Online Privacy Policy

Garden Mentors inc (the “Company”) respects the privacy concerns of the users of its website, gardenmentors.com and the services provided therein (the “Site”). The Company thus provides this privacy statement to explain what information is gathered during a visit to the Site and how such information may be used.

Please also review the Terms of Use at gardenmentors.com which also govern use of this Site.

Use of Information: As a general policy, no personally identifiable information, such as your name, address, or e-mail address, is automatically collected from your visit to the Site. However, certain non-personal information is recorded by the standard operation of the Company’s internet servers. Information such as the type of browser being used, its operating system, and your IP address is gathered in order to enhance your online experience.

The Site’s various mailing lists, downloads, special offers, contests, registration forms, and surveys may request that you give us contact information such as your name, mailing and/or e-mail address, demographic information such as your age and gender, and personal preference information such as your preferred software and interests. Information submitted at the time of submission will be used by the Company only as necessary for our legitimate business interests, including without limitation the improvement of our products, services and the contents of the Site. The Company may also share such information with our business and promotional partners to further those interests. Personally identifiable information is never sold or leased to any third parties. With your permission, we may use your contact information to send you information about our company and products. You may always opt-out of receiving future mailings as provided below. The Company does not store any credit card information it may receive in regard to a specific transaction and/or billing arrangement except as necessary to complete and satisfy its rights and obligations with regard to such transaction, billing arrangement, and/or as otherwise authorized by a user.

The Company may disclose user information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference (either intentionally or unintentionally) with the Company’s rights or property, other users of the Site, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.

Children Age 13 and Under: The Company recognizes the special obligation to protect personally identifiable information obtained from children age 13 and under. AS SUCH, IF YOU ARE 13 YEARS OLD OR YOUNGER, THE COMPANY REQUESTS THAT YOU NOT SUBMIT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION TO THE SITE OR TO THE COMPANY. If the Company discovers that a child age 13 or younger has signed up on the Site or provided us with personally identifiable information, we will delete that child’s identifiable information from our records. You may visit the FTC’s site for more tips on protecting children’s privacy online.

Use of Cookies: Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual’s computer hard drive for record keeping purposes. Cookies make using our Site easier by, among other things, saving your passwords and preferences for you. These cookies are restricted for use only on our Site, and do not transfer any personal information to any other party. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can, however, reset your browser to refuse all cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent. Please consult the technical information relevant to your browser for instructions. If you choose to disable your cookies setting or refuse to accept a cookie, some parts of the Site may not function properly or may be considerably slower.

If you leave a comment on the Site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

Information we may collect while you are shopping: When shopping, we keep a record of your email and the cart contents for up to 30 days on our server using Mailchimp for WooCommerce. This record is kept to repopulate the contents of your cart if you switch devices or needed to come back another day. You may read the Mailchimp privacy policy here.

Information we may collect during checkout from purchase checkout areas: While you visit the Site, we’ll track:

  • Products you’ve viewed: we’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed
  • Location, IP address and browser type: we’ll use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping
  • Shipping address: we’ll ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you your order.

We’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing the Site.

When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:

  • Send you information about your account and order
  • Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
  • Process payments and prevent fraud
  • Set up your account for our store
  • Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
  • Improve our store offerings
  • Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them

If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we may store order information for 7-10 years for tax and accounting purposes. 

This includes your name, email address and billing and shipping addresses.

We will also store comments or reviews, if you choose to leave them.

If you are purchasing through an affiliate link on the Site, such as Amazon or Renee’s Garden Seeds, see their privacy policies for information they may collect.

Information we collect and store relating to subscription purchases: For the purposes of processing recurring subscription payments, we store the customer’s name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number and credit card/payment details.

Who on our team has access to information: Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, Administrators can access:

  • Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
  • Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

Payments: We accept payments through PayPal and Stripe. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal or Stripe, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.

Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy and Stripe Privacy Policy for additional information.

Malware/Spyware/Viruses: Neither the Company nor the Site knowingly permit the use of malware, spyware, viruses, and/or other similar types of software.

Embedded content from other websites: Pages on the Site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Please see the Vimeo Privacy Policy for additional information.

Links to External Sites: The Company is not responsible for the content or practices of third party websites that may be linked to the Site. The Company is also not responsible for any information that you might share with such linked websites. The Company is not responsible for any transactions you might make with such linked sites. You should refer to each website’s respective privacy policy and practices prior to disclosing any information.

Bulletin Boards, Blog Discussions and Chat Areas: Guests of the Site are solely responsible for the content of messages they post on the Company’s forums, including, but not limited to chat rooms, blog comment areas, and bulletin boards. Users should be aware that when they voluntarily disclose personal information (e.g., user name, e-mail address, phone number) in these areas, that information can be collected and used by others and may result in unsolicited messages from other people. You are responsible for the personal information you choose to submit in these instances. Please take care when using these features.

Comments: When visitors leave comments on the Site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media: If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. 

Choice/Opt-Out: The Site may provide you the opportunity to opt-in to receive communications from us at the point where we request information about you. You always have the option of removing your name from any e-mail list in order to discontinue any such future communications. In order to ensure immediate removal from any list, please follow the specific instructions set forth within the communications you receive from the Company which you no longer wish to receive. If you are unsuccessful in completing the instructions specified in any such communication, please e-mail us at support@gardenmentors.com, including a copy of the undesired email attached to the request, and state you wish to be removed from the mailing list.

How long we retain your data: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register or subscribe on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Spam detection: We use Akismet spam detection service. This service collects information about visitors who comment on Sites that use the Akismet anti-spam service.  Typically, this includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself). You can learn more about the Akismet Privacy Policy here.

Where we may send your data: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Data may be shared with outside services such as payment processing sites (such as WooCommerce, Stripe, PayPal), our mailing list processor (Mailchimp), our spam detection service (such as Akismet), our affiliate program links (such as Amazon and Renees Garden Seeds), our Etsy shop links (such as Etsy), our Avitar plug-in (such as Gravitar), our Academy plugs in (such as WP_Courseware), our Google Analytics, and others. How and if your data is impacted by each of these depends on how you use the Site.

What rights you have over your data: If you have an account on the Site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. 

Contact Information for Complaints or Concerns: If you have any complaints or concerns about the Company or about this privacy statement, please contact:

Via email: support@gardenmentors.com

or

Via regular mail:

Garden Mentors Inc

5530 Chuckanut Drive #295

Bow, WA 98232

Information provided by you via general e-mail inquiries to the Company such as your e-mail address is used only to respond to your inquiries in the ordinary course of business, and is not shared with third parties.

Security: Security for all personally identifiable information is extremely important to us. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, The Company cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit via the internet. By transmitting any such information to the Company, you accept that you do so at your own risk.

Your Acceptance of These Terms: By using the Site, you accept the policies and restrictions set forth in this Online Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use the Site. This Online Privacy Policy may be revised from time to time by updating this posting. You are bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to review the then current Online Privacy Policy to which you are bound.

Last Updated: November 2020