Privacy policy

Merci ("us," "we," or "our") operates the virtual marketplace available at https://merciflowers.co.za/ (the "Site"). The right to privacy and this privacy "Policy" is important to us. We are committed to taking steps to protect your privacy when we process your “Personal Information” as defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA") and we implement business practices that comply with POPIA.

The terms of this Policy will prevail if there is any conflict between these policy terms and any other terms in an agreement between us. We may change the terms of this Policy and will always process Personal Information in accordance with the latest version.

Merci processes information as a responsible party when we process Personal Information for the purposes of managing our relationship and offering our services to you.

This Policy applies to all processing of Personal Information as defined in POPIA and as it relates to our users, customers, potential customers, visitors of the website, social media sites, or virtual marketplace, or in the case of our corporate clients, their clients or other data subjects receiving products from them through our services, in which case we act as their operator. When we act as an operator, we act on the instructions of our corporate client, who will be the responsible party in respect of the Personal Information that they have instructed us to process to render the services.

The policy informs you of our practices regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information and also explains certain rights you have.

Collecting Your Information

While using our Site, we may ask you to provide us with certain Personal Information that can be used to contact or identify you, including but not limited to, your name or company name, email address, postal address, and phone number. We may also collect the following categories of personal information insofar as it is required by our operational requirements:

-Personal Information and contact details of the recipient of the product ordered through our services;

-User information: Personal Information included in correspondence, transaction documents, use of the services, or other materials that we process in the course of providing the services. This may include recordings of telephone calls and any Personal Information that may be included in those recordings;

-Consent records: if we base our processing of information on consent, we will store a record of the consent you have provided;

-Payment details: payment method used, payment amount, payment date;

-Views, opinions, and ratings of products and vendors.

We may collect Personal Information from the following sources:

-directly from you when you provide it to us, such as when you register an account, sign up to use our services as a Customer, contact us or through the course of our relationship with you;

-from our Customers, including our corporate clients, where they provide us with your information if you are the recipient of the product ordered through our virtual marketplace;

-from couriers who deliver products ordered through the virtual marketplace to you;

-from your web browser when you visit our website, subject to the settings of your web browser;

-through analytical services or analytical tools supplied by third parties;

-from public sources where you have made your Personal Information public, such as on social media or online platforms;

-from your use of our services or use of any features or resources available on or through our services;

-from third parties when you interact with them through our services or interact with us through their services, and

-from third parties with whom we hold trusted relationships where the third party is in law entitled to share your information with us or you have given consent for the information to be shared.

Using Your Information

We mainly use Personal Information that we collect to provide our services. In addition to this, we may use the information for one or more of the following purposes:

-to provide information to you that you request from us relating to our products or services;

-to provide information to you relating to other products that may be of interest to you. Such additional information will only be provided where you have consented to receive such information;

-to inform you of any changes to our website, services, or goods and products;

-to perform in terms of our agreement with you or with the Vendor;

-to monitor and analyze our business to ensure that it is operating properly, for financial management and for business-development purposes;

-to contact you by email to inform you about our services, however, you can opt-out of such communications;

-to form a view of you as an individual/juristic person and to identify, develop, or improve our services and other services that may interest our Customers;

-to carry out market research and surveys, business and statistical analysis, and necessary audits;

-for fraud prevention;

-to perform other administrative and operational tasks like testing our processes and systems and ensuring that our security measures are appropriate and adequate;

-to comply with our regulatory, legal, or other obligations.

In addition to the above purposes, we may use your Personal Information for other purposes if the law allows for it, if you consent to it, or if it is in the public interest to do so. All purposes for the processing of your Personal Information will be legal in terms of POPIA.

If you have previously purchased goods or services from us or registered for our service, we may provide you with details of similar goods or services, or other goods and services, that you may be interested in.

Direct marketing in general

We may process your Personal Information to contact you to provide you with information regarding our services and products if you are a Customer of Merci or have created an account with us.

You may unsubscribe from direct marketing communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link that we include in every direct marketing communication or by contacting us and requesting us to do so. After you unsubscribe, we will not send you any direct marketing communications, but we will continue to contact you when necessary in connection with the services or in connection with our business.

We will not sell your Personal Information.

Use of Cookies

Cookies provide information regarding the computer used by a visitor. We may use cookies where appropriate to gather information about your computer to assist us in improving our website.

We may gather information about your general internet use by using the cookie. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer and stored on the computer’s hard drive. Such information will not identify you personally. It is statistical data. This statistical data does not identify any personal details whatsoever.

Online Advertising We Use

We use Google AdWords Remarketing to advertise triggers across the Internet. AdWords remarketing will display relevant advertisements tailored to you based on what parts of the Merci website you have viewed by placing a cookie on your machine.

This Cookie does not in any way identify you as an individual, but merely recognizes you as the person who visited the particular page, to show advertisements relating to that page. Google AdWords Remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing to better suit your needs and only display advertisements that are relevant to you.

Remarketing

Merci also uses 3rd party vendor re-marketing tracking cookies, including the Google Adwords tracking cookie and Facebook Remarketing.

This means we will continue to show ads to you across the internet, specifically on the Google Content Network (GCN).

As always we respect your privacy and are not collecting any identifiable information through the use of Google’s or any other 3rd party remarketing system.

The third-party vendors, including Google, whose services we use, will place cookies on web browsers in order to serve advertisements based on past visits to our website.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based