non-marketing communications are not subject to general opt-out, such as communications relating to services we are providing you, sales transactions, software updates and other support related information, patches and fixes.
• We collect and save mailing addresses during the order process which may be used in the future to send catalogs and/or special offers. If you wish to be removed from that list, please email info@teaforte.com.
• We also collect phone numbers during the order process. We use phone numbers in cases where an issue arises with the order that you placed. If you have opted in to our SMS program, we may send marketing messages to the mobile phone number you have provided. You may unsubscribe at any time by replying “STOP” to the MMS or SMS message received. After you reply 'STOP' to us, we will send you a text message to confirm that you have been unsubscribed. After this, you will no longer receive text messages from us. If you want to join again, just sign up again. Message and data rates may apply. You will receive roughly one message per week. If you have any questions about your text plan or data plan, contact your wireless provider.

Where permitted by applicable law, we may also use anonymous, de-identified, or aggregated information that does not reasonably identify you for any purpose.

CCPA Personal Information Collection Disclosure Notice

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) requires us to notify you of the CCPA defined categories of personal information that we have collected from consumers within the last twelve (12) months, as summarized below:

CATEGORY	EXAMPLES	COLLECTED
A. Identifiers.	Name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, Social Security number, driver's license number, passport number, or similar identifiers.	YES
B. Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).	Name, signature, Social Security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, passport number, driver's license or state identification card number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information, medical information, or health insurance information.	YES
C. Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law.	Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information).	NO
D. Commercial information.	Records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.	YES
E. Biometric information.	Genetic, physiological, behavioral, and biological characteristics, or activity patterns used to extract a template or other identifier or identifying information, such as, fingerprints, faceprints, and voiceprints, iris or retina scans, keystroke, gait, or other physical patterns, and sleep, health, or exercise data.	NO
F. Internet or other similar network activity.	Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer's interaction with a website, application, or advertisement.	YES
G. Geolocation data.	Physical location or movements.	YES
H. Sensory data.	Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information	NO
I. Professional or employment-related information.	Current or past job history or performance evaluations.	YES
J. Non-public education information (per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Section 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99)).	Education records directly related to a student maintained by an educational institution or party acting on its behalf, such as grades, transcripts, class lists, student schedules, student identification codes, student financial information, or student disciplinary records.	NO
K. Inferences drawn from other personal information.	Profile reflecting a person's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.	NO

Personal information under the CCPA does not include:

• Publicly available information from government records.
• De-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like:
  • Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data;
  • Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

We will not collect additional categories or use the personal information we collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We use web server logs and "cookies" to track user behavior on our website. A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent to your browser or mobile device by websites, mobile apps, and advertisements that you access or use. This data is stored on your browser or mobile device and helps websites and mobile apps to remember things about you to improve your experience with the website. We use this information gathered by cookies for a few different purposes. First, we use cookie data to improve our website performance and track the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We also may use this information to personalize your experience with our online store.

If you do not wish for cookies to be placed on your computer, most web browsers permit you to prevent that from taking place. Additionally, information about opting out of cookie-based Internet advertising can be found via the following links - http://optout.networkadvertising.org/#!/ and/or https://www.neustar.biz/privacy/opt-out. However, please keep in mind that these technologies are an important part of how our website works; removing, rejecting or limiting the use of cookies or other similar technologies might affect the availability and functionality of the website.

Do-Not Track.

Your browser may allow you to set a “Do Not Track” preference. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals.

How Tea Forté Shares Your Information.

In general, we share your information as follows:

• First and foremost, we will not rent, sell or trade your personal information to any third party for its own marketing purpose without your permission. However, we may share non-personal, non-individual statistical or demographic information in aggregate form with our marketing partners or other third parties for research purposes. In other words, we will not tell our marketing partners that you purchased a specific product, but we may tell them how many customers purchased that product. We use third parties to help us operate and improve our services. These third parties assist us with various tasks, including processing payments, shipping orders, data hosting and maintenance, analytics, affiliate tracking, and security operations. All of our service providers and partners must agree to strict confidentiality obligations. Our partner agency Rakuten Advertising may collect personal information when you interact with our digital property, including IP addresses, digital identifiers, information about your web browsing and app usage and how you interact with our properties and ads for a variety of purposes, such as personalization of offers or advertisements, analytics about how you engage with websites or ads and other commercial purposes. For more information about the collection, use and sale of your personal data and your rights in regard to Rakuten Advertising, please use the below links. Rakuten Privacy policy : https://rakutenadvertising.com/legal-notices/services-privacy-policy/  Your Rights Rakuten : https://rakutenadvertising.com/legal-notices/services-privacy-rights-request-form/
• We may transfer your information if we are involved in a merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, bankruptcy or other change of ownership or control, including without limitation, during the course of any due diligence process.
• We may share your information when required to do so by applicable law or court order. This may include if we need to comply with a subpoena, bankruptcy proceedings, or similar legal process, or in response to lawful requests by public authorities.
• We may also share information to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud, violation of our terms or legal rights, or other wrongdoing.

CCPA Personal Information Sharing Disclosure Notice

If you are a California resident, the CCPA requires us to notify you of the CCPA defined categories of personal information that we disclose to third parties for a variety of business purposes. In the preceding twelve (12) months, Tea Forté has disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose:

• California Customer Records personal information categories.
• Commercial information.
• Internet or other similar network activity.
• Geolocation data.
• Professional or employment-related information.

We disclose your personal information for a business purpose to third-party service providers.  In the preceding twelve (12) months, Tea Forté has not sold any personal information.

Children’s Personal Information.

In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Tea Forté does not knowingly collect information on any person under 16 years. We ask that children do not submit information to us without the consent of a parent or guardian. If we learn that we have collected personal information about a child under 16, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe we may have collected information about a child under 16, please contact us at info@teaforte.com.

Safeguarding and Storing Your Information.

Tea Forté uses reasonable technological and physical safeguards to protect your personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

In general, Tea Forté only retains your information for the time necessary to realize our legitimate business purposes and to comply with the law. However, we may continue to store anonymous or anonymized information, such as website visits, without identifiers, in order to improve our services.

Please note that Tea Forté is headquartered in the United States. Therefore, if you are located outside of the United States, you should be aware that Tea Forté processes, hosts and transfers personal information in different countries outside of the country you reside in, including in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please know that U.S. data protection laws may be different than the laws of your country.

Your Rights and Choices.

In addition to your other rights described above, you may have additional rights to access, correct or delete your personal information.  These rights vary depending on where you reside. But we will make reasonable efforts to honor your request, even if your country or state does not require us to do so. 

Additional Rights for California Residents.

If you are a California resident, the CCPA may provide you with additional rights regarding our use of your personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights. If you are a resident of California, you have the following additional rights:

• Right to Know and Receive Copies of Your Personal Information. You have the right to know certain information about our collection and use of your personal information over the past twelve (12) months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:
  • The categories of personal information we collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
  • The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).
  • If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing: 1) sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and 2) disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

 

• Right to Request We Delete Your Personal Information. You have the right to request that we deleteany of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, unless retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:
  • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, fulfill the terms of a written warranty or product recall conducted in accordance with federal law, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
  • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
  • Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
  • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
  • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
  • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
  • Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
  • Comply with a legal obligation.
  • Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

To exercise your CCPA rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

• Calling us at (800) 721-1149
• Sending an email at info@teaforte.com.

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a twelve (12) months period. The verifiable consumer request must provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative and escribe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. However, we do consider requests made through your password protected account sufficiently verified when the request relates to personal information associated with that specific account. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within forty-five (45) days of receiving the request. If we need more time (up to 90 days), we will tell you how much additional time we need and explain the reason in writing.

If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Any disclosures we provide will only cover the twelve (12) months period preceding our receipt of the verifiable consumer request. We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

We will not discriminate against you, deny you goods or services, charge you a different price, or provide you with a lesser quality of goods or services if you exercise any of your CCPA rights, unless permitted by the CCPA.

Additional Rights for Nevada Residents.

Certain Nevada residents may opt out of the sale of certain categories of their personal information.  As of the effective date of this Privacy Policy, we do not sell personal information covered by that law.  However, if you are a Nevada resident who would like to opt-out of any future sale of your information in the unlikely event we change our practices, you may do so by contacting us at info@teaforte.com with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your full name, street address, city, state, zip code, and an email address so that we can contact you if needed to verify your identity and the authenticity of the request.

Canadian

The Privacy Policy and all documents related hereto are drawn up in English at the express wish of the parties hereto (Tea Forté and you). Il est de la volonté expresse des parties aux présents que la présente politique de confidentialité et tous documents s’y rapportant soient rédigés en anglais.

Third-Party

Our Site may contain links to websites operated by other companies. We do not share your personal information with those websites and are not responsible for their privacy practices. Once you have left our Site, you should check the applicable privacy policy of the third-party website to determine how they will handle any information they collect from you.

Updates and Changes to our Privacy Policy.

We reserve the right to change, modify, add or remove portions of our Privacy Policy at any time without prior notice. Where appropriate, we may provide advance notice to affected individuals. Please periodically review our Privacy Policy for changes. This version was updated as of the date identified at the top of this page.

SMS Messaging Terms

 In addition, you agree to our Messaging Terms (https://terms.pscr.pt/legal/shop/teaforteshop/terms_of_service) and Messaging Privacy Policy (https://terms.pscr.pt/legal/shop/teaforteshop/privacy_policy).

Contacting Tea Forté.

If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@teaforte.com.