The goal at igourmet.com is to provide our valued customers with a unique selection of diligently selected imported gourmet products at near wholesale prices. We are open for business on the Internet 24 hours per day, seven days per week. In the course of doing business, we adhere to the following terms and conditions.
Payment and Sales Tax
igourmet accepts VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Optima, Discover, Diners Club, and Carte Blanche credit cards for all purchases. We also accept Paypal transactions. We only ship to addresses within the United States and its possessions, including worldwide military bases and only charge sales tax on non-food items shipping to Pennsylvania addresses.
Pricing
The prices listed on the igourmet.com web site are current as long as they are displayed and are subject to change at our discretion.
Product Availability
Many of the items we sell are only available to us in limited quantities. We make every effort to update our web site to reflect out of stock conditions, but it is possible that an item you purchase at igourmet is on back order. In that event, we customarily ship as much of the order as possible and ship the back-ordered item as it becomes available.
System Availability
igourmet makes every effort to maintain 100% system availability. In cases where we do experience technical difficulties, we are not responsible for orders that are not processed or accepted.
Shipping
The Eternal Question seems to be: Is It Safe To Ship Food In The Mail In The Summertime? Our answer - a resounding YES thanks to FreshWave. igourmet spent two years researching and developing the FreshWave packaging system. During the summer months, we use an air tight, fully insulated, temperature retaining packaging system that keeps its contents cool for a full 48 hours in ambient temperatures of up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Through the use of the FreshWave packaging system, igourmet.com can absolutely guarantee that, if temperatures stay under 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the food products you receive from us are in the same fresh condition as when they left our facility.
The FreshWave system combines a reusable, seamless, molded polystyrene cooler chest with a non-toxic refrigerant gel pack. Your perishable foods are temperature controlled within the confines of the polystyrene, which itself is encased in an outer cardboard shipper. To further contain temperature escalation, we fill the voids inside the package with Styrofoam pellets to minimize the amount of air within the system. As an added bonus, you get to keep the cooler and the refrigerant gel pack to use for your next picnic or road trip. In the winter months, we utilize an outer cardboard shipper with a tight fitting polystyrene lining to retard freezing.
igourmet ships via your choice of UPS or U.S. Postal Service. There are two factors that determine the shipping charges on orders. First, shipping charges increment as the weight of your order increases. Secondly, the shipping charge formula is scaled based upon the distance between our New York headquarters and the destination address. We have set our rates to approximate the rates charged to us by our delivery service providers. Because the U.S. Post Office cannot guarantee delivery, we can only guarantee that your order will not get delayed or lost in transit if you select the UPS option during checkout.
Cheese of the Month subscription rates include shipping and handling charges.
Return Policy
Assuming ambient temperatures of below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, we guarantee that any perishable product you receive from igourmet will be of high quality and in good physical condition. We make the same guarantee for non-perishables, without the temperature constraint. Any item(s) that you deem unsatisfactory will be replaced or refunded upon your request, as long as you let us know the details of the problem within 5 business days of having received your order. We will not make you return the goods to us to claim a refund or replacement. This is a very liberal return policy and we reserve the right to become more strict if people begin to take advantage of our trust.
Privacy Statement
The executive managers at igourmet.com know that our customers expect us to keep information about them private and secure. This statement describes our privacy policy. By visiting igourmet.com, you are accepting the practices described below.
Personal Information About Customers That igourmet.com Gathers
Information You Give Us: We reserve the right to store any information, other than your credit card number and avs code, that you enter on our web site or provide us over the phone or in any other way. This includes address information and shopping choices. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as shipping your packages, responding to your requests, improving our selection, and communicating with you. We may also use that information for future marketing purposes.
Automatic Information: We receive and store certain data elements whenever you log on to our web site. Like many web sites, we use cookies and obtain browser information like refering pages and browser brand and version. We also timestamp the date and time of your visit.
Email Communications: We do not utilize email open confirmation, a technique many sites use to determine when you open email from them. We consider this practice invasive and wasteful of bandwidth. Our weekly newsletter is entirely opt-in, and every newsletter we send has a link to automatically unsubscribe. If you do not want to receive email from us, simply let us know by emailing service@igourmet.com.
How We Use Cookies
Cookies are small files that reside on your computer that web sites transfer to your hard drive through your browser. Our cookies simply enable our web site to recognize who you are in order to offer you a personalized greeting or determine your membership in our loyalty program. We also use cookies to store items in your shopping cart before checkout. In order to shop successfully at igourmet.com, you need to leave cookies turned on in your browser's settings.
How igourmet.com Shares Information About Customers
igourmet provides your shipping information to UPS and FedEx (for obvious reasons) and to suppliers that function as third-party drop shippers for us. The information we supply to drop shippers only relates to the specific order being fulfilled by them. It is generally sent by secure email, secure http or secure ftp. We securely transmit your credit card data to the appropriate credit card company during order processing. As web technology and the online operating environment are constantly evolving, we cannot accurately predict all future applications of the data we store about your order history. If you strongly oppose any use of your contact information other than what is needed to fulfill orders, please let us know by emailing us at service@igourmet.com.
In the event igourmet buys or sells a business unit, customer information may be one of the transferred business assets but remains subject to the policies made in this Privacy Statement.
With respect to law enforcement, we may be obliged to release personal information if we believe such release is appropriate to comply with the law, or protect the rights, property, or safety of igourmet.com, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with organizations that fight fraud and identity theft.
Security of Sensitive Information
We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input. We reveal only a fragment of your credit card number when confirming an order. Information stored in our customer database is protected using state-of-the-art security methods.
Our business changes constantly, and our Privacy Statement may change periodically. Please check our web site frequently to see if any changes take place. However, we will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.
Information About Fraud
When it comes to credit card processing, we take fraud very seriously. It is a violation of State and Federal law to place orders under a false name or with an invalid credit card number. Attempts at fraudulent ordering will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Both the FBI and the US Secret Service have advanced methods to identify the time, location and origination of Internet transactions, and have assumed responsibility for investigating Internet fraud cases.
Your browser and igourmet's secure server work together to encrypt your credit card information during transmission, ensuring that transactions stay private and protected. Only the screen that collects your credit card number is secure, allowing the rest of the site to run at a faster speed. igourmet guarantees the safety of your credit card information in the following manner: if any unauthorized use of your credit card occurs as a result of your credit card purchase from igourmet, simply notify your credit card provider in accordance with its reporting rules and procedures. If, through no fault of your own, your credit card company finds credit card fraud but does not waive your entire liability for unauthorized charges, igourmet will reimburse you for the remaining liability, up to a maximum of $50.00.
Commitment to the Environment
We at igourmet feel responsible to operate in an environmentally friendly manner. To this end we use recycled and biodegradable materials whenever possible. All of the corrugated cartons we use are at least partially made from recycled paper. All of the foam pellets and polystyrene carton liners we use are made from partially recycled and CFC-free materials. All of the refrigerant gel packs we use are non-toxic and biodegradable. These materials cost us a bit more, but we think it is well worth the extra pennies.
After you receive an order from igourmet, we hope you will make every attempt to reuse the packing equipment we send you in an environmentally friendly manner. The FreshWave polystyrene chests and refrigerant gel packs are ideal for keeping food cool on picnic and long car rides. If you have any ideas on how we can become more environmentally friendly, we welcome your comments.
