Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement overview and summary

VCA Canada (“VCA”) is committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience.  This Privacy Statement applies to your use of VCA’s websites and any online or mobile applications (each an “App”) that run on smart phones, tablets and other devices, that link to this statement, including without limitation www.vcacanada.com, and the myVCA App (collectively, the “Sites”).

What information does this Privacy Statement apply to?

This Privacy Statement applies to data and information, including personal information, collected from or about you through the Sites and your use of the content, products and services offered through the Sites.

What Information do we collect?

We may collect, among others, the following types of information from you:

  • Your name and contact information
  • Information about the transactions you make with us
  • Demographic information about you
  • Information you post or submit to us
  • Information about your computer or device, your internet browser and browsing activities

How do we use your Information?

We may use your personal information for a variety of purposes, including:

  • to provide products or services that you may request
  • to communicate with you
  • to administer promotions (sweepstakes, contests and offers)
  • to deliver advertising
  • to improve our Sites, products and services
  • for other legitimate business purposes, including legal compliance

How do we share and disclose your Information?

We may share your personal information in the following ways:

  • with our affiliates, business partners and service providers
  • to fulfill the purpose for which you provided the information
  • at your direction or with your consent
  • to third parties for their marketing purposes
  • for other legitimate business purposes, including legal compliance

What choice do you have?

You may withdraw your consent to the collection, use and sharing of your personal information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. For instance, we provide you with choices about receiving promotional offers from us, receiving interest-based advertisements and other materials, the use of cookies and, if applicable, sharing your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

Personal Information outside Canada

Your personal information may in some cases be transferred outside Canada. As a result, it will be subject to the laws of other jurisdictions than your country of residence and may be available without notice to you to foreign government authorities under lawful orders and laws applicable in such jurisdictions.

How can you contact us?

If you believe that VCA has not adhered to this Privacy Statement, please contact us at webmaster@vca.com.

PRIVACY STATEMENT

VCA Canada (“VCA”) is committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience.  This Privacy Statement applies to all VCA websites and any online and mobile applications (“apps”) that run on smart phones, tablets and other devices, that link to this statement, including without limitation www.vcacanada.com, and the myVCA™ App (collectively, the “Sites”).  This Privacy Statement does not apply to any VCA website or app that does not display or include a link or other reference to this Privacy Statement or that has its own privacy statement.

This Privacy Statement applies to all data and information collected through the Sites and your use of the content, products and services offered through the Site, including your “personal information.” When used in this Privacy Statement, personal information means “any information about an identifiable individual”. This may include, for example, your name, contact information, email address, information relating to your transactions with us or payment information. It may also include other types of more technical information such as browsing history on our Sites, but only when this information can identify you as an individual. Information that is aggregated and cannot be associated with an identifiable individual is not considered to be personal information.

We encourage you to read this Privacy Statement carefully.  By accessing or using any of the Sites, you consent to the data and information collection and use practices described in this Privacy Statement as well as the other terms of this Privacy Statement.

COLLECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may collect various data and information about you and your use of the Sites and the content, products and services available through the Sites, including personal information.  Data and information we collect may include:

  • contact information, such as your name, home or work address, email address or telephone number;
  • information about your pet, including your pet’s name, species, breed, birthday and treatment information;
  • demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests, tastes and preferences;
  • information we collect automatically through your use of the Sites, such as information about your computer hardware and software, such as your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times, websites you visit before and after you visit our Sites and information about interactions with any advertisement that may be included in our Sites. For more information on the information we collect automatically when you visit our Sites, please refer to the “Use of Cookies and Web Beacons” section of this Privacy Statement.

We only treat this information as “personal information” if we are able to associate it with an identifiable individual.

Data and information about you and your use of the Sites and the content, products and services may be voluntarily provided when you choose to use or buy any of the content, products and services available through the Sites and some data and information may be automatically collected by the Site.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personal information or sensitive data through any bulletin board services, chat areas, news groups, forums, communities, personal web pages, calendars and/or other message or communication facilities designed to enable you to communicate with the public at large or with a group, this information may be collected and used by others.

USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Use by VCA

Personal information collected by the Sites may be used by VCA, and its affiliated companies, as permitted or required by law, with your specific consent or as follows:

  • Operating, maintaining and improving the quality of the Sites and the content, products and services available through the Sites (for instance, we may assess the types of products our customers prefer).
  • Displaying content, products and services according to your interests and preferences, past orders and activities.
  • Providing faster methods for you to submit information to us and receive back the content, services or products you desire.
  • Processing your orders and delivering services and products or processing entries to and running contests, sweepstakes, programs and surveys.
  • Subject to your Right to Withdraw Consent provided in this Privacy Statement, communicating with you by postal mail, e-mail, text (SMS, MMS), phone and other methods of communication about us, our partners and the content, products and services offered by us and our partners, including contests, rewards, events and special offers for content, products and services;
  • Communicating with you with respect to confirmations, invoices, notices, updates, product alerts and other administrative messages.

When reasonably possible, rather than using personal information, we will anonymize and/or aggregate personal information so that it no longer identifies an individual, and use it for the purposes mentioned above or any legal purpose.

Sharing Information with Third Parties

We may share personal information as permitted or required by law, with your specific consent or as follows:

  • With our subsidiaries, affiliates, business partners, vendors or agents.For example, we may share your information with third party service providers that we engage for various purposes, including, without limitation, processing, analyzing and/or storing data, printing and mailing services, email services, billing and collections, customer support and delivery of products.To the extent applicable, we require these entities to comply with this Privacy Statement and appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
  • When we have a good faith belief that (i) access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process, such as a court order or subpoena, or a request by law enforcement or governmental authorities, (ii) such action is appropriate to enforce our Terms of Service for the Sites, including any investigation of potential violations thereof, (iii) such action is necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues associated with the Sites or our services, or (iv) such action is appropriate to protect the rights, property or safety of VCA, its employees, users of the Sites or others.
  • If we or any of our affiliates become involved in a merger, acquisition or other transaction involving the sale of some or all of our assets, we may disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with the evaluation, financing and/or consummation of the transaction and your personal information could be included in the assets transferred as part of the transaction.

When reasonably possible, rather than using personal information, we will anonymize and/or aggregate personal information so that it no longer identifies an individual, and may share this data with our customers and partners, including suppliers of advertisements, potential affiliate partners in academia and industry, as well as for other commercial relationships or other purposes.

Links to third party websites

We may offer links to web sites operated by third parties.  Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other web sites.  We encourage you to review the privacy statements of any third party websites you choose to link to from the Sites so that you can understand how those websites collect, use and share your information.  We are not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of the Sites and the VCA family of websites.  This Privacy Statement applies solely to information collected by the Sites.

Use of cookies and web beacons

The Sites use “cookies” to help personalize your online experience.  A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server.  Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer.  Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time.  The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page.  For example, if you personalize any Site pages, or register with any Site or services provided through any Site, a cookie helps the Sites to recall your specific information on subsequent visits.  This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use features of the Sites that you have customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies.  Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer.  If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Sites or other websites you visit.

The Sites and e-mails we may send you may also use web beacons.  Web beacons are electronic images which can be used to deliver cookies, count visits or tell if an e-mail has been opened or acted upon.

We use Google Analytics which allows us to see information on user online activities including, but not limited to, page views, source and time spent on our Websites and/or Apps. 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.

We use services such as Google AdWords Remarketing to advertise the Sites across the Internet and to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our Sites. AdWords remarketing will display ads to you based on what parts of the Websites 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 site or this could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a site 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 Websites, so that they may show you ads relating to that page. If you do not wish to participate in our Google AdWords Remarketing, you can opt out by visiting Google’s Ads Preferences Manager.

Intended for Users Over 13 Years of Age

The safety of children is very important to us.  Although the Sites are intended for use by persons at least 13 years of age, and we have processes in place to help prevent participation in our Site communities and use of our services by persons under 13 years of age at time of registration, we cannot prohibit minors from visiting the Sites and must rely on parents and guardians (who have reached the majority age in their jurisdiction at time of use) to decide which materials are appropriate for children under 13.  We will not knowingly collect or store personal information from children under the age of 13.  If you become aware that a child under 13 years of age has registered for an online account with VCA or otherwise provided us with their personal information, please report such use to privacy.canada@vca.com.  If we become aware of a user under the age of 13 providing information on our site without parental permission, we will terminate that account and purge our databases of all personal information provided by that user to the extent reasonably feasible.

Personal Information outside your Country of Residence

Your personal information may in some cases be transferred outside Canada, including the United States. As a result, you understand that your personal information will be subject to the laws of other jurisdictions than Canada and may be available without notice to you to foreign government authorities under lawful orders and laws applicable in such jurisdictions. Regardless of the company or person who processes your information and where it is processed, we will take steps to protect your information in accordance with applicable data protection laws and this Privacy Statement.

Security of your personal information

We secure your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure and secure the personal information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure.  When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

Due to the nature of the Internet, we cannot guarantee that communications between you and VCA, and other users and you, will be free from unauthorized access by third parties or accidental loss or damage.  Therefore, your use of the Sites, the services made available through the Sites and your disclosure to us of any personal information is at your own risk.  However, once we receive a transmission from you, we will make reasonable efforts to ensure the security of your information in our operations.

If we learn of a security breach through which sensitive personal information may have been compromised, we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps.  We may post a notice on our Web site if a security breach occurs.  By using the Sites, or providing personal information to us through any means, you expressly agree that we can communicate with you electronically regarding security, privacy and administrative issues relating to your use of the Sites and our services.

Right to withdraw consent

Consent may be withdrawn at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice; however, without such consent, VCA may limit the services or products it is able to provide.

You may “opt-out” of receiving communications via postal mail, e-mail, phone and other communication methods.  In order to opt out of receiving these communications, you should follow the “unsubscribe” or “manage email preferences” instructions contained in any communication you receive or send us an email request to privacy.canada@vca.com and include “Opt-Out” in the subject box and include your name and email address in the text box.

You may also withdraw your consent to VCA sharing your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.  In order to opt out of receiving these communications, you should follow the “unsubscribe” or “manage email preferences” instructions contained in any communication you receive or send us an email request to privacy.canada@vca.com and include “Opt-Out – Third Party Marketing” in the subject box and include your name and email address in the text box.

Text Messaging

We may offer text/SMS messaging communications to you as part of the products and services available from us. You may need to opt-in to receive text communications from us.  You may opt-out of receiving particular text messaging communications from us (other than Text Appointment Reminders) at any time by texting the word STOP in response to any text message. After you opt-out, a confirmation message may be sent to you indicating your participation in the text messaging communication portion of the offered product or service was terminated and that you will no longer receive additional text messages from us. 

Unless expressly noted, all text messaging services are offered without charge to you.  Message, data rates and other charges may apply.  You are liable for any mobile phone charges incurred (usage, subscription, etc.) as a result of using any of our products or services.  Please consult your mobile service carrier's pricing plan to determine the charges for sending and receiving text messages.

For information about Text Appointment Reminder text messages please click here https://vcahospitals.com/text-appt-alert-terms.

Access and Correction

VCA respects your right to access and correct your personal information and complies with all laws regarding access and correction. If you need assistance updating your personal information, please contact us using the contact information detailed in the “Contact Information” section below.

Contact Information

We welcome your comments regarding this Privacy Statement.  If you believe that VCA has not adhered to this Privacy Statement, please contact us at privacy.canada@vca.com.  We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.

Changes to this privacy statement

We may occasionally update this Privacy Statement to reflect company and customer feedback, and to keep current with rules and regulations, new technologies and standards.  We will post any privacy policy changes on our Sites and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Statement to be informed of how we are protecting your information.  You will be bound by any changes to our Privacy Statement when you use the Site after such changes to our Privacy Statement have been posted.

The Sites are administered and maintained by VCA Inc.  Use of any Site is governed by the applicable terms of use and indicates acceptance of such terms. 

©2019 VCA Inc.  All rights reserved.

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