MEC's privacy notice

Personal Information You Provide

We collect personal information when you interact with us, including when you become a member, shop with us, order online, or join an event. During our interactions we may give you extra details about how we handle your personal information, which may update or add to this Notice.

Personal information you provide to us may include:

• Contact and member information: Your name, email, phone number, mailing address, and sometimes proof of ID. If you are a member, we may also collect details like when and how you joined, your language preference, your birthday, and your membership number. We may keep notes about your interactions with us.

• Consents and agreements: Records of the consents you give (such as for marketing emails), and copies of agreements, waivers, or releases you sign.

• Online account information: Details linked to your online account, such as items in your cart or saved gift cards. If you store a payment card in your online account (other than gift cards), we only keep a tokenized version.

• Communications and social media: If you contact us, including by email, phone, chat, or social media, we may keep notes or recordings. For marketing emails, we may track whether you open them or use the links, and what you browse or buy afterward.

• Third-party contact information: If you provide someone else’s contact information (for example, for an e-gift card or emergency contact), we collect only what’s needed, such as their name, phone number, email, address, or your relationship to them.

• Job applications: If you apply for a job, we collect information including your contact details, experience, education, skills, certifications, and work eligibility. With your consent, we may also conduct background or reference checks.

• Events: If you sign up for an event, we may collect information about your participation and any required emergency contacts or waivers.

• Rentals: If you rent equipment, we collect contact information and details about what you rented and when.

• Equipment work and repairs: We may collect information we need to complete repairs or adjustments, such as your activity level, height, weight, age, or boot sole length.

• Other information you choose to share: This includes any other personal information that you give to us voluntarily, including contest entries, product reviews, surveys, and feedback.

Personal Information We Automatically Collect

We may automatically collect information about you when you interact with us, including:

• Purchase information: Details about your transaction, including the date, location, items purchased, payment type, and banking information (including tokenized card information). If you are a member, this information will be linked to your membership. If you make an order as a guest online, shipping information will be kept with your order.

• Membership and rewards information: For members, this includes your participation in and use of benefits, events, rewards, points, offers, redemptions, and levels.

• Video surveillance: Our locations may use video cameras. We normally keep footage for about 30 days unless we need to retain it for business or legal reasons.

• Device and usage information: When you use our site, we may collect information about your device, internet connection, and browsing activity, including pages visited, user account sign-ins, downloads, clicks, crash reports, and URLs you visited before and after our site. Some of this information may be collected by third parties.

• Location information: If you enable location services, we may collect your device’s location while you use our site. Some features, like finding your nearest store, need this to work.

• Cookies and similar technology: We use cookies, pixel tags, and similar tools to understand how you use our website. See our Cookie Notice for more details.

Personal Information We Collect from Other Sources

We sometimes collect personal information from other sources, including:

• Public Information: Content you publicly share, or information available from public sources such as government records or media.

• Information from third parties: Information from other customers, staff, or third parties (including service providers) for identification, fraud prevention, incident reporting, or disputes. We may also collect your personal information if someone lists you as an emergency contact or purchases a gift for you.

Personal Data We Derive

We may create insights based on the information we collect. For example, we may infer your location from your IP address or your interests from your browsing. We may also use predictive analytics for marketing, such as estimating customer lifetime value, churn risk, expected time between purchases, and gender. For more information regarding predictive analytics, see here.

We use your personal information to provide services and products, manage your membership, operate our business, and improve MEC. This may include:

• Sales and services: If you purchase products, rentals, or services from MEC or through the MEC website, we, or third parties acting on our behalf, may use your personal information to complete your transaction or manage your rental. If you buy directly from a brand on the MEC website, that brand and its service providers will use your information to fulfill your order. If you provide an email address for e receipts, we will use it only for that purpose, or to contact you in the case of recalls. We may also use purchase records for product returns.

• MEC membership and rewards: If you are an MEC member, we use your personal information to manage your membership. We may also use your information to provide you with targeted or general communications, advertisements, rewards, or benefits.

• Communications: We may use your personal information to contact and communicate with you by phone, chat, email, social media, mail, or other methods. This includes responding to questions, comments, or concerns and requesting product or other feedback. If you have opted out of marketing emails, we may still send messages that are transactional or factual, including information about your purchases, membership, or product recalls.

• Marketing communications: If you have provided express or implied consent, we may use your contact information to send marketing messages by email, social media, or text. We may also send marketing messages by mail. Marketing communications include updates, announcements, contests, discounts, offers, event invitations, and newsletters. We may tailor these messages using your personal information, including membership history, rewards level, purchases, browsing activity, email engagement, event attendance, addresses, points, gender, or other demographics.

• Advertising: We may use your personal information, including contact information, interests, and demographics, for marketing ads. These ads may come from MEC or third parties on MEC’s behalf. They may be directed to you or to audiences with similar characteristics as you, using personal information, or technologies like cookies or pixel tags.

• Improving our services: We may use your personal information to improve our operations, personalize your online experience, recommend relevant products, and provide store specific information.

• Analytics: We use analytics associated with your personal information to measure the effectiveness of our marketing and sales efforts, understand conversions, and support planning for products, rentals, and services. We may also use this information to understand how you interact with us and for market research.

• Affiliate programs: If you visit our website or make a purchase from us through an affiliate marketing program, we may use your personal information to support or process your purchase or the program.

• Contests and promotions: If you participate in contests, giveaways, or promotions, we may use personal information to administer the contest, identify winners, understand engagement and interests, and support planning and marketing. We may also use this information as described in the contest rules.

• Job applications: If you apply for a job, we use your personal information to assess your eligibility and qualifications and to contact you regarding employment. You may be asked whether you agree to additional terms, including use of an artificial intelligence algorithm to help review your initial application. If you are hired, your application information may form part of your employee record.

• Events: If you register for an MEC event, we may use your personal information to manage attendance, and if required, to process payment, communicate with you about the event, or connect with your emergency contact. We may also use this information for engagement analysis, market research, or targeted marketing.

• Feedback: We may use personal information submitted through ratings, reviews, surveys, or questions to respond to issues and improve our products and services.

• Device, technical and usage information: We use device and technical information, including click throughs and IP addresses, to understand website traffic, improve our website and services, and tailor our marketing. We also monitor system usage and performance to protect the security and integrity of our systems.

• Location information: We use geolocation information and addresses to provide location based services and regionally relevant content, including event invitations and targeted advertisements.

• Identification, verification, and fraud prevention: We use various information to identify and verify you and to detect and prevent fraud. This may include your online account, membership information, address, postal code, purchase history, device and technical information, and information from identity verification and fraud prevention services. We may also use this information to investigate claims and protect the security of our stores, staff, and website.

• Legal and regulatory requirements: We may use your personal information to meet legal obligations and regulatory requirements or as otherwise permitted by law.

• Other uses: We may also use your personal information to provide products and services you request or for any purpose that we describe at the time of collection.

We share personal information to provide services or products, support our operations, and improve MEC. We share information only as described in this Notice, where we have your consent, or where the law permits or requires it. This may include:

• Service Providers: We share personal information with third‑party providers that perform services for us. For more details, please see the section on Service Providers below.

• Brands: When you buy directly from a brand on our website, we share your order information with that brand so it can process your purchase.

• Advertising Partners: Our advertising partners, including companies such as Meta/Facebook and Google, may collect information about your activity on our digital properties and on other online sites. They may also use personal information that we share with them to deliver advertisements on their platforms to you and to similar audiences.

• Events: To support your safety during an event, we may share your emergency contact information with the event’s first aid provider or organizing partner. If an emergency involving you occurs, we may disclose information to your emergency contact and to responders.

• Permitted Legal Disclosures: Under privacy laws, we may be required or permitted to disclose personal information in certain circumstances. This may include sharing information with law enforcement, government authorities, or buyers or potential buyers if MEC is involved in a business transaction.

• Voluntary Public Disclosure by You: If you publish or post content on our website, our social media, or other spaces that are visible to others, that information becomes publicly available. Information you share with third‑party social networking or other websites is outside of our control and is not governed by this Notice.

When you visit the MEC website or interact with us online, we may use cookies and other online tracking tools like beacons, pixel tags, and session replay technologies to help improve your experience and support our operations.

Cookies

See our Cookie Notice for further information about our use of cookies and options available to you.

Beacons and Pixel Tags

We may use web beacons or pixel tags to gather information on our website, including about site traffic, visitor demographics, and purchasing activities. These tools help us to:

• Measure interest and engagement in our website
• Measure the success of our marketing campaigns
• Compile statistics about usage of the online services and response rates
• Tailor your MEC experience, including providing you with relevant content and ads on our website and other platforms, like Google and Facebook
• Send personalized communications, such as requests for product reviews
• Collect and associate information about your online activities over time and across different websites
• Track activities on the MEC website, including device information, geolocation, networks, page visits, duration of visits, engagement with website components, conversion rates, revenue per session, average order values and click through rates. We generally use this data for aggregated reporting, but we may link tracking information with personal information for our own research.

If you do not want to have your information collected by beacons or pixel tags, please do not use our website.

Session Replay Technologies

We use third party services, such as Noibu and Datadog, to record interactions with our website and allow us to see user session replays. These replays may include users’ clicks, mouse movements, keystrokes, and scrolls. We use this information to diagnose usability problems and areas for improvement on the MEC website.

We rely on third party service providers to support operations and provide services. This can require service providers to collect or process personal information on our behalf. We use third parties for:

• Orders fulfillment, shipping, and delivery: If you purchase a product from us, your contact, purchase, and shipping information may be shared with third parties, including shipping companies.

• Analytics: We use analytics providers to support reporting, member engagement, website usage analysis, and demographic targeting for advertising and market development.

• Communications: Marketing providers send marketing messages for us, including newsletters and texts. Social media platforms help us market, engage, and communicate, including delivering tailored advertising. Additional providers support our email, phone, and live chat interactions.

• Payment processing: Payment processing gateway and analytics providers help us facilitate payment transactions and process gift card payments.

• Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting providers like AWS and Azure store and process data for us, which may include personal information.

• Job applications: We use third parties to host MEC’s online job application processes.

• Artificial Intelligence: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools from service providers to help support our operations, including for processing, analysis, providing chatbots or answers to questions on our website, and fraud detection. When AI tools are used to process personal information, we will not make any automated decisions about you without human oversight.

• Feedback: Third parties help manage the product ratings, reviews, and question and answer portions of the MEC website.

• Rental: We may use a third party to manage rentals.

• Events: Various providers may help us with events, including registration and management.

• Identification, verification and fraud prevention: Service providers help us identify and verify individuals, detect and prevent fraud, investigate claims, and protect the security of our stores, staff, and the MEC website. Some providers may use the personal information we provide them to improve their identity verification and fraud detection services.

• Professional advisors: We may share information with our professional advisors, including lawyers, auditors, bankers, and insurers, as necessary.

In some cases, we share aggregated or other non-identifying information with service providers. Because aggregated or non identifying information does not identify individuals, it is not considered personal information and is not subject to this Notice.

Steps We Take to Protect Your Information

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to help protect your personal information. Although we take these measures, no internet transmission is ever fully secure and no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of personal information, and any transmission is at your own risk.

All MEC staff are responsible for the protection of personal information:

• The Privacy Officer has overall responsibility for personal information at MEC.

• Privacy Leads are business unit leaders who help identify and mitigate privacy risks.

• The IT and Information Security Team controls access to personal information, helps to digitally safeguard personal information, and responds to IT related privacy breaches or risks.

• The Legal Team supports legal requirements for privacy.

• The People Team is responsible for employee personal information.

• All MEC staff are accountable for protecting personal information respectfully and in accordance with our policies.

Protecting Your Own Personal Information

You also play an important role in protecting your personal information online:

• External websites and third-party platforms: The MEC website links to external websites or third-party platforms. MEC is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these websites. You should read their privacy notices before using their services or providing information to them.

• Unauthorized Access: Protect your MEC online account by choosing a strong password and keeping your login information private. MEC is not responsible for lost, stolen, or compromised usernames or passwords, or for activity on your account caused by unauthorized access. MEC is also not responsible if you do not secure your devices, your internet connection, or if you use of public or unsecured networks, including publicly available in store Wi Fi.

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, for as long as we have a business or legal reason to do so, or as otherwise permitted or required by law.

At any time, we may choose to delete, de-identify, or anonymize any or all of your personal information, including your membership record. If we anonymize or aggregate your information so that it can no longer be associated with you, it is no longer personal information and is not subject to this Notice.

Some of our service providers are partially or fully located outside of Canada. As a result, your personal information may be stored and processed outside of Canada, and may be subject to laws and access by government or regulatory organizations outside of Canada. If you reside in Quebec, your information will be released, processed, and stored outside Quebec, including by service providers located outside of Quebec.

You have options about your personal information:

Access and Update Your Personal Information

Opt-out, Disable, and Manage Use of your Personal Information

Close your Membership or Delete your Personal Information

Learn More

Our website, services, and membership are not intended for children under 16 years.

Most general questions about privacy can be answered by our Customer Care team.

You can send specific questions or concerns about your personal information to the MEC Privacy Officer:

Privacy Officer
Mountain Equipment Company
151 E 2nd Ave, Unit 320
Vancouver, BC V5T 1B4
[email protected]

If you are not satisfied with MEC’s response, you may have options, including raising a complaint with the relevant Privacy Commissioner:

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta

Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

We will update this Notice from time to time. We will post the updated Notice to the MEC website and, if the changes are significant, we may provide a more prominent notice, such as an email notification.

How we handle your personal information is governed by the version of the Notice that is currently in effect.