Sam's Club Privacy Notice (Online and In-Club)

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Notice of Changes:

• Updated the “State Privacy Rights” section

What Does This Privacy Notice Include?

This Privacy Notice describes what personal information, we collect, how we collect and use your personal information, who we disclose it to and why, the measures we take to protect your personal information, and the choices you may have regarding our use of your personal information. It covers our Clubs in the United States and Puerto Rico, and our websites and mobile apps, and services where this Privacy Notice is posted (“Sites”).

What is not covered in this Privacy Notice?

Our Notices for specialized Operations cover the uses and treatment of personal information related to our specialized operations such as Sam’s Club pharmacies and vision centers; financial products and services that we offer either directly or in connection with business partners; and mobile device retail installment sales. 

Our specific privacy notices for our specialized operations include:

• Our Health & Wellness operation (pharmacy and optical) that uses patient health information as described in the health services Notice of Privacy Practices. Review the Notice of Privacy Practices for the information practices specific to patient health information.
• When you obtain financial products and services from us, and our co-branded credit card partner, we may collect and use certain financial-related information. Find out more here: Synchrony Bank’s Privacy Policy.
• When you link an eligible card to the Sam’s Cash Bonus Offers Program (“Program”), we collect, use, and disclose transaction data in the course of administering the Program. Please see the Sam’s Cash Bonus Offers Privacy Notice for more information. 

Sam’s Club maintains separate privacy policies for our operations outside of the US.

What Personal Information Do We Collect?

We may collect or receive the categories of personal information listed below, which may depend on the products or services you may use, as well as your device and account settings. Not all categories may be collected or received for every individual. 

• Basic Personal Identifiers, such as name, telephone number, physical address, email address, government-issued identifiers (e.g., national identification numbers, driver’s license numbers), and signatures.
• Device Information and Online Activity, such as account login information, MAC address, IP address, cookie IDs, mobile ad IDs, and social media information.
• Internet and Other Network Activity Information, such as information about your browsing or search activity as well as your interactions with our websites, mobile applications, emails, or advertisements (for example keystroke patterns which help us determine if it is you or a bot who is interacting with us).
• Commercial Information, such as purchase and transaction history information (products or services you have purchased, rented, or returned), details about products associated with services you receive from or through us (e.g., car make, model, year, odometer reading, and Vehicle Identification Number when you visit our Tire and Battery Center), product reviews, travel and vacation information, and sweepstakes and contest entries.
• Communications, such as the content of emails, text messages, interactions with our bot (AI assistant chatbots), or other communications, call logs, and calendar information where Sam’s Club is a party to the exchange.
• Demographic Information, such as age, gender, citizenship, ethnicity, date of birth, family or marital status, household income, education, professional and employment information, family health, number of children, number of cars owned, and software or virtual assets owned.
• Financial Information, such as credit or debit card numbers, and financial account numbers.
• Biometric Information, such as voice prints, imagery of the iris or retina, face geometry, and palm prints or fingerprints.
• Geolocation, such as data about the location of your device, which may be imprecise (i.e., inferred from your device’s IP address). If you provide your consent, this data may be precise. For more information about precise geolocation, see the How Do We Collect Personal Information? > Collected Through Automated Means section below.
• Sensory Information, such as audio, visual information, and other sensory information such as photographs and audio and video recordings.
• Background Information, such as background checks and criminal convictions
• Inferences, such as individual preferences and characteristics. This may include inferences drawn from and related to shopping patterns and behaviors, intelligence, and aptitudes.

How Do We Use Personal Information?

We use personal information to provide you with products and services and to operate and improve our business. For example, we use it for:

• Performing services, including maintaining or servicing accounts, providing member service, processing or fulfilling orders and transactions, verifying member information, processing payments, providing financing, providing and conducting analytics services, providing storage, or providing similar services.
• Performing and providing advertising and marketing services, including targeted advertising.
• To conduct auditing and monitoring of transactions and engagement, including auditing related to counting ad impressions to unique visitors, verifying positioning and quality of ad impressions, and auditing compliance.
• Short-term, transient use, such as non-personalized advertising shown as part of your current interaction with us.
• Helping to ensure security and integrity and prevent fraud.
• Undertaking activities to verify or maintain the quality or safety of our services or devices and to improve, upgrade, or enhance them, such as training our AI.
• Debugging to identify and repair errors.
• Conducting business analysis, such as analytics, projections, identifying areas for operational improvement.
• Conducting research and development, including undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration.
• Fulfilling our legal functions or obligations.
• We do not engage in profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning members.

We may combine and associate personal information collected or inferred about you from multiple online and in-Club sources (including other companies and services in our corporate family) to better achieve these purposes.

To the extent we process deidentified information, we will maintain and use the information in deidentified form and will not attempt to reidentify the information unless permitted by applicable law.

We use information that may be considered Sensitive Personal Information under state laws for each of the purposes described above and to make inferences about members, which we may use to promote certain products or services. Where required by law, Sam’s Club only processes this Sensitive Personal Information with your consent.

How Do We Collect Personal Information?

We may obtain and combine personal information from different sources, types of technology, and devices. This information may be collected from various places including in our Clubs, online, and from third parties.

Provided Directly by You or a Member of Your Household

When you visit us in our Clubs or online, you may share different types of personal information with us when you engage in the activities below:

• Sign up for or modify a Sam’s Club membership;
• Conduct or seek to conduct a transaction online or in-Club, or request a service where we collect information (including when required by law, such as purchasing alcohol, or certain cough and cold medications);
• Create an account on one of our websites or mobile services.
• Participate in our programs, such as scan & go;
• Request member service or contact us;
• Interact with various types of technologies, applications and features, including our bot (AI assistant chatbots);
• Post a rating, review, or other user-generated content on one of our websites or mobile services, or post a review or comment on one of our social media pages;
• Participate in a contest, sweepstake, promotion, or survey; or
• Use features of our websites or mobile services that enable us, with your consent, to access the camera, microphone, or contacts on your computer or mobile device to provide you with functionality, such as voice search, scanning bar codes for online search or mobile scan & go, or importing your mobile contacts. You must give us your permission before we access these features, and you can opt out of providing access to them at any time by adjusting the settings on your device.
• In addition to the above, and if available in your region, we may use your device’s camera to provide services such as virtual try-on for eyeglasses. Your device’s camera uses facial scanning technology to measure your unique features so we can virtually place eyeglass frames over the image of your face. To do this, we collect your biometric information. You are given the option to consent to the collection and use of your biometric information or decline use of the service, before you utilize it. Any biometric data we collect from you will be deleted within 48 hours and will be used for the purpose of enabling you to see yourself wearing virtual eyeglass frames. We do not sell or share any biometric information collected through our eyeglass virtual try-on service.

When you make a purchase or use our in-store services, such as services provided by our Tire & Battery Center or Bakery, we may also ask you for your phone number and collect other information related to your transaction. If you choose to provide us with your phone number, we may associate and store it with your Sam’s Club account or other personal information we may already have about you, along with the information related to your transaction. In addition to using this information as described in the How Do We Use Personal Information? section above, we may also use it to provide you with a more personalized Sam’s Club experience, including to improve and deliver tailored online ads, product recommendations, and promotions.

Collected Through Automated Means

We obtain personal information about you, such as device and online identifiers and internet or other network activity information, in our Clubs or online, such as when you visit our websites, use our mobile applications or services, or click on advertisements or links in emails you receive from us.

Also, depending on your device’s settings, we may collect precise geolocation information. You can control our ability to do this by adjusting the location-sharing settings on your mobile device at any time. You also may adjust your mobile device’s Bluetooth settings to disable the sharing of Bluetooth location-related data.

• Your mobile device’s GPS signal allows us to show you the Sam’s Clubs closest to you. It also lets us know when you are about to arrive to pick up your Online Pickup order after you check in.
• We may be able to recognize the location of your mobile device in our Clubs when you are in a Club where we provide free Wi-Fi access or through the use of Bluetooth technology. We may use Bluetooth technology in our Clubs to allow our mobile services to show you nearby products that may interest you, make it easier for you to locate products within our Clubs, and help you navigate through our Clubs.

We collect your personal information from technology we use in and outside of our Clubs. For example, our point-of-sale terminals process your credit card information when you complete your purchase, and we operate cameras and automated technologies in-Club and on Sam’s Club property outside of our store for security and operational purposes. These cameras and automated technologies may process images of you as part of check out, to help deter theft, or improve store design to better serve our members.

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) may also be in use on our properties, where permitted by law. Personal information is collected from ALPRs to help ensure security, prevent theft and fraud, assist with parking enforcement, and to help maintain the safety of individuals and properties. See our ALPR Privacy Notice for additional information.

Obtained from Other Companies within Our Corporate Family

We may obtain your personal information from another company within our corporate family of companies, such as from Walmart.

Obtained from External Third-Party Sources

We may obtain personal information about you from other sources to help us to correct or supplement our records, improve the quality or personalization of our services, increase the appeal and relevance of advertising, and to prevent or detect fraud. We may collect information from consumer reporting agencies in conjunction with products or services that involve financial risk to Sam’s Club. We also may obtain device and browsing information from third parties for marketing purposes.

Collected from Another Solution or Asset

When you speak to member service we collect your personal information using call recording technology in accordance with applicable law.

Who Do We Disclose to & Why?

We may disclose all categories of personal information described above with certain categories of third parties, as described below. All of the categories of personal information that we collect have been disclosed to other companies, including those within our corporate family, for a business purpose. We may disclose your personal information in the following circumstances:

Within Our Corporate Family of Companies

We may disclose your personal information with other retail and non-retail companies (e.g., Walmart and One Finance) within our corporate family for them to use in ways that are consistent with this Privacy Notice.

Other Companies:

We may disclose personal information to the entities listed below, for the reasons described. In circumstances other than those described below, where required by applicable law, we will provide specific notice or ask for your affirmative consent.

Vendors for Business Operations:

We disclose personal information about you to vendors to perform services on our behalf. These vendors including without limitation shipping vendors, billing and refund vendors, payment card processors, and companies that help us improve our products and services.

Direct-to-Customer Companies:

We work with a number of companies that provide services directly to you through co-branded or other promotions. For co-branded programs, we may receive compensation for the co-branded activity. When we share your personal information with these companies, they are prohibited from using it for any purpose other than making their products or services available to you.

Advertising, Marketing, and Other Related Technology Partners:

We work with various advertising, marketing, and other related technology partners so we can both market our products to you and provide advertising services to other companies.

• Advertisers. These are companies that place ads through our advertising services. Advertisers may use pixels or cookies in their ads that collect information from/about you to help them understand how you respond to their ads.
• Publishers. These are companies that operate the websites that you visit (e.g., an online newspaper or an entertainment website). We share personal information with publishers to help us serve ads to you on their websites and to help us understand how those ads perform. 
• Social Media Platforms. We share personal information with social media platforms that help us serve ads to you on those platforms.
• Advertising Technology Providers. We work with companies that use cookies, pixels, beacons, and similar technologies to tailor the ads you see using information collected about you over time on our Sites, and across other participating websites and mobile services. Advertising Technology Providers include ad servers, advertising agencies, technology vendors that support media buying and selling, and research firms. For more information about your choices related to interest-based advertising, see Interest-Based Advertising Preferences in the "How Can You Set Your Preferences?” section below.
• Data Technology Vendors. We work with technology providers that help us manage and automate the use of the data we collect (including personal information). These companies include, for example, technology providers that help us automate our advertising services, and identity management companies.
• Measurement and Analytics Vendors. These vendors include, for example, companies that provide aggregate reporting on our website performance, and the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and services. To learn more about Google Analytics, please visit https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.

Sam’s Club Suppliers and Other Third Parties: 

To help make member shopping experiences more relevant and friction-free, we may offer insights and related services to companies, including our suppliers who provide us with products and services to offer directly to members both online and in our clubs. These insights do not directly identify you and are derived by combining information such as shopping history from many members. Sam’s Club may receive payment for these insights.

Credit Offers

If you apply for a Sam’s Club Membership, we may disclose your personal information, such as your membership and application information, with the company that we partner with to offer co-branded credit card programs. In conjunction with the co-branding program, we may receive compensation from the co-branding activity. Similarly, if you qualify for a credit account  we may share your personal information with our partner, so that they may extend the offer of credit as required by law. For more information on how to stop receiving prescreened offers of consumer credit, see "How Can You Set Your Preferences?" section below.

Business Member Information

We may disclose information regarding a Business Membership with the account’s primary member or an officer or principal of the business in order to respond to their inquiry. A non-primary member of the account may request information specific to their purchases.

We may disclose information about Business Members’ resale merchandise purchases, such as tobacco or candy products, to our suppliers in order to enable them to offer these members discounts or rebates.

Products and Services Offered by Other Businesses

We sometimes enable other businesses to make products or services available to our members. You may purchase products or services from these other businesses at our Clubs or through our websites or mobile services. We indicate when products or services are offered by other businesses and disclose to these businesses personal information related to your purchase of their products and services. These other businesses may operate their business in the United States or in other countries.

Legal Requirements and Protection of Our Company and Others

We may disclose your personal information when required by law or legal process, or when we believe doing so will help to protect the safety, property, or rights of individuals or Sam’s Club. Examples include:

• Protecting the health or safety of individuals.
• Addressing crimes committed on Sam’s Club property.
• Identifying and addressing fraud or financial risk.
• Responding to a request from law enforcement, search warrant, or other valid legal inquiry.  
• Responding to a court or other investigative body in the case of an alleged breach of an agreement or violation of law.
• Assist with fraud prevention and potential criminal activity.

Business Transfers

If we plan to merge, sell, or reorganize our businesses, we may disclose your personal information, along with the personal information of other Sam’s Club members as part of the business arrangement. (This may include transfers of personal information made as part of insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings). We will use reasonable measures to help ensure your personal information is handled in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

With Specific Notice or Your Consent

In circumstances other than those described above, we will provide specific notice or ask for your affirmative consent, as required by law, before we disclose your personal information outside of our corporate family of companies.

How Can You Set Your Preferences?

Marketing

For marketing communications, we use an:

• Opt-in standard for automated phone and text messages, and for disclosing personal information with companies outside our corporate family of companies to promote their products and services through direct marketing. Opt-in means we will only conduct the activity with your affirmative consent.
• Opt-out standard for phone, email, mobile service (in-app) notifications, and postal mail.

You may withdraw your consent if you would like to stop receiving marketing communications. Please communicate your marketing preference requests directly to us in any of the following ways:

• Online: By logging on to your SamsClub.com account and clicking “edit” under email preferences in the Member profile.
• By Email: You may email privacy@samsclub.com for assistance.
• By Mail: Sam’s Club, 2101 SE Simple Savings Drive, Bentonville, AR 72716-0745, Attention: Membership Services
• By Phone: You may call Member Services by dialing 1-888-746-7726.
• In Club: You may request to opt out at the Membership Services desk of your local Sam’s Club.

If you are not a Sam’s Club member and are currently subscribed to our promotional emails, you may update your marketing preferences by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the footer of one of our promotional emails or by contacting the mail or email resources listed above.

For email requests, it may take up to 10 days for us to process your requests. For requests related to telephone calls, text messages, mobile service notifications, and disclosing information with your consent, it may take up to 30 days. If you adjust your postal mail preferences, it may take six to ten weeks before you stop receiving mail because postal mailings are prepared many weeks in advance.

Regardless of your marketing communication preferences, we may still contact you for transactional or informational purposes, such as member service, reminder or service notices, recalls, or information regarding your order.

Additionally, the consent standards described in this section do not apply to Sam’s Club-branded credit card offerings provided through associated financial institutions. To stop receiving certain prescreened offers of credit that originate from participating nationwide credit reporting agencies, contact the official Consumer Credit Reporting Industry organization at 1-888-567-8688 or by going to www.optoutprescreen.com.

Interest-Based Advertising
Interest-based ads are optimized for effectiveness based on inferences about you. Sam’s Club adheres to Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) self-regulatory principles for interest-based advertising (IBA). For more information about interest-based advertising, see the Advertising, Marketing, and Other Related Technology Partners section above or read about interest-based advertising.

To successfully opt out of interest-based advertising, you must have cookies enabled in your web browser (see your browser’s instructions for information on cookies and how to enable them). Opting out only applies to your current web browser on your current computer. If you use multiple computers or multiple web browsers, you must opt out on each one. If you delete your browser’s saved cookies, you will need to opt out again.

You may use the Global Privacy Control (GPC) to opt out of the processing of personal information for purposes of Targeted Advertising or the sale of your personal information through the use of the GPC. See the State Privacy Rights section below for more information.

How Can You Access and Update Your Personal Information?

You can access or update your personal information as described below:

• Enter and update your own contact information and payment information, as well as contact information for your delivery recipients, by logging into your Sam's Club account.
• To change your personal information as it relates to specific services provided by Sam’s Clubs’ business partners or vendors for business operations, use the Contact Us section below and we will refer you to the correct partner.
• If you need assistance accessing records related to your Pharmacy or Optical information, please visit the Pharmacy and Vision Center website.
• You can 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 deactivating your SamsClub.com account.
• To delete your Sam’s Club account, use the Contact Us section below. Or, within our mobile apps, visit the “Account” section and click the “Request to Delete Account” link.

You can also access or update any of the information described in the bullets above by using the Contact Us section below and including, along with your contact details, the information you would like to access or update and any requested changes. Consumers in certain states have additional rights, which are addressed below in the State Privacy Rights section.

How Do We Secure Your Personal Information?

Whether you are using our websites or mobile services or visiting our Clubs, we use reasonable information security measures, including physical, administrative, and technical safeguards. Learn more about measures you can take to help protect the security of your personal information.

How Long Do We Retain Your Personal Information? 

We will keep the personal information we collect about you for as long as necessary to carry out the purposes set forth in this Privacy Notice or any other notice provided at the time of data collection, but no longer than as required or permitted under applicable law or internal Sam's Club policy. We dispose of the information we collect in accordance with Sam's Club's retention policies and procedures.

Biometric Retention Schedule: Sam's Club will permanently destroy your biometric identifiers and biometric information when the first of the following occurs: (i) the initial purpose for collecting or obtaining such biometric data has been satisfied; or (ii) within three years of your last interaction with us; or (iii) as otherwise required by applicable law.

Links to Third-Party Services and Features

We want to improve your online experience and make it easier to discover new products and services through our Sites. We may provide you with links to other online services (such as websites or social media platforms) and may include third-party features such as apps, tools, widgets, and plug-ins. We may not own or control these linked online services or third-party features, and we are not responsible for the information practices of the third parties that have ownership or control over them. In some cases, these third parties operate independently from us, which means their privacy practices are not covered in this Notice. We recommend that you review their privacy statements to learn about these third parties' privacy practices, including details on the personal information they may collect about you.

State Privacy Rights

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia have enacted comprehensive data privacy legislation. Depending on the state in which you reside, you may exercise certain privacy rights by going to the footer of our website or settings section of our app and selecting the “Your Privacy Choices" link.

Learn more about your state privacy rights by reviewing our FAQs.

Members from California, Texas, and Nebraska may also exercise the privacy rights provided to them by their state by calling 1-800-Walmart (1-800-925-6278) and saying “Privacy”.

• Access your personal information. You may have the right to obtain your personal information in a portable format that allows you to transmit the personal information to another entity. If you are a resident of Connecticut, Oregon, or Minnesota, you may receive additional information regarding certain disclosures we make to third parties, which will be provided in our response to your access request.
• Correct your personal information.
• Delete your personal information. A request to delete personal information is subject to certain exceptions, defined by law. This means that if you request that we delete your personal information we will retain some pieces of it, for example to contact you for a food or product recall.
• Opt Out of the Processing of My Personal Information for Purposes of Targeted Advertising
• Opt Out of the Sale or Sharing of My Personal Information

You may also use the Global Privacy Control (GPC) to opt out of the processing of personal information for purposes of Targeted Advertising or the sale/sharing of your Personal Information. If you notify us of your opt-out preferences through GPC, we will honor your request with respect to the browser or device that sends us the GPC signal, and when you log in to your account from that device, the opt-out will extend to your account, as well. Our Sites will not respond to other types of “do not track” signals.

When we receive a GPC signal or an opt-out of sale/share request, we will display a notification to indicate to you that your opt-out request is honored. This opt-out will be immediately effective on data collected during that interaction. For other data that we hold in our system, it may take up to 15 days from receipt of your request to process the opt-out. 

If we decline to take action on one of your rights, depending on your residency, you may be able to submit an appeal by going to our privacy request page, entering your Privacy Request ID and Zip Code, and selecting the appeal option.

We will not discriminate or retaliate against you for exercising your rights. We will not deny you goods or services, charge different prices or rates, provide a different level of service or quality of goods, or suggest that you might receive a different price or level of quality for goods. Some programs or membership services require usage of personal information to function, so compliance with your request may impact those experiences.

We may disclose personal information to third parties or process your personal information for various purposes, including targeted advertising. These kinds of disclosures may be deemed selling under certain state privacy laws. You have the right to opt-out of the sale or processing of your Personal Information for targeted advertising as described above.

Additional state privacy notices and disclosures:

• California Privacy Notice
• See Appendix 1 for additional details regarding what pieces of personal information are sold or shared and whether those pieces of personal information are used for targeted advertising.

How Do We Verify Your Identity to Complete Your Access, Correction, and Deletion Requests

If you request access to, or the correction or deletion of, your personal information we will verify your identity before disclosing the requested information. To do so, we may ask that you log into your account or provide us with your:

First name*, middle initial, last name*
Address*
Email address
Phone number
*Required field

When you make a request, you will be asked to answer a few questions about yourself to help us verify your identity. Third-party identification services may help us with verification to prevent disclosure of your personal information resulting from fraudulent requests. You may be asked to log into your online account and complete a one-time passcode validation. In the event more documentation is necessary to verify your identity, we will notify you directly.

What If You Cannot Verify My Identity?

If we cannot verify your identity, we will notify you, and your request(s) to access, request, or delete your personal information will not be processed. Any requests may be denied if we have reason to believe they are fraudulent.

How Do I Submit a Request Using an Authorized Agent?

In some states, you can have authorized agents exercise some of your privacy rights for you. If you would like an authorized agent to exercise those rights, they may use the same links described above to submit requests. We require documentation demonstrating your agent’s authority to submit requests on your behalf. For example, a valid power of attorney or other documentation, including a letter, signed by you (the state resident) authorizing the agent to submit your requests. Documentation may be uploaded at the time you submit your request on our website or provided to us up to 10 business days after. If you submit your request by calling, you can email your forms to privacy@samsclub.com.

How Will I Know if this Notice Changes?

We will provide notice of significant updates, but please check our Privacy Notice periodically for changes. We’ll always post the date our Privacy Notice was last updated at the top of the Notice.

Contact Us

To contact the Member Services team about this Privacy Notice or about how we handle your personal information, visit our Member Services page. Alternatively, you can write to us at:

Sam’s Club Corporate Privacy
Privacy Office, MS #0160
811 Excellence Dr
Bentonville, AR 72716-0160

privacy@samsclub.com

Appendix 1:

All of the categories of personal information, as defined in the “What Personal Information Do We Collect?” section, are used for all of the purposes described in the “How Do We Use Personal Information?” section. For additional detail, please refer to the chart below.