| Privacy Policy (Effective 07/10/09) |
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Sam’s Club is committed to safeguarding your privacy. The questions below outline the privacy policy of Sam’s Club for members in the United States. This includes questions about what information will be collected, how it will be used and shared, and what choices and options you have, including how you may contact us.
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When you use our Pharmacy or Optical departments, you provide us with your health information so that we may process your request. We understand the sensitive nature of such information and have always respected your privacy by keeping it confidential, including in accordance with federal law (the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act or HIPAA). Our Notice of Privacy Practices describes how we protect your information maintained by Pharmacy and Optical, such as how you may review your health information and how we limit disclosure. A copy of the Notice of Privacy Practices is provided by Pharmacy or Optical to you at the first time of service, or may be requested at any time at your local Sam’s Club.
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Sam’s Club collects information about you in the following ways:
Information you give us.
We collect personal information that you may provide us when you visit a Sam’s Club, visit us online, register as a Member, or make a purchase. Examples are your name, home, billing, and shipping addresses, email address, telephone number, driver’s license number, Membership Number, payment information, and your Social Security Number if you apply for credit. We may also collect your personal information in other situations as well. For instance, we may collect personal information on certain Member Services sites such as when you make travel arrangements using Sam’s Club Travel. We may keep a record of correspondence when you contact Sam’s Club, or when you a report a problem with our services or merchandise. Sam’s Club may also occasionally ask Members to complete voluntary surveys for research purposes. Wherever Sam’s Club collects personal information, we make an effort to include a link to our Privacy Policy.
The more information you provide, and the more accurate the information is, the better Sam’s Club will be able to improve and customize your shopping experience. For that reason, we merge the information you provide to us offline with information you provide to us online.
Information Collected Automatically on Our Website
We may automatically collect some information when you visit our website. Examples include your internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, the referring website, the path you take through our website, and the date and time of your visit and purchases. Our website uses cookies, or small files that are stored on your computer’s hard drive or browser. While cookies are optional for browsing, they are needed to register, log on, or shop at our website. This information is used by samsclub.com to operate the site and to make site improvements based on usage statistics. We do not link any of this information to your personal information, except where Sam’s Club believes harm to the website, fraud, or similar activity may be occurring.
Information from third parties.
We may collect personal and demographic information (such as number of members in a household, gender and age) and mailing lists from third parties in order to provide you with goods and services intended to meet your needs. Additionally, this information may be merged with personal information we have collected from you. We use this information to personalize your shopping experience and to provide you with the most relevant products, services, and communications.
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Sam’s Club's goal in collecting personal information is to better understand ways we can deliver products and services that are relevant and that are suited to meet your needs. For example, we may use the personal information you provide us and the information we collect automatically on our website:
- to process membership applications,
- to ship orders to you,
- to alert you to product recalls,
- for billing and refund purposes,
- to help us improve our services, website, and communications, and
- with regard to credit qualification and application (e.g., to determine if you qualify for a Sam’s Club credit account or other credit account offered jointly by Sam’s Club and a partner, and to process any applications for credit you may make).
Sam’s Club operates under the umbrella of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (“Wal-Mart”). Wal-Mart shares information with Sam’s Club, except for information provided to purchase a financial product or service, to better understand customer needs and improve service.
We may send you customer service or product information to keep you updated on items you have purchased. We may also contact you regarding other marketing or promotional information that we think you may find of interest. You may opt-out of such marketing material as described under the Choices section below. If you opt-out, we may still contact you for reasons unrelated to marketing, such as for purposes of alerting you to important information about your Membership, product information or upgrades, product recalls, shipping, refunds, and other reasons related to your Membership.
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Sam's Club does not sell or rent your personal information to third parties. We share your personal information only under the following limited circumstances.
- We may share personal information with service providers, suppliers, or companies that help with our business operations, such as credit card processors, shipping vendors, billing and refund vendors, and companies that help us improve our product and service offerings and our website. These service providers, suppliers or vendors are required not to use your information for any other purpose than to facilitate a specific service requested by Sam’s Club. We also share information with Member Services partners in order to conduct the requested transaction.
- If you apply for a Sam’s Club Membership, we may share your information with the company that we partner with to offer credit card programs. To help you obtain the highest credit limit possible this may include your membership and application information. Similarly, if you qualify for a credit account and are not offered a credit account by a Sam’s Club Associate we may share your information with our partner, so that they may extend the offer of credit as required by law.
- We may share information with companies that we have partnered with so that we may jointly offer you products and services of interest. You may opt-out of this sharing under the Choices section below.
- For certain business customers who purchase business resale merchandise, such as tobacco products, we may share information with our partners in order to enable them to offer such customers discounts or rebates.
- We may share aggregate data, such as user statistics (for example, a certain percentage of our users are female) in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.
- We may share information in other special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it; where we believe it is relevant to protect personal safety, property, or other rights of Sam’s Club, its Members or associates; or to respond to Member inquiries from the account’s primary Member or from an officer or principal of a Business Member.
- Business Transfers: In the unlikely event that Sam’s Club or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will be one of the transferred assets.
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Sam’s Club Marketing Material:
We want to send you marketing communications only if you want to hear from us. You may opt-out of receiving different types of Sam’s Club marketing material in the following ways:
- Online: By logging on to your samsclub.com account and clicking “edit” on the Member profile section.
- By Email: You may email privacy@samsclub.com for assistance.
- By Mail: Sam’s Club, 608 SW 8th Street, Bentonville, AR 72716-0745, Attention: Membership Department
- By Phone: You may call Member Services by dialing 1 (888) 746-7726.
- In Club: You may request to opt out at the Membership desk of your local Sam’s Club.
When submitting your request to opt-out, please include your membership number, zip code and type of suppression requested (e.g. mail, phone, email, or sharing for joint or co-branded marketing.)
Joint or Co-branded Marketing Material:
We may also share your personal information with partners when we team up to offer or provide products, services, contests, or promotions that are of value to Members. If you would like to opt-out of this type of sharing, click here and follow the instructions.
Please note your choice to opt-out under any of the above will apply only to the individual cardholder Membership. If there are several cardholder Memberships under a single Account (such as a spouse's card or add-on card), each person with a Membership card must opt-out. Also, the above opt-outs do not apply to the Sam’s Club co-branded credit card or to data sharing regarding business customers that purchase business resale merchandise. However, you can choose to stop receiving prescreened offers of consumer credit from all companies, including prescreened offers of Sam’s Club credit, by calling 1-888-567-8688.
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You may update your information with us at any time by logging on to your samsclub.com account and going to the “My Account” section. You can delete or deactivate your Sam’s Club account if you wish. Please contact our Member Service Department by calling 1 (888) 746-7726 for further instructions about deleting or deactivating your Samsclub.com account. |
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Personal information that we maintain is subject to physical, administrative, and technical controls. When we do have to collect your most sensitive personal information, such as Social Security Numbers, we will protect its confidentiality, prohibit its unlawful disclosure, and limit access to authorized personnel only.
Your samsclub.com account information is password-protected so that only you have access to this personal information. You may update your samsclub.com information in the My Account section by using your email address and password. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. Sam’s Club will not ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or email. Also, remember to sign out of your samsclub.com account and close your browser window when you leave the site. This ensures that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence.
As a global company, Sam’s Club has separate privacy policies for its international sites. When you give Sam’s Club personal information on this website or in a Sam’s Club store, the information may be sent electronically to servers outside of the country where you originally entered the information, such as to the United States or other countries. In addition, that information may be used, stored, and processed outside of the country where you entered that information. Whenever Sam’s Club handles personal information as described above, regardless of where this occurs, Sam’s Club takes steps to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with the relevant Terms of Service, this Privacy Policy, and any privacy policy on a Sam’s Club international site where you enter personal information.
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, Sam’s Club cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services. Once we receive your transmission, we take reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to ensure the security and confidentiality of your information.
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We encourage you to review our privacy policy to make sure you understand how we use information that you provide. The policy may change from time to time, so please check our website periodically. We will alert you to changes by posting at the top of the privacy policy the date it was last updated and provide any other appropriate notice.
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We want to hear from you if you have any comments or questions about our privacy policy. Please contact us at the following mail or email address:
Privacy Office
608 SW 8th St
Bentonville AR 72716-0505
privacy@samsclub.com
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Our privacy policy describes how we share information for marketing purposes. The policy and rights apply to all members, including California residents:
Please contact us with any questions, or to request a list of third parties to whom we may disclose information for marketing purposes and the categories of information we may disclose, via the Contact Us section above.
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