Privacy Policy

Date created: November 2017

Last revised date: n/a

Purpose and Scope of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is applicable wherever Hach Lange GmbH (“Hach”) or any of its affiliates located in the European Economic Area conducts market research and sends you invitations, questionnaires or similar electronic or printed forms or documents that solicit your participation in market research.

When Hach´s Market Research Team conducts such market research, our invitations and questionnaires will always explain the purpose(s) of our contact, and the terms and conditions on which we ask you to participate in the market research.  Hach is a major industry manufacturer and our Market Research Team’s main purpose is gathering your opinions/feedback to help develop new products, make existing ones better, improve customer service and help make key business decisions.

The information that we collect

When we contact you, we generally do so for one of the following purposes:

1. To invite you to participate in market research;
2. To conduct a market research interview with you;
3. To validate answers you gave in a recent survey we conducted.

 Occasionally, we may contact you for one of these other purposes:

1. To notify you if you have won a prize draw or will receive an incentive that we sponsored (only where such prize draw or incentive can be lawfully offered);
2. To ask for your permission to use your personal information for a purpose that was not explained to you when we first collected your personal information.

When you participate in our research, we may ask you for your personal opinions, as well as demographic information such as your age, experience level, etc.  At times, we may need the answer to a question so that the next set of questions will be appropriate to your situation.  You may refuse to answer certain questions or discontinue participation in our research at any time. 

Confidentiality of survey responses and personal information

We combine your survey responses in a given survey with the responses of all others who participate and report those combined responses to our internal business partner who requested the survey data.  We will never intentionally report your individual survey responses, except as described below.

Your personal information that is used to contact you or follow up with you regarding a survey and your survey responses may be collected, stored or processed by Hach, our affiliates, or our non-affiliated service providers, both within and outside of the European Economic Area.  They are contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us, or we collect and disclose to them, confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own. In any event, we will ensure that personal information will be stored and processed compliant with at least the regulations and standards that apply to the location of storage or processing. We cannot guarantee, however, to comply at all times with the regulations and standards that apply to your location.

In addition to keeping your personal information and survey responses confidential from third parties, we will never sell, share, rent, or otherwise intentionally transfer your personal information such as your name, address, telephone number or email address to other market research companies, direct marketing companies or any other third parties. We may from time to time share your personal information and survey results with our affiliated companies for the same purposes as noted above.

The only exceptions when we may disclose your personal information or survey responses to third parties are as follows:

1. You request or consent to sharing your identifying information and individual responses with the third parties for a specified purpose;
2. In the rare but possible circumstance that the information is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, orders or for similar legal or regulatory requirements.;

Privacy of Minors

Hach Company’s Market Research Team does not target and is not intending to target minors under the age of 18.  We will not knowingly collect personal data from minors, and will delete such data upon discovery.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we may store on your browser or the hard drive of your device.  A cookie can contain information, such as your IP address, that we use in order to remember a user’s sessions when accessing the survey tool to avoid duplicate surveys or to remember where each user left off in a survey so he or she can return to the place he or she left off. Other than as just described, the cookies we use do not contain any personal data. We do not track your personal data through cookies.  You can also adjust your browser settings to receive a message every time a cookie is installed on your computer or to prevent their installation altogether. Although rejection of cookies will not interfere with your ability to take a survey, it will interfere with your ability to stop and restart the survey exactly where you left off or it may allow multiple survey entries.  Certain other functions and/or services might be unavailable to you if you reject cookies altogether.

Security of personal information

We inform our employees and service providers about our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security and privacy, and we emphasize the importance of complying with them.  Our security procedures are consistent with generally accepted commercial standards used to protect personal information.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

Accuracy of personal information

Hach Company’s Market Research Team makes reasonable efforts to keep personal information in its possession or control, which is used on an ongoing basis, accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information available to us.  We rely on you to help us keep your personal information accurate, complete and current by answering our questions honestly.

Access to personal information

You may at any time request access to a summary of your personal data held by us, and request corrections or updates to that information, or request deletion of it. We will make reasonable efforts to respond promptly to such requests in accordance with local laws.

To request access to personal information that we hold about you, we require you to submit your request in writing at the email address or postal address shown below.  You may be able to access your personal information and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate, except as follows:

1. Providing access to your personal information would be likely to reveal personal information about others.
2. Disclosing the information would reveal the confidential commercial information of Hach or its associates or customers.
3. The burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to your privacy in the case in question.

We will endeavor to provide your requested personal information within 30 days of receiving your access request.  If we cannot fulfill your request, we will provide you with a written explanation of why we had to deny your access request, via email.

Please notify us of any changes in your name, address, title, telephone number or email address.  You can correct your personal data by contacting us at market.research-eu@hach.com to request changes.

You may also contact us by mail using below address:

Hach Lange GmbH, Market Research Department, Willstaetter Strasse 11, 40549 Duesseldorf, Germany

Opting Out

If do not wish to participate in any research from us, or our affiliates or representatives, you may opt out by clicking the opt-out link on the survey invitation in your email or email your requests to market.research-eu@hach.com, or by writing to the address provided hereinabove..

Changes in This Privacy Policy

This statement was created in November 2017. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes at this same location and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes that potentially impact the privacy of your personal information we will notify you by email.

How to contact us

Questions regarding this policy, complaints about our practices and access request should be emailed to market.research-eu@hach.com or by mail to the address provided hereinabove.

We will investigate all complaints and attempt to resolve those that we find are justified.  If necessary, we will amend our policies and procedures to ensure that other individuals do not experience the same problem.