Privacy Policy

Our commitment to you

ERM Power Limited /ERM Power Retail Pty Ltd (we, us or our) recognises that your privacy is very important and is committed to protecting your personal information and complying with laws that are aimed at protecting your personal information, including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the National Privacy Principles (NPPs).

This policy sets out how we manage your personal information.  It also describes generally the types of personal information we hold, how it is collected, held, used and disclosed and our purpose in doing so. We encourage you to check our website regularly for any updates to our privacy policy.

Collection

We may collect and hold personal information about you, including your name, gender, address, phone number, facsimile number, email address, bank account details, place and type of business and/or other information relevant to providing you with the services you are, or someone else you know is, seeking. 

The personal information that we collect and hold about you depends on your interaction with us.  Generally, we will collect and hold your personal information for the purpose of:

• providing services to you or someone else you know;
• providing you with information about other services that we, or our related entities and other organisations that we have affiliations with, offer that may be of interest to you;
• providing you with information relevant to your type of business or other area of expertise or interest;
• facilitating our internal business operations, including the fulfilment of any legal requirements;
• analysing our services and customer needs with a view to improving those services; and
• contacting you to provide a testimonial for ERM Power.

We will usually contact you directly, generally by telephone or our face to face contacts or in writing, to collect your personal information. There may, however, be some instances where personal information about you will be collected indirectly because it is unreasonable or impractical to collect personal information directly from you.  

We may also collect information from your distributor or the energy market operator relating to energy usage or previous energy usage at your premises.

We will usually notify you about these instances in advance or, where that is not possible, as soon as reasonably practicable after the information has been collected.

If you access our website, we may collect additional personal information about you in the form of your IP address or domain name.  

Our website uses cookies.  The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and to prepare customised web pages for them.  Cookies do not identify you personally, but they may link back to a database record about you.  We use cookies to monitor usage of our website and to create a personal record of when you visit our website and what pages you view so that we may serve you more efficiently.

If the personal information you provide to us is incomplete or inaccurate, we may be unable to provide you, or someone else you know, with the services you, or they, are seeking.

Use and disclosure

Generally, we only use or disclose personal information about you for the purposes for which it was collected (as set out above). Although, we may disclose personal information about you to:

• service providers, who assist us in operating our business (including insurers, distributors, metering service providers and financial institutions for payment processing);  
• a purchaser of the assets and operations of our business, providing those assets and operations are purchased as a going concern; 
• our related entities and other organisations with whom we have affiliations so that those organisations may provide you with information about services and various promotions;
• credit providers or credit reporting agencies for the purposes permitted under the Privacy Act and credit reporting legislation;
• debt collection agencies and other parties that assist with debt-recovery functions;
• law enforcement bodies to assist in their functions, courts and tribunals or as otherwise required or authorised by law;
• government and regulatory authorities (including the Australian Taxation Office) as required or authorised by law; and 
• our professional advisors (such as auditors and lawyers).

From time to time, we may use your personal information to promote and market products and services to you, including through electronic methods such as email or SMS. We will do this to keep you informed of products, services and special offers and we may continue to provide this information after you cease to acquire services from us.

If you do not wish to receive communications about our products, services and special offers, or if you have subscribed to any of our newsletters or subscriptions and no longer wish to receive them, you can opt out by contacting us at privacy@ermpower.com.au or by calling our Privacy Officer on +61 7 3020 5100.

If you receive a communication via email, you can opt out by clicking on the ‘opt out’ or ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the email and following any prompts.  

Credit reporting

We may use and disclose your personal information in order to conduct credit checks, obtain a credit report about you, assess your creditworthiness and for any other purpose permitted by the Privacy Act and credit reporting legislation at any time before, during or after the provision of credit to you.  We may also disclose information about you to a credit reporting agency as authorised by law.

Security

We store your personal information in different ways, including in paper and in electronic form. The security of your personal information is very important to us.

We take reasonable measures to ensure that your personal information is stored safely. We expect all our employees and contractors to comply with the Privacy Act and our Privacy Policy, and will take appropriate steps to address any breaches by employees and contractors of the Privacy Act and Policy obligations. However we do not accept responsibility for the misuse of personal information by third parties.

Our websites have electronic security systems in place, including the use of firewalls and data encryption.  We also take care to store personal information in a manner that reasonably protects it from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification of disclosure.

However, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be secure. Accordingly, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information transmitted over the internet.  Once we receive your information, we make every effort to ensure its security on our systems.

If you are concerned about providing personal information over the internet, you can contact us by telephone or post.

Access

You may access personal information we hold about you, upon making a written request. We will endeavour to acknowledge your request within 14 days of its receipt and to provide you with access to the information requested within 30 days.

We may charge you a reasonable fee for processing your request if your enquiry involves extensive administration time or resources.  If this is the case, we will advise the likely fee in advance and can help refine your request if required. We may decline a request for access to personal information in circumstances prescribed by the Privacy Act.

If, upon receiving access to your personal information, or at any other time, you believe the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, please notify us immediately. We will take reasonable steps to correct the information so that it is accurate, complete and up to date. 

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of linked websites and any linked websites are not subject to our privacy policies and procedures.

Updates

We may update this privacy policy from time to time.

Feedback

If you have any queries or concerns about our privacy policy or the way in which we handle your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer on +61 7 3020 5100 or email privacy@ermpower.com.au.

More information

For more information about privacy in general, you can visit the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s website at www.oaic.gov.au.