Privacy policy

  • Who we are

    HomeBay Ltd. is a limited liability company incorporated in Canada. (“HomeBay”, “we”, “us”, “our”).

    This policy describes how HomeBay collects, processes uses and discloses your personal information as a data controller, when you contact us, use our services or interact with our platforms including websites and mobile apps (together “Platforms“).

     

    What this policy covers

    We are committed to adopt the highest standards when it comes to how we collect, use and protect your personal information, and have accordingly developed this privacy policy (the “Policy”), which:

    • sets out the types of personal information we collect;
    • explains how and why we collect and use your personal information;
    • explains when and why we may share personal information within HomeBay and with other organizations; 
    • explains how we protect the personal information we collect; and

    This Policy applies if you use our services (referred to in this Policy as “our Services”). Using our Services means:

    • Buying / Ordering services or products from us over the phone, in store, or online
    • Using any of our platforms, including websites (“our Websites”), or mobile applications (“our Mobile Apps”); or
    • Taking part in our promotions & competitions and registering to receive our newsletters and offers 

    This Policy also applies if you contact us or we contact you about our Services.

     

    What personal data we collect

    When you register to our services, we may collect:
    • Your personal details, including your shipping and billing addresses, email address(es) or phone number(s).
    • Your account login details, such as your username and the password (encrypted) that you have chosen; and
    When you shop with us online, browse our Websites, or use our Mobile Apps, we may collect:
    • Information about your online purchases (for example: what, when, where you ordered / bought and how you paid);
    • Information about your online browsing behavior on our Websites, Mobile Apps and public networks and information about when you click on one of our adverts (including those shown on other organizations’ websites);
    • Information about devices you have used to access our Services (including the make, model and operating system, IP address, browser type and mobile device identifiers); and
    • Information about your precise geolocation.
    When you contact us or we contact you or you take part in promotions, competitions, surveys or questionnaires about our Services, we may collect:
    • Personal information you provide about yourself; 
    • Details of emails and other digital communications we send to you including information about the emails you open and links in them that you click on; and
    • Your feedback and contributions to customer surveys and questionnaires.

    If you choose not to provide your personal information to be used in accordance with this Policy, you will still be able to visit our Platforms but you may not be able to access certain options, products or services, and in some cases we may not be able to fulfill a service you request.

     

    Why and How we use your Personal Information

    Make our Services available to you 

    We use your personal information to provide the services you have requested, including:

    • Processing your orders and refunds; and 
    • Managing the accounts you hold with us.

    This is so we can provide the services to you in line with our contractual obligations to you.

    Personalize your experience

    We may use your personal information to personalize the marketing messages we send to you and to make them more relevant and interesting, as this is in our legitimate business interests. Where necessary we will obtain your consent first. We may use your personal information for this purpose in the following ways: 

    • Using your online browsing behavior as well as your purchases to help us better understand you as a customer and provide you with personalized offers and services; 
    • Providing you with relevant marketing communications (including by email, mail, telephone, SMS, or online advertising), relating to products and services we offer, and those of our suppliers. As part of this, we may measure the effectiveness of our marketing communications and those of our suppliers; 
    Contact and interact with you

    We may use your personal information when we communicate with you, in order to:

    • Contact you about our Services, for example by phone, email or mail or by responding to social media posts that you have directed at us;
    • Manage promotions and competitions you take part in, including those we run with our suppliers;
    • Invite you to take part in and manage customer surveys, questionnaires and other market research activities carried out by HomeBay

    It is in our legitimate business interests that we are able to provide you with appropriate responses and provide you with notice about our services.

    Manage and improve our day-to-day operations

    We analyze information about how you use our services to: 

    • Manage and improve our Websites and Mobile Apps; 
    • Help to develop and improve our product range, services, stores, information technology systems, know-how and the way we communicate with you; 
    • Detect and prevent fraud or other crime.

    It is in our legitimate business interests to use the information provided to us for this purpose, so we can understand any issues with our services to improve it.

     

    SHARING PERSONAL INFORMATION 

    We may share your personal information with third parties under the following circumstances:

    Service Providers

    We work with carefully selected Service Providers that carry out certain functions on our behalf. These include, for example, companies that help us with technology services, storing and combining data, processing payments and delivering orders. We only share personal information that enables our Service Providers to provide their services.

    SHARING PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

    We may share personal information with other organizations in the following circumstances:

    • if any applicable law or a public authority says we must share the personal information;
    • if we need to share personal information in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (this includes providing personal information to others for the purposes of preventing fraud and reducing credit risk);
    • to an organization we sell or transfer (or enter into negotiations to sell or transfer) any of our businesses or any of our rights or obligations under any agreement we may have with you to. If the transfer or sale goes ahead, the organization receiving your personal information can use your personal information in the same way as us
    • to any other successors in title to our business; or
    • to anyone to whom we transfer or may transfer our rights and duties under our agreement with you.

     

    HOW WE PROTECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

    We maintain physical, technical, and organizational safeguards to secure your personal information from unauthorized access, use, alteration and destruction. However, no internet-based site can be 100% secure and we cannot be held responsible for unauthorized or unintended access that is beyond our control.

     

    SOCIAL MEDIA

    We operate channels, pages and accounts on some social media sites to inform, assist and engage with customers. We monitor and record comments and posts made on these channels about us so that we can improve our services.

    HomeBay is not responsible for any information posted on those sites other than information we have posted ourselves. We do not endorse the social media sites themselves or any information posted on them by third parties.

     

    RETENTION

    We keep records for as long as required to 

    • manage purchases and provide the other relevant products or services anticipated by this Privacy Policy, including keeping you up-to-date with our marketing 
    • personalize the products, services and communications with you 
    • comply with the applicable record retention legal requirements. When deciding how long to keep your personal information after our relationship with you has ended, we take into account our legal obligations and regulators’ expectations.

    If you wish to request that we no longer use your information to provide you services, email us at  [email protected].

    However, we will retain and use your registration information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

     

    MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

    All marketing communications we send to you will provide you with a way to withdraw your consent to future marketing. If you no longer wish to receive promotional materials you may opt-out from receiving these communications, this will remove you from marketing lists.

    Please note that if you unsubscribe from marketing communications you will still receive operational and service messages from us regarding the services or products you bought from us and responses to enquiries made to us, and that we may hold your details on a suppression list so we don’t send you marketing communications in the future.

     

    COOKIES AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES

    We use cookies and similar technologies, such as tags and pixels (“Cookies”), to personalize and improve your customer experience as you use our Websites and Mobile Apps and to provide you with relevant online advertising. Cookies are small data files that allow a website or Mobile App to collect and store a range of data on your desktop computer, laptop or mobile device.

    Cookies help us to provide important features and functionality on our Websites and Mobile Apps, and we use them to improve your customer experience. For example, we use Cookies to do the following:

    Improve the way our Websites and Mobile Apps work

    Cookies allow us to improve the way our Websites and Mobile Apps work so that we can personalize your experience and allow you to use many of their useful features.

    For example, we use Cookies so we can remember your preferences and the contents of your shopping cart when you return to our Websites and Mobile Apps.

    Improve the performance of our Websites and Mobile Apps

    Cookies can help us to understand how our Websites and Mobile Apps are being used, for example, by telling us if you get an error messages as you browse. These Cookies collect data that is mostly aggregated and anonymous.

    Deliver relevant online advertising

    We may use Cookies to help us deliver online advertising that we believe is most relevant to you on our Websites and other organizations’ websites.

    Cookies used for this purpose are often placed on our Websites by other organizations, and always with our permission. These Cookies may collect information about your online behavior, such as your IP address, the website you arrived from and information about your purchase history or the content of your shopping cart. This means that you may see our adverts on our Websites and on other organizations’ websites. You may also see adverts for other organizations on our Websites.

    To help us to deliver online advertising that is relevant to you, we may also combine data we collect through Cookies in the browser of your desktop computer or other devices with other data that we have collected.

    Measuring the effectiveness of our marketing communications, including online advertising

    Cookies can tell us if you have seen a specific advert, and how long it has been since you have seen it. This information allows us to measure the effectiveness of our online advertising campaigns and control the number of times you are shown an advert.

    We also use Cookies to measure the effectiveness of our marketing communications, for example by telling us if you have opened a marketing email that we have sent you.

    Your choices when it comes to Cookies

    You can use your browser settings to accept or reject new Cookies and to delete existing Cookies. You can also set your browser to notify you each time new Cookies are placed on your computer or other device.

    If you choose to disable some or all Cookies, you may not be able to make full use of our platforms. For example, you may not be able to add items to your shopping basket, proceed to checkout, or use some of our products and services that require you to sign in.

    Once you have given us your consent to the use of cookies, we shall store cookies on your computer or device. If you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, you will need to delete our cookies using your internet browser settings.

     

    AGGREGATE DATA, DATA ANALYTICS AND SOCIAL MEDIA FUNCTIONALITY

    We may aggregate personal information and remove any identifying elements in order to analyze patterns and improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze Platform use, to improve our content and product offerings, and to customize our Platforms’ content, layout, products and services, and we may appoint third parties to do this on our behalf, as set out above.

    We gather certain usage information like the number and frequency of visitors to our Platforms. This information may include which webpage you just came from, which webpage you next go to, what browser you are using, your device and your IP address. We only use such data in the aggregate. This collective data helps us to determine how much our customers use parts of our Platforms, and do research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand and serve you.

    If you use buttons on our Platforms linked to social media or similar sites (for example “Like” and/or “Share” buttons), content from our Platforms may be sent back to that other website or service and, depending on your privacy settings, may be privately or publicly visible (for example to friends, followers, or generally to anyone who has access to your profile page).

     

    PRIVACY CONCERNS

    If you have any concerns about our compliance with applicable privacy laws or this Privacy Policy please email us at [email protected]. We will endeavor to respond to your concerns as soon as possible.

     

    NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

    We update this Privacy Policy when needed and place updates on our platforms. If we are going to use your personal information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify you. All changes will become effective when posted unless indicated otherwise. Please review this Privacy Policy periodically for changes.

     

    LINKS

    Our Websites or Mobile Apps may contain links to other websites operated by other organizations that have their own privacy policies. Please make sure you read the terms and conditions and privacy policy carefully before providing any personal information on a website as we do not accept any responsibility or liability for websites of other organizations.

     

    CHILDREN

    Our platforms are not directed towards children. If you are providing personal information for an individual less than 13 years of age, you are providing us your affirmative parental consent as the legal parent or guardian to collect, use and process the information of the individual less than 13 years of age, consistent with this Privacy Policy.

     

    Last updated: January 1, 2022