Privacy Policy

Chatters Limited Partnership, by its General Partner, Chatters GP Inc. (hereinafter "Chatters Limited Partnership") is committed to safeguarding the personal information entrusted to us by our Franchisees and Retail Clients. We manage personal information in accordance with Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act and other applicable laws. This policy outlines the principles and practices we follow in protecting the personal information of our Franchisees and of Retail Clients.

For purposes of this policy, "Franchisee" also includes prospective and former Franchisees, "Retail Client" means customers and third parties dealing with the Store locations and business of those Franchisees, as well as Retail Clients of Stores that may be owned by Chatters Limited Partnership subsidiaries that operate retail Stores, and Retail Clients who use BookMe offered by Chatters Limited Partnership for appointments at all retail Stores, "Store" includes a salon or combined salon and beauty supply retail business and "BookMe" is the system with which Retail Clients may book appointments online and through mobile devices.

Franchisees of Chatters Limited Partnership and subsidiaries of Chatters Limited Partnership that operate Stores are required to meet privacy laws in their location of operation, and any personal information collected from Retail Clients directly by Franchisees shall be subject to the Franchisee's own privacy policy.

This policy applies to Chatters Limited Partnership and, except to the extent of the foregoing paragraph, its subsidiaries including, without limitation, Chatters Assetco Ltd., Chatters Salon Limited and any related, affiliated or subsidiary entity of Chatters Limited Partnership or any of the aforementioned corporate entities (collectively called "Chatters"). This policy also applies to any person providing services on our behalf.

Copies of this policy are available to any Franchisee or Retail Client on request, and on our website at www.chatters.ca.

WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. This includes an individual's name, home address and phone number, age, sex, marital or family status, an identifying number, financial information, educational history, etc., or video images of an individual.

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

We collect only the personal information reasonable for the purposes of providing services to Franchisees and Retail Clients, and for the purposes of managing Chatters and its franchise business.

From Franchisees we collect personal information needed to:

  • Evaluate suitability of applicants as a Chatters Franchisee
  • Enter into franchise agreements and contracts
  • Deliver requested products and services
  • Provide information on warranties for products and services
  • Notify Franchisees of upcoming events of interest
  • Initiate, administer, and terminate our Franchisee – franchisor relationships
  • Ensure Franchisee compliance with our requirements
  • Meet regulatory requirements
  • Manage day to day administrative matters
  • Provide information on future or additional business opportunities
  • Provide advice with respect to product placement, layout and merchandising

We normally collect all Franchisee information directly from our Franchisees, in accordance with this privacy policy and as authorized by law. We inform our Franchisees before or at the time of collecting personal information, of the purposes for which we are collecting the information. The only time we don't provide this notification is when a Franchisee volunteers information for an obvious purpose.

We also collect personal information so that Chatters may manage its franchise business, including, without limitation, to improve its franchise business and brand, monitor Franchisee compliance (such as by ensuring there is no diversion), to manage Chatters liability with respect to safety and security, and to ensure compliance with its own obligations to its own suppliers.

Chatters collects personal information of Retail Clients in accordance with this privacy policy and as authorized by law. We inform our Retail Clients before or at the time of collecting personal information, of the purposes for which we are collecting the information. The only time we don't provide this notification is when a Retail Client volunteers information for an obvious purpose. From Retail Clients we collect personal information in the following circumstances:

  • For the purpose of responding to or contacting Retail Clients with respect to their interaction at a Store or with a Franchisee
  • For the purpose of providing Retail Clients the ability to make appointments through BookMe
  • In the normal course of our day to day business operations to the extent that subsidiaries of Chatters Limited Partnership own and operate Stores

Personal information of Retail Clients which is collected at a Store is subject to the privacy policy of that Franchisee, and in the case of Stores that may be owned by subsidiaries or affiliates of Chatters Limited Partnership, the privacy policy of that subsidiary or affiliate.

BookMe is operated by a third party service provider. To use BookMe Retail Clients must enter certain personal information into the service. Such personal information is collected, used and disclosed solely for the purpose of operating BookMe and for assessing the frequency of use of the BookMe service by Retail Clients, so we may continue to improve the BookMe service.

CONSENT

We ask for consent to collect, use or disclose Franchisee and Retail Client personal information, except in specific circumstances where collection, use or disclosure without consent is authorized or required by law. We may also rely on providing adequate notice or assume your consent in cases where you volunteer information for an obvious purpose. With respect to personal information of Retail Clients collected by a Franchisee, we rely on the consent obtained by our Franchisees in accessing that personal information.

Email: We may use your personal information to send you emails or text messages (e.g., electronic receipts, transaction updates, etc. ). We are allowed to assume your consent for such purposes; you are free to withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of certain personal information. However, if you do so, we may not be able to provide certain services.

We may also use your personal information for marketing purposes, including sending you commercial electronic messages. In most cases, we rely on your implied consent to send such messages. You give us your implied consent when you transact with us, sign up for a discount code, enter a contest, or engage in other similar activities with us. You are free to withdraw your consent at any time - you may opt out of marketing emails or texts by clicking the "unsubscribe" option in the email message at any time.

Text (SMS) Messages: If you consent to receive text messages, Chatters offers its customers mobile alerts regarding marketing messages, sales, events and product releases by SMS message. Message and data rates may apply, check with your cellular or data carrier for information. You can opt out of receiving text messages at any time. To stop receiving text messages, text the word STOP to 78953 any time or reply STOP to any of the text messages you have received from Chatters. This is the exclusive method for opting out. Your opt-out request may generate either a confirmation text or a texted request to clarify the text message program to which it applies (if you have more than one).

As Retail Client or Franchisee you may withdraw your consent to the use and disclosure of your personal information at any time, unless the personal information is necessary for us to fulfill our legal obligations. We will respect your decision, but we may not be able to provide you with certain products and services if we do not have the necessary personal information.

We may collect, use or disclose Retail Client or Franchisee personal information without consent only as authorized by law. For example, we might not request consent when the collection, use or disclosure is reasonable for an investigation or legal proceeding, to collect a debt owed to our organization, in an emergency that threatens life, health or safety, or when the personal information is from a public telephone directory.

Online Technologies: We may collect certain types of information electronically when you interact with Chatters Limited Partnership, emails, social media accounts, online advertising, or through technologies such as cookies, web beacons, single pixel gifs and analytics engines. This information helps us understand what actions you take on our Sites and allows our Sites to work correctly.

For example: We may use your location or language preference to auto-select features when you visit our Sites; we may use information about your purchase on our Sites to provide you with interest-based advertisements based on your purchasing profile; and we may collect, combine and categorize your personal information on an aggregated basis to identify purchasing patterns to help us analyze our businesses to better serve customers.

The technologies and services we use include:

  • Cookies, which are small text files that are saved on your computer when you visit a website so that information can be saved between visits, such as your login credentials or language preferences. For example, cookies allow you to log in quickly when you visit our sites
  • Web beacons, and single pixel gifs, which are small image files that have information about you, such as your IP address, that can be downloaded when you visit a website or open an e-mail. This allows us to understand your online behaviour, monitor our email delivery, and provide you with interest-based advertising. These tools also allow our third-party tracking tools to gather information, such as your IP address, and provide this back to us in an anonymized, aggregate form (i.e. in a manner that prevents us from identifying you personally). Aggregate information refers to personal information compiled and expressed in a summary form where no personal identifiers are included
  • Other technologies, such as analytics engines, which pull usage data from multiple sources and help manage and collect this data to use for personalization, interest-based advertising, customizing content and other methods to gain insights into our customers’ needs and preferences. For instance, we use Google Analytics which allows us to see information on user website activities including, but not limited to, page views, source and time spent on our Sites. This information is depersonalized and is displayed as numbers, meaning that it cannot be tracked back to individuals. You may opt out of our use of Google Analytics by visiting the Google Analytics opt-out page

Through these technologies, we may collect personal information as follows:

  • Third-party social networks that provide interactive plug-ins to enable social network features (e.g., to connect to Facebook) on the Sites may use cookies to gather information on your use of the Sites. How this collected data is used by a third party is dependent on the privacy policy of the social network, which is available on the appropriate parties’ website. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third parties as well. Third parties involved may use these tracking methods such as but not limited to cookies to achieve their own business goals and purposes by relating and combining information about your usage of our Sites to any other personal information they may have collected on you. We may also obtain and use analytical and statistical information from third-party social networks to help us measure performance and effectiveness of content we display on social networks, for example, by measuring impressions and clicks on the content we promote
  • Google Ads: We use Google Ads Remarketing to advertise our products and services across the Internet and to advertise on third-party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our websites. Google Ads remarketing will display ads to you based on what parts of the Sites you have viewed by placing a cookie on your web browser. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our Sites or this could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a website in the Google Display Network. This cookie does not in any way identify you or give access to your computer or mobile device. The cookie is only used to indicate to other websites that you have visited a particular page on our Sites, so that they may show you ads relating to that page. If you do not wish to participate in our Google Ads Remarketing, you can opt-out by visiting Google’s Ads Preferences Manager
  • Online Interest-based Advertising: We may also allow a limited number of trusted third parties to install cookies on your hard drive from our Sites. Our Sites may include third-party advertising and links to other websites which may be used to generate personalized advertisements. Personalized ads, sometimes referred to as interest-based or behavioral ads, are ads based upon information about you, such as your page views on our Sites, your information requests or purchases on our Sites. We participate in the Meta Custom Audience program. We share your information with Meta, which will assist in delivering relevant advertising to our customers who also use Meta. Please refer to Meta’s privacy policy for additional information. However, advertisers and other third parties (including the ad networks, ad-serving companies, and other service providers they may use) may assume that users who interact with or click on a personalized ad or content displayed on our Sites are part of the group that the ad or content is directed towards. Advertisers or ad companies working on their behalf sometimes use technology to serve the ads that appear on our Sites directly to your browser. They may also use cookies to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize ad content. We do not have access to or control over cookies or other features that advertisers and third-party sites may use, and the information practices of these advertisers and third-party websites are not covered by our Privacy Policy. Please contact them directly for more information about their privacy practices. You can also generally opt-out of receiving personalized ads from third-party advertisers and ad networks who are members of the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada. Please visit the DAAC opt-out page for more information

You may delete or disable certain of these technologies at any time via your browser. However, if you do so, you may not be able to use some of the features on our sites.

Data Deletion: You may request the deletion of your personal information by contacting us at customerservice@chatters.ca. Additionally, if you would like to delete your Facebook data, please follow these steps.

REFER A FRIEND PROGRAM

Referrer:

  • In the Chatters referral platform, an existing customer can send a referral through e-mail, various social media channels or SMS
  • Once the referral is sent, the family member/friend will be sent an email containing a $10 CDN discount coupon/code
  • After your family member/friend uses the code/coupon for a Chatters purchase, you will receive a $10 CDN Chatters discount code/coupon

These rewards will be emailed to you, to a maximum of $100 CDN reward codes/coupons per account per year for Chatters purchases.

In order to be eligible for these specific program rewards, your friend or family member must use their code/coupon at www.chatters.ca

Referee:

  • Once a referral is received, the family member/friend has 90 days from receipt to use their code/coupon
  • The family member/friend must purchase one or more eligible Chatters products from www.chatters.ca for you to receive your code/coupon
  • You will receive your code/coupon at the email address you provided with

Terms and Conditions:

  • To make a referral as part of the Program, you must be a current Chatters customer with at least one active account
  • Chatters team members, contractors, sales representatives acting on Chatters' behalf are excluded from this Program
  • Please note, business and corporate accounts are also not eligible for this credit
  • You and your referrals have to accept the Program Terms to participate in the Program
  • To be eligible for referral rewards, you must (i) explain the Program to your referrals and obtain consent from each referral to use their personal information for the purpose of sending them the referral and (ii) abide by these Program Terms. Referrals must provide consent to use of their personal information in order to participate in the Program
  • There is no limit to the number of referral offers you can send to your friends. Referral rewards are limited to a maximum of $100 CDN reward codes/coupons per account per year for Chatters purchases
  • Referees cannot accept more than one referral offer as part of this Program. If they receive multiple offers, a referral reward will be applied to the account of the current Chatters customer whose referral they accepted through the Program
  • Chatters assumes no responsibility for lost, delayed, damaged or misdirected referrals or communications or for any failure of the website, for any problems or technical malfunction of any computer online systems, servers, access providers, computer equipment, software, failure of any e-mail or referral to be received by Chatters on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any website, or any combination thereof including any injury or damage to a your (or any other person's) computer related to or resulting from this program. Chatters reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change, cancel or suspend this program should a virus, bug or other cause beyond the reasonable control of Chatters, corrupt the security or proper administration of the program or for any other reason. Referrals are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, unintelligible, falsified, altered or tampered with or unlawful in any way. Referrals submitted by unauthorized means will be disqualified. In the event that it has been determined that a referral has been made in a manner not sanctioned by these terms, you and all of your referrals will be disqualified from this program and any referral credits that have been awarded will be deducted. You agree to abide by the terms of this program and the decisions of the Chatters team, which are final. This program is subject to all applicable laws and regulations
  • Chatters may end the Program or change any of the terms at any time, without notice and without obligation to award any referral rewards or credits

Your Privacy:

All information collected by the referral form will be used for the purposes of the referral program only. Your privacy is important to Chatters. We have a long-standing policy of protecting the privacy of our customers in all of our business operations, the principles that govern the collection and the use and disclosure of personal information. These principles reflect our continuing commitment to protecting our customers' privacy.

HOW DO WE USE AND DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We use and disclose Retail Client and Franchisee personal information only for the purposes for which the information was collected, except as authorized by law. For example, we may use Retail Client and Franchisee contact information to deliver goods and to provide BookMe. The law also allows us to use that contact information for the purpose of collecting a debt owed to our organization, should that be necessary.

In addition Chatters Limited Partnership may access a Franchisee's video surveillance footage with for purposes of monitoring licensed sales, security and loss prevention, and management of Chatters' liability, and upon request by a Chatters Franchisee, in order to provide advice to that Franchisee with respect to product placement, layout and merchandising.

Such footage may capture Retail Clients and employees of Chatter's Franchisees, and where a Chatters location is owned by a subsidiary of Chatters Limited Partnership, Retail Clients and employees of that Store.

If we wish to use or disclose your personal information for any new business purpose, we will ask for your consent.

HOW DO WE SAFEGUARD PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We make every reasonable effort to ensure that Franchisee and Retail Client information is accurate and complete. We rely on our Franchisees and Retail Clients to notify us if there is a change to their personal information that may affect their relationship with our organization. If you are aware of an error in our information about you, please let us know and we will correct it on request wherever possible. In some cases we may ask for a written request for correction.

We protect client personal information in a manner appropriate for the sensitivity of the information. We make every reasonable effort to prevent any loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of personal information, as well as any unauthorized access to personal information. Specific mechanisms include limiting disclosure of personal information to Chatters employees that reasonably require it to carry out their functions, physical locks and storage security and implementation of web passwords and IT security systems. When we collect video footage of our Franchisee's locations, we limit access to certain senior officers of Chatters Limited Partnership.

We also use appropriate security measures when destroying Retail Client and Franchisee personal information, including shredding paper records and to the extent reasonably possible, permanently deleting electronic records.

We retain Franchisee and Retail Client personal information only as long as is reasonable to fulfill the purposes for which the information was collected or for legal or business purposes.

BookMe is provided by a third party who is contractually obligated to protect the personal information of Retail Clients collected through BookMe. The third party may store personal information of Retail Clients on servers located outside of Canada. Chatters and the third party service provider for BookMe use appropriate security measures to protect personal information collected through BookMe, however it is important to remember that there are inherent risks associated with providing personal information online or through SMS or other mobile applications.

ACCESS TO RECORDS CONTAINING PERSONAL INFORMATION

Franchisees and Retail Clients have a right of access to their own personal information in a record that is in our custody or under our control, subject to some exceptions. For example, organizations are required under the Personal Information Protection Act to refuse to provide access to information that would reveal personal information about another individual. Organizations are authorized under the Act to refuse access to personal information if disclosure would reveal confidential business information. Access may also be refused if the information is privileged.

If we refuse a request in whole or in part, we will provide the reasons for the refusal. In some cases where exceptions to access apply, we may withhold that information and provide you with the remainder of the record.

You may make a request for access to your personal information by writing to

Legal & Development

Chatters Limited Partnership

271 Burnt Park Drive

Red Deer County, AB T4S OK7

Or by sending an email to privacy@chatters.ca

You must provide sufficient information in your request to allow us to identify the information you are seeking.

You may also request information about our use of your personal information and any disclosure of that information to persons outside our organization. For personal information collected before January 2004, if we do not have a record of disclosures, we will provide information about any disclosure of your information that is likely to have occurred.

You may also request a correction of an error or omission in your personal information.

We will respond to your request within 30 calendar days, unless an extension is granted. We may charge a reasonable fee to provide information, but not to make a correction. We will advise you of any fees that may apply before beginning to process your request.

QUESTIONS AND COMPLAINTS

If you have a question or concern about any collection, use or disclosure of personal information by Chatters, or about a request for access to your own personal information, please contact Chatters Legal & Development at the previously mentioned address.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you may also contact the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta:

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta

Suite 2460, 801 - 6 Avenue, SW

Calgary, Alberta T2P 3W2

Phone: (403) 297-2728

Toll Free: 1-888-878-4044

E-mail: generalinfo@oipc.ab.ca

Website: www.oipc.ab.ca