Privacy & Cookie Policy

Notice: By using the Home-Cost.com site and services, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, 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. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here or by means of a notice on our homepage. This policy statement applies only to Home-Cost.com not to any third parties or companies affiliated with Home-Cost.com.

Policy: Home-Cost.com will only collect Personal information you choose to provide when using or registering at our site. We do not sell, rent, loan or transfer your Personal information to any third parties except as required to complete a purchase specifically requested by you.

Collection of Active Personal Information: (information provided by you) When you choose to purchase Home-Cost.com services, we will need the following information:

• Full Name (contact information)
• Address (contact information)
• Email address (to confirm order, provide your initial access password and to respond to you)
• Zip Code of the location where the home will be constructed (for location specific construction data)
• Credit Card Information (to complete your purchase)
• Phone Number (in case we need to reach you about your order)

At certain places throughout the site we may ask you to “opt-in” and provide certain voluntary Personal information for other reasons including:

• Demographic Data (for aggregate marketing analysis)
• Email Newsletter
• Sweepstakes and Promotions
• Surveys
• Contacting Home-Cost.com
• Contact by a third party affiliate (e.g., construction lending, home plans)

Information collected on our Web site is used by Home-Cost.com and authorized agents for Home-Cost.com purposes (“Home-Cost.com”). Home-Cost.com will not collect any personal information about you except that information you have specifically and knowingly provided.

Collection of Passive Non-Personal Information: (cookies and other types of automatic data collection)When you visit Home-Cost.com, we use a common feature of your Internet Web browser called a “cookie” to assign a unique identification number to your computer. Cookies are files that your Web browser places on your computer’s hard drive. With this cookie, we obtain your Internet provider’s name (e.g., “aol.com”), the country of your visit, the duration and navigation of your visit throughout our site. Cookies do not capture any personal information such as email address or other private information about you.

We also use cookies to tell us whether you have visited our site previously and to help us determine whether you came to Home-Cost.com from a particular Internet link or advertisement. Also, we use Cookies to evaluate a visitor’s “click stream”, or page-to-page activity. This is useful to us in evaluating the effectiveness and traffic on our various web pages.

The “Help” portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies and how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Although you can navigate our site without enabling cookies, you cannot purchase or access your account without cookies.

Web server log files are also used to help us track site traffic volumes and evaluate our site’s capacity and speed. Log files inform us of visitor traffic and their browser preferences so our site may be as user friendly as possible. Site traffic history is recorded but no private information about the visitor is captured.

Some of our business partners (e.g., web traffic tracking, advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by home-cost.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any business partners. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Home-Cost.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any business partners. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site.

Use of Information: What We Do With the Information

Home-Cost.com will use information collected on our Web site for five main purposes.

1. We collect and use active Personal information you provide to implement the sale transaction you initiate;
2. We collect and use passive information (e.g., cookie tracking) to evaluate how visitors come to our site. We also review how to improve our site by evaluating which site area features and products are most popular, and conversely which areas or pages are not actively trafficked;
3. We may collect information in order to personalize the site for our customers;
4. We may share non-personal, summary information regarding our customers with third parties (for example, we publicly disclose the aggregate number of registered users of our Web site). However, Home-Cost.com does not share any Personal information about any particular customer with third parties unless you “opt-in” and grant permission to do so;
5. We may use or share “opt-in” Personal information that you have voluntarily provided and granted us permission to use or share for marketing purposes. If we want to collect information for other purposes, we will inform you when we collect the information.

Legal Disclosure and Protection

In certain limited legal situations, we reserve the right to share your personal information with third parties if required to do so by law, or if we believe disclosure is necessary in order to accomplish the following:

• Comply with requirements the law or with legal process served upon us;
• Protect or defend our legal rights, our intellectual property and assets, the Home-Cost.com site, or our customers;
• Respond to illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or violations of the Terms of Use for using the Home-Cost.com site.
• Email Contact or Newsletters: This is a voluntary service. If you do not want to receive e-mail from us please reply to an e-mail that we have sent to you and insert “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.

Choice Mechanisms:

When you “opt-in”, you are choosing to give your consent by clicking a check box or some other way of explicitly signaling your choice to share or provide permission to use your information in a certain way. With “opt-out”, your consent is the default choice and you must actively take action, such as un-checking a box to avoid sharing or using your personal information.

Use of Our Site

Home-cost.com will protect its intellectual property, including its patents, trademarks, and copyrights to the full extent of the law. Except for public domain material, intellectual property laws including U.S. and International patent, trademark and copyright laws protect the content on this site and the products. When you purchase a Home-Cost.com product or service such as Home-Cost or Home-Spec, you are granted a non-exclusive license to use the material at this site while connected to Home-Cost.com. See Terms of Use. Except as expressly provided above, all rights are reserved by Home-Cost.com. Other than as required for the limited purpose of reviewing material on our site, electronic reproduction, adaptation, distribution, performance or display is prohibited.

Third-Party Sites

Our site contains links to other sites whose information practices and privacy policy may be different than our own. This Policy is not intended to apply to other third parties or companies affiliated with Home-Cost.com. Please review the policy statements of affiliated third parties to learn how they collect, use and protect your personal information.

Maintenance Of Accurate Information

Procedures have been established to ensure that our product and promotional information is current and accurate in keeping with reasonable standards. We are committed to respond to requests to correct inaccurate information in a timely manner.

Agents

Home-Cost.com may employ other companies and individuals to perform services such as:

• Administering sweepstakes, contests and other promotions;
• Sending emails;
• Providing marketing assistance;
• Analyzing data

In order to perform these activities, such companies and individuals will only have access to necessary personal information and will not be permitted to use it for any other purpose.

Managing and Controlling the Use of Your Personal Information

We provide you several choices in how to manage and control the personal information you have provided.

Establishing Your Initial Account:

When you purchase a Home-Cost.com product or service, you will enter your personal information into a secure server using SSL (secure socket layer) encryption the industry-standard. Home-Cost will then email you an initial password for you to access your account as a registered user, and you may begin using our on-line services. You will then be able to change your password as you desire so you can manage the security of your information.

Registered On-Line Users:

Once registered as an online user, you are able to access your account and your personal information through our secure site via your secure user portal when you log-in. Click on the tab “Update My Info & Preferences” in your secure user portal and you will be able to change your name, address, phone number, fax number, email and “opt-in” preferences.

Email:

You may email us at privacy@home-cost.com with ‘PERSONAL INFORMATION REQUEST” in the subject field. Include your name, address, telephone number, email address and a note instructing us of the change you would like to make.

Phone:

You may phone us at 800-646-0350

Mail:

You may write to us at:
Home-Cost.com
1100 Corporate Office Drive; Suite 300-B
Milford, MI 48381

Include your name, address, telephone number, email address and a note instructing us of the change you would like to make.

Retention of Personal Information

We retain information provided to us indefinitely unless otherwise stated. We may keep some personal information you have requested to remove for the following purposes:

• Analyze and repair problems
• Assist with investigations
• Enforce our site rules
• Comply with legal requirements

Security

The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information using 256 bit secure socket layer technology (SSL). Home-Cost.com uses GeoTrust SSL certificates which provides up to 256 bit encryption providing the highest level of encryption and security possible. You can be assured that communications between your browser and this site’s web servers are private and secure.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

If you have any questions about security on our Web site, please contact us using the methods below