Privacy policy

Privacy policy

"Waitwhile, Inc. (“Waitwhile”, “us”, “our”, and “we”) is committed to maintaining robust privacy protections for our users. Our Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) is designed to help you understand how we collect, use and safeguard the information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our Services.

By accepting our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use you consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal and other information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

Our website (“Site” or “Website”) and the services that we offer through our mobile application (the “Mobile Application”) and/or the Site (collectively, the “Services”) are directed to the general public. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 years of age or have any reasonable grounds for believing that children under the age of 13 are accessing our Website or using our Services. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected Personal Information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us.

California residents under 18 years of age may have additional rights regarding the collection and sale of their personal information. Please see the California Residents section below for more information.

Types of Data We Collect

We collect “Non-Personal Information” and “Personal Information.” Non-Personal Information includes information that cannot be used to personally identify you, such as anonymous usage data, general demographic information we may collect, referring/exit pages and URLs, platform types, preferences you submit and preferences that are generated based on the data you submit and number of clicks. “Personal Information” means data that allows someone to identify or contact you, including, for example, your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, as well as any other non-public information about you that is associated with or linked to any of the foregoing data. Our collection and processing of your information is based on different contexts: our performance of a contract, our obligations under law, our legitimate interest in conducting our business, protection of a natural person’s vital interests and/or upon your consent.

THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT DEPENDS ON HOW YOU INTERACT WITH US. WE COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT CUSTOMERS WHO PURCHASE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO USE OUR SERVICES AND ABOUT THOSE WHO VISIT OUR SITE.  WE ALSO COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT THOSE WHO USE OUR SERVICES ALTHOUGH WE COLLECT SUCH INFORMATION ON OUR CUSTOMER’S BEHALF.  OUR CUSTOMERS USE OUR SERVICES TO, AMONG OTHER THINGS, MANAGE THEIR GUEST WAIT TIMES AND LINE POSITION AND TO PROVIDE RELATED NOTIFICATIONS.  TO DO SO, OUR CUSTOMERS REQUEST AND COLLECT CERTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT GUESTS, USUALLY NAME, TELEPHONE NUMBER, AND/OR E-MAIL ADDRESS.  OUR CUSTOMERS, HOWEVER, MAY REQUEST AND COLLECT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THEIR GUESTS.  WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR AND CANNOT CONTROL THE TYPES OF INFORMATION THAT OUR CUSTOMERS REQUEST AND COLLECT FROM THEIR GUESTS.  WE COLLECT SUCH INFORMATION ON BEHALF OF OUR CUSTOMERS AND OUR CUSTOMERS’ COLLECTION AND USE OF SUCH INFORMATION IS GOVERNED BY THE CUSTOMERS’ RESPECTIVE PRIVACY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES.  PLEASE CONTACT THAT CUSTOMER DIRECTLY WITH ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW THAT CUSTOMER COLLECTS OR USES INFORMATION IT COLLECTS THROUGH THE SERVICES.

Information You Provide to Us

The information we collect on or through the Services, Site, and/or Mobile Application may include information you provide to us under the following circumstances:  

• We may collect Personal Information from you, such as your first and last name, e-mail and mailing address, phone and password when you create an account to log in to our Site or Mobile Application (“Account”).  We also collect your IP address when you visit the Site and/or subscribe to the Services.
• When you subscribe to the Services or Mobile Application our payment processor will collect all information necessary to complete the transaction for any paid subscription, including your name, credit card information, and billing information.
• We retain information on your behalf, such as files and messages that you store using your Account.
• If you provide us feedback or contact us via e-mail, we will collect your name and e-mail address, as well as any other content included in the e-mail, in order to send you a reply and evaluate your inquiry.
• When you participate in one of our surveys, we may collect additional information that you provide.
• When you post messages on the Site or on a social media site (“SMS”) where we have a page or presence (collectively “SMS Pages”), the information contained in your posting may be retained and/or republished on our Site and other users may be able to see them.
• Waitwhile makes use of location-based data including city, region, and country for our Site and/or Mobile Application. If you choose not to allow Waitwhile to access your location, some or all functionality may not be available to you.

Information Collected via Technology

As you navigate through and interact with the Services, Site, and/or Mobile Application, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

• We collect information provided to us by your browser or by our software application when you view or use the Services, such as your IP address, the website you came from (known as the “referring URL”), the type of browser you use, the device from which you connected to the Services, the time and date of access, details of your visits to the Site and other information that does not personally identify you. We track this information using cookies, or small text files which include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to a user’s browser from our servers and are stored on the user’s computer hard drive. Sending a cookie to a user’s browser enables us to collect Non-Personal information about that user and keep a record of the user’s preferences when utilizing our Services, both on an individual and aggregate basis.  Also, our Site uses session cookies and local storage to authenticate users with login credentials  and to enable web application functionality.  
• We may also use third party analytics services such as Google Analytics or Google Adsense to collect information about how you use and interact with our Services. Such third party analytics services may use cookies to gather information such as the pages you visited, your IP address, a date/time stamp for your visit and which site referred you to the Site.

Use of Your Personal Information

This Privacy Policy describes how we use and process Personal Information as a Controller, as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In general, Personal Information you submit to us is used either to respond to requests that you make, or to aid us in serving you better. We use your Personal Information in the following ways:

• provide the Services you request and fulfill any purpose for which you provide it;
• to facilitate the creation of and secure and enable your use of your Account;
• identify you as a user in our systems;
• provide improved administration of our Services;
• improve the quality of experience when you interact with our Services;
• send you a welcome e-mail to verify ownership of the e-mail address provided when your Account was created and otherwise send you notices related to your use of the Services;
• send you administrative e-mail notifications, such as security or support, maintenance advisories, and changes to our Services;
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection;
• to send newsletters, surveys, offers, and other promotional materials related to our Services;
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information; and
• For any other purpose with your consent.

Our software may use your Personal Information to make automated decisions including but not limited to sending you email/phone notifications, displaying a your name in the bookings/waitlist, analyzing data to provide better wait time estimations, and providing the businesses to whom waitlists relate with statistics about wait times, servings and no-shows.

Although the sections above describe our primary purposes in collecting your Personal Information, in many situations we have more than one purpose. For example, if you complete an online purchase or other transaction we may collect your information to perform our contract with you, but we also have a legitimate interest in maintaining your information after your transaction is complete so that we can quickly and easily respond to any questions about your order. As a result, our collection and processing of your Personal Information is based on different contexts upon your consent, our need to perform a contract, our obligations under law, and/or our legitimate interest in conducting our business.

Please refer to our Security Policy for more information on how Waitwhile handles internal access to your Personal Information.

Use of Non-Personal Information

In general, we use Non-Personal Information to help us improve the Services, Site, and Mobile Application and customize the user experience. We also aggregate Non-Personal Information in order to track trends and analyze use patterns on the Site. This Privacy Policy does not limit in any way our use or disclosure of Non-Personal Information and we reserve the right to use and disclose such Non-Personal Information to our partners, advertisers and other third parties at our discretion.

If our information practices change at any time in the future, we will post the policy changes to the Site so that you may opt out of the new information practices. We suggest that you check the Site periodically if you are concerned about how your information is used.

Disclosure of Your Personal Information

Waitwhile does not sell or rent your Personal Information to marketers or third parties. We only disclose your Personal Information as described below and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.

Third Party Service Providers

We may share your Personal Information with third party service providers to: provide you with the Services that we offer you through our Site; to conduct quality assurance testing; to perform marketing; to run data analysis; to facilitate creation of accounts; to provide technical support; and/or to provide other services to the Company.  Where required by applicable law, third-party service providers are bound by contractual obligations with respect to disclosure and use of Personal Information.

Other Disclosures

Regardless of any choices you make regarding your Personal Information (as described below), Company may disclose Personal Information if it believes in good faith that such disclosure is necessary (a) in connection with any legal investigation; (b) to comply with relevant laws or to respond to subpoenas or warrants served on Company; (c) to protect or defend the rights or property of Company or users of the Services; (d) to investigate or assist in preventing any violation or potential violation of the law, this Privacy Policy, or Terms of Use; (e) to our subsidiaries and affiliates; (f) to a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Information held by us about users is among the assets transferred; (f) to fulfill the purpose for which you provide it; (g) for any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information; and/or (h) with your consent.

Links to Third Party Websites

As part of the Services, we may provide links to or compatibility with other websites or applications that are not owned or operated by us. However, we are not responsible for the privacy practices employed by those websites or the information or content they contain. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by us through the Site, Mobile Application, and the Services. Therefore, this Privacy Policy does not apply to your use of a third party website accessed by selecting a link on our Site or via our Services. To the extent that you access or use the Services through or on another website or application, then the privacy policy of that other website or application will apply to your access or use of that site or application. We encourage our users to read the privacy statements of other websites before proceeding to use them.

Your Rights Regarding the Use of Your Personal Information

The following mechanisms provide you with the following control over your Personal Information:

• You have the right at any time to prevent us from contacting you for marketing purposes. When we send a promotional communication to you, you can opt out of further promotional communications by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in each promotional e-mail. You can also indicate that you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us in the “Settings” section of your Account. Please note that notwithstanding the promotional preferences you indicate by either unsubscribing or opting out in the “Settings” section of your Account, we may continue to send you administrative emails including, for example, periodic updates to our Privacy Policy.
• You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website." "acd": "Access, Correction, Deletion

Access, Correction, Deletion

Typically, we retain your personal information for the period necessary to provide you with access to the Site, Services, and/or Mobile Application and to otherwise fulfill the purposes outlined in this policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.  In addition, we may keep your Personal Information as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and/or enforce our agreements.  The precise periods for which we keep your Personal Information vary depending on the nature of the information and why we need it.

We respect your privacy rights and provide you with reasonable access to the Personal Information that you may have provided through your use of the Services. If you wish to request to access or amend any other Personal Information we hold about you, or to request that we delete any information about you that we have obtained from our Services, you may contact us at:

Waitwhile, Inc.
548 Market St
Suite 45862
San Francisco, CA 94104
hello@waitwhile.com

At your valid request, we will have any reference to you deleted or blocked in our database. You may update, correct, or delete your Account information and preferences at any time by accessing your Account settings page on the Services. Please note that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain all information you submit for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, and/or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

You may decline to share certain Personal Information with us, in which case we may not be able to provide to you some of the features and functionality of the Services, Site, or Mobile Application. At any time, you may object to the processing of your Personal Information, on legitimate grounds, except if otherwise permitted by applicable law.

Security of Your Personal Information

We implement security measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access. Your account is protected by your account password and we urge you to take steps to keep your personal information safe by not disclosing your password and by logging out of your account after each use. We further protect your information from potential security breaches by implementing certain technological security measures. However, these measures do not guarantee that your information will not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of such firewalls and secure server software. While we use reasonable efforts to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. By using our Services, you acknowledge that you understand and agree to assume these risks.

No “do not track” standard has been adopted to this day, and therefore Waitwhile does not use “do not track” signals.

Please refer to our Security Policy for more information on the measures taken to secure the information on our platform.

International Data Transfers

When Waitwhile obtains personal information about you, we may process and store the information outside of the country in which you are located, including in the United States. The countries in which we process the information may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you are located. You consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

We rely upon a number of means to transfer Personal Information which is subject to the GDPR, including transfer of Personal Information to recipients that have entered into the European Commission approved contract for the transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area.

California Residents

This section supplements our Privacy Policy with respect to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and certain other California laws and applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers” or “you”). This section does not apply to personal information (defined below) collected from California-based employees, job applicants, contractors, or similar individuals. Any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this section.

Information We Collect

We collect certain information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer, household, or device (for the purposes of this section only, “personal information”). Personal information does not include publicly available information, such as deidentified or aggregate consumer information, or information excluded from the CCPA’s scope.

The following is a list of all categories of personal information which we collect, or reasonably believe that our customers have collected through the Services from California Residents, in the twelve (12) months prior to the effective date of this policy (each, a “Category”):

• Identifiers.
• Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).
• Commercial information.
• Internet or other similar network activity.

We obtain each Category directly from you or by way of collection through the Website, service providers and/or payment processors.  We share each Category for a business purpose with service providers, payment processors, and other third parties to whom you or your agents authorize us to disclose your personal information in connection with products or services we provide to you.

Uses

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following purposes:   (i) providing the Services, Site, and Web Application (including without limitation maintaining your account, processing and fulfilling orders, and administering surveys and contests); (ii) providing customer support; (iii) operating the Site and Web Application (including without limitation managing third party relationships and enabling usage of our service providers); (iv) communicating with you; (v) customizing the Site and Web Application; (vi) securing and protecting the Site and Web Application (including without limitation auditing, bug and fraud detection, debugging and repair of errors and the detection, protection and prosecution of security incidents or illegal activity); (vii) enforcing our terms and policies; (viii) complying with law; (ix) verifying your identity; and (x) other business purposes about which we may notify you from time to time. 

Sale

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not sold personal information as that term is defined based on our understanding of the CCPA and its implementing regulations.

Non-Discrimination

We do not discriminate against California residents who exercise any of their rights described in this section.  

Your Requests

Subject to certain exceptions and restrictions, the CCPA provides California consumers the right to submit requests to a business which has collected their personal information: (i) to provide them with access to the specific pieces and categories of personal information collected by the business about such consumer, the categories of sources for such information, the business or commercial purposes for collecting such information, and the categories of third parties with which such information was shared; and (ii) to delete such personal information (each, a “California Request”). We need certain types of information so that we can provide the Website to you. If you ask us to delete some or all of your information, you may no longer be able to access or use the Website.  If you are a California consumer, please follow the instructions in the “Access, Correction, Deletion” section above to submit California Requests and note that you are a California consumer when you do so.

We do not track our customers over time and across third party websites to provide targeted advertising and therefore do not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. Third parties that have content embedded on our websites such as a social feature may set cookies on a user’s browser and/or obtain information about the fact that a web browser visited our Website from a certain IP address.

Pursuant to California Civil Code Section 1798.83(c)(2), we do not share your personal information with third parties for their direct marketing use. If you are a California resident under the age of 18, and a registered user of any site where this policy is posted, California Business and Professions Code Section 22581 permits you to request and obtain removal of content or information you have publicly posted. To make such a request, please send an email with a detailed description of the specific content or information to legal@waitwhile.com. Please be aware that such a request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information you have posted and that there may be circumstances in which the law does not require or allow removal even if requested.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change this policy and our Terms of Service at any time. We will notify you of significant changes to our Privacy Policy by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your account or by placing a prominent notice on our Site. Significant changes will go into effect 30 days following such notification. Non-material changes or clarifications will take effect immediately. You should periodically check the Site and this privacy page for updates.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or the practices of the Site or Mobile Application, please contact us by sending an email to hello@waitwhile.com.

Last Updated: March 16, 2022.