Vendor Policies and Vendor Code of Conduct

Connect Me Dude expects all vendors to adhere to the following policies when listing products and or services on Connect Me Dude. Vendor offenses and prohibited content can result in the suspension of your Connect Me Dude account.

 

Vendor code of conduct

This policy requires that vendors act reasonably and honestly on the Connect Me Dude site to ensure a safe buying and selling experience. All vendors must:

 

• Please provide accurate information to Connect Me Dude and our customers at all times
• Act reasonably and not misuse Connect Me Dude’s features or services
• Not attempt to damage or abuse another Vendor, their listings, or ratings
• Not attempt to influence customers’ ratings, feedback, and reviews
• Not send unsolicited or inappropriate communications
• Not contact customers except through Buyer-Vendor Messaging
• Not attempt to circumvent the Connect Me Dude sales process
• Not operate more than one selling account on Connect Me Dude.

Violating the Code of Conduct or any other Connect Me Dude policies may result in actions against your account, such as cancellation of listings, suspension or forfeiture of payments, and removal of selling privileges. More details about these policies are below.

 

Accurate Information

You must provide accurate information to Connect Me Dude and our customers and update the information if it changes. For example, this means that you must use a business name that accurately identifies your business and list your products in the correct category.

 

Acting Fairly

You must act fairly and lawfully and may not misuse any service provided by Connect Me Dude. Examples of unfair activities include:

 

• Providing misleading or inappropriate information to Connect Me Dude or our customers, such as by creating multiple detail pages for the same product or posting offensive product images
• Manipulating sales rank (such as by accepting fake orders or orders that you have paid for) or making claims about sales rank in product titles or descriptions
• Attempting to increase the price of a product after an order is confirmed
• Artificially inflating web traffic (using bots or paying for clicks, for example)
• Attempting to damage another Vendor, their listings, or ratings
• Allowing other people to act on your behalf in a way that violates Connect Me Dude’s policies or your agreement with Connect Me Dude

 

Ratings, Feedback, and Reviews

You may not attempt to influence or inflate customers’ ratings, feedback, and reviews. You may request feedback and reviews from your own customers in a neutral manner but may not:

• Pay for or offer an incentive (such as coupons or free products) in exchange for providing or removing feedback or reviews
• Ask customers to write only positive reviews or ask them to remove or change a review
• Solicit reviews only from customers who had a positive experience
• Review your own products or a competitors’ products

 

Communications

You may not send unsolicited or inappropriate messages. You must send all communications to customers through Buyer-Vendor Messaging.

 

Customer Information

In the case when you receive customer information such as addresses or phone numbers to fulfill orders. You may only use that information to fulfill orders and must delete it after you processed the order. You may not use customer information to contact customers (except through Buyer-Vendor Messaging) or share it with any third-party.

 

Circumventing the Sales Process

You may not attempt to circumvent the Connect Me Dude sales process or divert Connect Me Dude customers to another website. This means that you may not provide links or messages that prompt users to visit any external website or complete a transaction elsewhere.

 

Multiple Selling Accounts on Connect Me Dude

You may only maintain one Vendor dashboard account for each region in which you sell unless you have a legitimate business need to open a second account, and all of your accounts are in good standing. If any of your accounts are not in good standing, we may deactivate all of your selling accounts until all accounts are in good standing.

 

 

Filing Infringement Notices as an Agent or Brand Protection Agency

Connect Me Dude understands that many brands may choose to have brand protection agencies or agents report intellectual property infringement on their behalf and accept authorized agents’ submissions. However, Connect Me Dude does not permit individuals with active selling accounts to file infringement notices as agents of a brand when the filing of those notices could benefit their own selling account (by removing competing listings, for example). Any vendors filing notices as an agent to benefit their own status as a vendor may have their selling account terminated.

 

Keeping Your Account Information Secure

The security of your account is important to us because it is central to your business. We recommend the following best practices to reinforce the security of your Connect Me Dude account:

 

• Set up Two-Step Verification for all of your Connect Me Dude accounts. You can reinforce your password security in this way as you are required to enter an additional code from your phones when signing in to your account. This can greatly reduce the risk of unauthorized access if the password is compromised.
• Pick strong passwords that are different for each of your accounts and change your password regularly.
• Choosing the same password for each of your online accounts is like using the same key to lock your home, car, and office – if a criminal gains access to one, all of them are compromised.
• Use a long password made up of numbers, letters, and symbols.
• Avoid using publicly-available information (For example: your phone number) in your passwords.
• Make sure that the e-mail address or the mobile number that you use to sign-in to your account is up-to-date. For more information on how to change your e-mail address or password, see Change Login Settings.
• If your business has multiple users, then have each user set up their own account and then link your accounts. Ensure that you regularly review secondary users who have access to your account and revoke access to users who no longer need access.
• Review your Notification Settings and ensure that you have the required setup to receive notifications of important actions being taken on your account. Beware of phishing. Connect Me Dude never asks you to verify sensitive information via e-mail. Submit such information only when completing an order on our website, registering to sell on Connect Me Dude, or updating account information in Vendor dashboard.
• If you are ever in doubt about the authenticity of an e-mail, visit our site directly by typing the address into your browser bar, rather than clicking any links.

 

If you believe your Connect Me Dude account has been compromised, follow the steps below:

• Change your Vendor dashboard login password. If you are not able to login to your account, contact Vendor Support.
• Review the following information in your account to determine if any changes have been made:
  • E-mail address preferences
  • Payment information
  • User permissions
  • Connect Me Dude storefront details
  • Listing and condition notes
• Your e-mail account might have been compromised as well. Consider changing the e-mail address associated with your account and use a different password for your e-mail account.
• If you receive e-mails or links that you suspect are phishing attempts, report them to stop-spoofing@Connectmedude.com.
• Contact Vendor Support to report that your account has been compromised.

 

Identifying false (spoofed) e-mails

You might receive e-mails from Connect Me Dude, such as Sold, Ship Now e-mails, or Technical Notification e-mails. However, sometimes you might receive e-mails that are not really from Connect Me Dude, even if at first glance they may appear to be. Instead, such e-mails are falsified and attempt to convince you to reveal sensitive account information.

These false e-mails, also called “spoofed” e-mails or “phishing,” look similar to legitimate e-mails from Connect Me Dude. Often these e-mails direct you to a false website that looks similar to a Connect Me Dude website, where you might be asked to give account information, such as your e-mail address and password combination.

Unfortunately, these false websites can steal your sensitive information, which can then be used without your knowledge to commit fraud.

To protect yourself from responding to these e-mails, you can follow some simple rules:

• Know what Connect Me Dude won’t ask in an e-mail:
  • Connect Me Dude will not ask you for the following information in an e-mail communication:
    • Your bank account information, credit card number, PIN number, or credit card security code (including “updates” to any of the above)
    • Your mother’s maiden name or other information to identify you, such as your birth city or your favorite pet’s name
    • Your Connect Me Dude or Vendor dashboard account password

 

• Review the e-mail for grammatical or typographical errors: Watch for poor grammar or typographical errors. Many phishing e-mails are translated from other languages or are sent without being proof-read.
• Check the return address: Genuine e-mails from Connect Me Dude always will come from an address ending in “@connectmedude.com.” Check the e-mail’s header information. If the “received from,” “reply to,” or “return path” for the e-mail does not come from “@connectmedude.com,” it is not from Connect Me Dude. Most e-mail programs let you examine the source of the e-mail. The method you use to check the header information varies depending upon the e-mail program you use. The following are some examples of fraudulent return addresses:
  • vendor-performance@payments-Connectmedude.com
  • Connectmedude-security@hotmail.com
  • Connectmedude-payments@msn.com
• Check the website address: Some phishers set up spoofed websites that contain the word “Connectmedude” somewhere in the URL. Genuine Connect Me Dude websites always end with “.connectmedude.com”, “Connect Me Dudevendorservices.com” or “vendordashboardconnectmedude.com.” We will never use a combination such as “security-Connectmedude.com” or “Connectmedude.com.biz.”
• When in doubt, go directly to Connect Me Dude or the Vendor dashboard website: Some phishing e-mails include a link that looks as though it will take you to your Connect Me Dude account, but it is really a shortened link to a completely different website.
• If you hover over the link with your mouse when viewing the message in your e-mail client, you often can see the underlying false website address, either as a pop-up or as information in the browser status bar.

Note: The hover technique can be fooled. If you do click on a link, always look at the URL in your browser when the page opens.

• The best way to ensure that you do not respond to a phishing e-mail is to always go directly to your vendor account to review or make any changes to the account. When in doubt, do not click on a link in an e-mail.
• Do not unsubscribe: Never follow instructions contained in a forged e-mail that claim to provide a method for unsubscribing. Many spammers use these unsubscribe processes to create a list of valid, working e-mail addresses.
• Use Vendor dashboard’s features to track your orders:
• If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is: Sometimes phisher e-mails will offer you deals, such as a discount or a free item, in return for completing a simple task, (for example, signing in to your vendor account). We recommend that you never sign in to your vendor account by clicking on a link embedded in e-mail.

 

Website links to vendor products listed on Connect Me Dude?

A vendor can place a link on their website to the products they have listed on Connect Me Dude. However, a vendor is not allowed to provide a link from the Connect Me Dude website to the vendor’s own website

Transfer of vendor account.

Vendor accounts are not transferable.

If the ownership of a business changes for any reason, the new owner needs to establish a new vendor account.

If the ownership of a business isn’t changing, but the individual responsible for managing the vendor account have changed, you can change the user to the account.

Stock levels

The vendor’s responsibility is to keep all stock levels of all products sold on the Connect Me Dude platform up to date at all times.

Return of goods

The customer has the right to return goods under the following conditions:

• The customers are entitled to cancel their orders within 7 days without giving any reason for doing so. The deadline for canceling an Order is 7 days from the date on which the customer received the Goods or a third party who the customer appointed, who is not the carrier, takes possession of the product delivered. In such a case, you will be responsible for the customer’s refunding via Connect Me Dude within 14 days from the day on which you receive the returned Goods.
• If a product is not acceptable because of a defect, the customer needs to notify us within 7 days of such delivery by logging a return on the Website. Once you have inspected the product and validated the customer’s return, you will at the choice of the customer repair / replace the product as soon as possible (if such repair is possible/you have the same product in stock to use as a replacement) or refund the customer with the purchase price of the product
• Should a product be damaged or missing any parts or accessories at the time of delivery / collection, the customer will notify us within 7 days of such delivery / collection by logging a return on the Website. Once you have inspected the product and validated the customer’s return, you will at the choice of the customer repair / replace the product as soon as possible (if such repair is possible/you have the same product in stock to use as a replacement) or refund the customer with the purchase price of the product.

 

You will honour all return and refund policies as published on www.connectmedude.com as updated from time to time.

Resellers Agreement

All vendors will be required to sign a Resellers agreement before allowing access to the Connect Me Dude site.