Electric Kiwi Privacy Policy

Effective from 9 April 2022

Electric Kiwi is committed to protecting your personal information. We have created this Privacy Policy to help you understand how and why we collect information from you, how we store it, how you can access and correct that information, and when we might disclose information to other people.

  1. Application of this Privacy Policy
  2. Changes to the Privacy Policy
  3. Collection of your personal information
  4. Personal information we may collect
  5. Use of your personal information
  6. Protecting your personal information
  7. Retention of your personal information
  8. Sharing your personal information
  9. Credit card security
  10. Third party links
  11. Cookies
  12. Website and App tracking and measurement
  13. Online Advertising
  14. Accessing your personal information
  15. Correction of your personal information
  16. Severability
  17. Disputes

1. Application of this Privacy Policy

1.1
You must provide us with, and authorise any other person who holds information about you or the members of your household and your property to disclose, any information we reasonably request in relation to our provision of services to you.

1.2
This Privacy Policy does not limit or exclude your rights under the Privacy Act 2020.

1.3
This Privacy Policy applies to all instances where we collect information about you and your property that we supply electricity to and by accessing Electric Kiwi's website (Website), any Electric Kiwi app (App), any Electric Kiwi social media page (Social Media), contacting Electric Kiwi and/or using the services offered by Electric Kiwi (Services), you consent to the collection, use, disclosure, storage, and processing of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

2. Changes to the Privacy Policy

2.1
We may change our Privacy Policy on 30 days' notice. This notice will be on our website and will include reasons for any change.

2.2
You agree to be bound by the Privacy Policy that is in effect at the time you access our Website or App, contact Electric Kiwi and/or use the Services.

3. Collection of your personal information

3.1
We will collect the following personal information from you:

  1. information submitted to Electric Kiwi by you through your use of the Website, App or Social Media;
  2. information on your browsing activity when using the Website, App or Social Media;
  3. any communication with Electric Kiwi directly via writing, phone calls (which may be recorded) email, direct messaging or live web chat; and
  4. information obtained through your use (or prospective use) of the Services including your engagement in promotions and surveys.

3.2
We may supplement the information you provide us with information we collect from third parties including:

  1. third parties who are involved in your electricity supply, including your network operator and our Representatives (as that term is defined in our Terms and Conditions);
  2. third parties who are involved in credit checking and debt recovery, including credit checking and debt recovery agencies, our Representatives (as that Term is defined in our Terms and Conditions), our lawyers, and other electricity suppliers in New Zealand or their agents;
  3. third parties who maintain public databases or otherwise publish public information;
  4. third parties who we may need to contact to verify that you are, or a member of your household is, a vulnerable consumer or a medically dependent consumer, including your or a member of your household’s doctor, any District Health Board, the Ministry of Social Development, Work and Income New Zealand, Family and Community Services or any other source trusted by us; and
  5. third parties involved in any dispute organisation or scheme that we are a member of;
  6. any third party to whom we are required to disclose any information either by law or in compliance with the Electricity Industry Participation Code or other industry codes and standards,

and you authorise such third parties to provide your personal information to us for any of the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

4. Personal information we may collect

4.1
We may, in addition to other information, collect the following information about you, members of your household or your property:

  1. Your name, email address, residential address, telephone number, gender association and date of birth.
  2. Health information, where you are, or a member of your household is, a vulnerable consumer or a medically dependent consumer.
  3. Financial information, including your credit history and bank account and/or credit card numbers when you set up payments to us (although we do not store any credit card numbers).
  4. Preference information and marketing preferences.
  5. Details of your device, browser, domain name and IP address, and the details of any website you linked from to the Website or App.
  6. Information obtained from third parties in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
  7. Other additional information required from time to time.

4.2
We do not collect details about your race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political information or any other genetic or biometric data.

4.3
If you choose not to provide information when we ask for it, you may not be able to utilise the Website, App or the Services.

5. Use of your personal information

5.1
The information that we collect from you, or from a third party about you, may be used for a number of purposes relating to our business, including:

  1. To confirm, assess, and ascertain your suitability to setup an account with us and utilise the Services.
  2. To assess and report on your credit worthiness.
  3. To market our Services to you, including contacting you electronically (for example, by text, email or an online messaging platform).
  4. To perform the Services and any assistance required in connection with the Services.
  5. To satisfy our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
  6. To contact you to ensure customer satisfaction in respect of our role as your electricity provider.
  7. To monitor, improve and administer the Website, App and Social Media.
  8. To respond and follow on any queries, complaints or requests you might have made, and other customer care issues.
  9. To enable us to conduct promotions, surveys and market research, which includes analysing information pertaining to your use of the Services, App, Social Media and Website.
  10. To enable us to comply with our legal, regulatory and contractual obligations to you and other third parties involved in the supply of electricity to you and your property.
  11. To enable us to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution.
  12. To collect any outstanding monies that you may owe us.
  13. To verify any information that you give to us (or information that we may collect from other sources), including for the purposes of fraud prevention or compliance to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009.
  14. For any other purpose authorised by you or the Privacy Act 2020.

5.2
We will only use any health information that you provide us, or that we collect from a third party, for the purpose of:

  1. verifying that you are, or a member of your household is, a vulnerable customer or a medically dependent consumer; and
  2. complying with our obligations under the Electricity Authority Guideline on Arrangements to Assist Medically Dependent Consumers and the Electricity Authority Guideline on Arrangements to Assist Vulnerable Consumers.

5.3
If you post messages directly or indirectly to our Website, Social Media or App or elsewhere, we may collect, keep and use the information in those messages in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you commence the process to sign up on our Website or App to become our customer and you enter your contact details but you do not successfully complete the sign-up process, or your application is declined, we may contact you to see if we can help you complete the sign up process and/or to get your feedback. If we do this, we will use the personal details you have entered on the sign up page to contact you. We may also retain any information supplied by you in our database.

5.4
We reserve the right to use data (on an anonymous basis) in relation to your use of the Website, App, Social Media and Services for marketing and accounting purposes.

5.5
You may request that we stop sending marketing or promotional messages at any time, by clicking the unsubscribe link in our marketing and promotional emails.

6. Protecting your personal information

6.1
We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we collect, use and/or disclose in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy is accurate, complete, up-to-date and stored in a secure environment protected from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

7. Retention of your personal information

7.1
We will hold your personal information collected in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy both before and after the cancellation of your account, but only for so long as we are lawfully entitled to do so. We reserve the right to use your information after the cancellation of your account for our general business purposes, including to contact you if you switch electricity retailers in order to finalise your account, to obtain feedback on our services, and for debt collection purposes if you owe us any money.

8. Sharing your personal information

8.1
We will keep confidential all personal information collected about you. The only exceptions to this are where:

  1. The disclosure relates to the purpose for which the information was collected.
  2. The disclosure is expressly authorised by you or under this Privacy Policy.
  3. The disclosure is necessary to verify any information that you provide to us.
  4. The disclosure is necessary in order for us to supply electricity to you or it is a matter covered by our Terms and Conditions or Website and App terms of use.
  5. The disclosure is to third-party service providers solely in the course of their provision of services to us. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that these service providers are obligated to keep confidential any of your personal information that they receive and use.
  6. The disclosure is to any persons or organisations to whom we believe that we are authorised under the Privacy Act 2020 to pass your personal information on to, including for the purposes of complying with any legal, governmental or regulatory requirement on us, or in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution, or in connection with preventing or lessening a serious threat to public health or public safety or the life or health of any individual.
  7. In the event that we intend to enter into a major corporate transaction such as a sale of assets or control or we list on a stock exchange, in which case we may disclose your personal information to third parties to facilitate such transaction or listing. If we disclose your personal information, we will take reasonable steps to ensure it remains confidential.

8.2
You authorise our Representatives (as that term is defined in our Terms and Conditions), including debt recovery and credit checking agencies, to whom we may disclose your personal information to:

  1. pass and disclose that information to other debt recovery and/or credit checking agencies and their subscribers;
  2. use that information for the purposes of debt recovery and/or credit checking;
  3. publish that information on their debt recovery and/or credit checking databases; and/or
  4. provide that information to third parties for purposes of checking repayment history and/or creditworthiness.

9. Credit card security

9.1
Your credit card information is transmitted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol, which encrypts your information. Payments will be processed after your invoice is sent, or when validating your details, each as described in our Terms and Conditions. We do not keep your credit card details. Your full credit card details will be encrypted and securely stored by a PCI compliant third-party online payment provider.

10. Third party links

10.1
Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party products or services on our Website. These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

11. Cookies

11.1
Cookies are small pieces of information that can be stored on your hard drive (persistent cookies) or computer memory (session cookies). Cookies help us understand which parts of our Website are most popular, where our visitors are going, and how long they spend there.

11.2
We use cookies to learn how we can make our Website more useful and interesting for you. We use session cookies, which are used to remember specific information about your preferences for the duration of your session. When you log out or close your browser session, these cookies are deleted. We also use persistent cookies to personalise the user experience and for tracking traffic patterns to and from our Website. For more information on the tracking we use, refer to section 13 below.

12. Website and App tracking and measurement

12.1
We use third-party Website, App and Social Media trackers including but not limited to Google, DoubleClick, Facebook, Bing, Optimizely and Hotjar to collect information on how you use our Website, App and/or Social Media. The services are used to aggregate statistics anonymously, such as number of page views, the number of unique visitors, time spent on our site, and to determine advertising effectiveness.

13. Online Advertising

13.1
We use third-party vendors, such as Google, to display advertising on websites across the internet. These third-party vendors may also use cookies to anonymously track and target advertising based on your browsing behaviour and past visits.

13.2
We use remarketing to similar audiences and demographics and interest reporting to gather information for online advertising which allow us to reach people who have previously visited our Website, and to match the right people with the right message. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our Website, for example those who have partially completed the sign up process. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a site in the Google Display Network, or via third-party vendors who show our advertisements across the internet.

13.3
You are able to opt out of certain online advertising in the following ways:

  1. You have the option to opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google’s Ads Settings.
  2. Alternatively, you can opt out of third-party vendors use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

14. Accessing your personal information

14.1
If you are a customer of Electric Kiwi, you may access some of the personal information that we hold about you in the "Your Account" section of the Website or App. You may request access to all of the personal information that we hold about you by send a message via the ‘contact us’ link on our website or by writing to:

Privacy Officer
Electric Kiwi Limited
PO Box 106165
Auckland, 1143
New Zealand

Please quote your name, email address, phone number, and address, along with a brief description of the information you would like a copy of. We will respond to you within 20 working days of your notice.

15. Correction of your personal information

15.1
If the information held by us is inaccurate, incomplete or not up to date, you may ask us to correct the information. You can do this by updating the information contained within your profile on the Website or App. Where this is not possible, you can advise us of the correct information by contacting us as described above.

16. Severability

16.1
If any part of this Privacy Policy is found by a court to be invalid, void or unenforceable, whether under the Privacy Act or any other applicable law, such provision will be deemed to be deleted from this Privacy Policy and the remaining provisions of will continue in full force and effect.

17. Disputes

17.1
Your concerns can be resolved quickly by contacting us through our Website. Should you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that we have not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner by lodging a complaint form online or posting it to:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner
PO Box 10094
Wellington 6143