Privacy Policy

Privacy & Credit Reporting Policy

The United Fasteners group of companies [1] (we or us) is committed to providing quality goods and services to you. The purpose of this Privacy and Credit Reporting Policy (Privacy Policy) is to tell you what kinds of personal information, including credit related information, we may gather or hold about you, how we may use that information, whether we disclose it to anyone, the choices you have regarding our use of that information, your ability to access or correct that information and how you may complain should you believe we have breached our privacy obligations.

By continuing to access our website and providing personal information to us, you agree that we may collect, hold, use and disclose personal information about you in the manner described in this Privacy Policy.

Management of personal information

Personal information

'Personal information' is information or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained, from the information or opinion.

What kinds of personal information do we collect and hold?

The personal information we may collect and hold varies and is dependent on the nature of our dealings with you.  We generally collect the following types of personal information from individuals:

  • identification and contact information (such as name, address, telephone number and email address);
  • financial information, when individuals purchase goods or services from us (such as bank account or credit card details, for any purchase of products or services);
  • information about your use of our products and services (such as details of past orders and incomplete orders); and
  • any other personal information you provide to us from time to time (such as in a purchase order that you give to us).

If you access our website, we may collect the following kinds of personal information about you:

  • device information, including make, model and any unique device identifier;
  • IP address;
  • information about your use of our website (such as the pages that you visit); and
  • if you access our website or interact with us via social media, information relating to your user ID associated with the social media service, any information or content that you have permitted the social media provider to share with us and any information that you may have disclosed in connection with that social media service.

In most cases, if we do not collect the information we require, then we may be unable to undertake certain activities, such as providing you, or the organisation with which you are connected, with any requested information, goods and/or services. You may, however, in limited cases deal with us anonymously or via a pseudonym (for example, when browsing our website).

How do we collect personal information?

Generally, when providing goods and services to our customers or obtaining goods and services from our suppliers or contractors, we collect personal information directly from the individuals where reasonable and practical.

We may collect personal information directly from you when you:

  • provide information about yourself to us in any way;
  • acquire goods or services from us;
  • request information about us, our products or our services;
  • provide feedback to us; or
  • access our website or interact with us via online channels.

We may also collect information about you from other sources such as:

  • your financial institution, if you instruct them to provide financial information about you to us;
  • publicly available sources of information; or
  • our related companies.

We will only collect your personal information from third parties if it is unreasonable or impractical to collect the necessary information directly from you or if we are otherwise permitted to do so.

How do we handle sensitive information?

The Privacy Act describes 'sensitive information' as information relating to a person's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, trade union or other professional or trade association membership, sexual orientation, criminal record, and health information about an individual.

We do not collect sensitive information about our customers.

Why do we collect personal information?

We collect and hold personal information in order to enable us to provide goods and services to customers, improve our goods and services, for marketing purposes and to enable us to comply with our obligations under other laws.

We collect, hold and use personal information about you:

  • to identify you and communicate with you;
  • to provide goods and services to you;
  • to assess any application for credit that you make to us, by assessing your likely capacity to repay the credit;
  • for internal record-keeping;
  • to monitor usage of our systems and resources, to enable us to better understand how our resources are being used and to plan our future resource needs;
  • to analyse customer needs, develop customer strategies and improve customer experiences;
  • for market research and business development, including website development;
  • for marketing our goods and services, including direct marketing to you;
  • to comply with our legal obligations; and
  • to respond to any queries or complaints you may have.

When do we disclose your personal information?

We may disclose your personal information to our related entities, to other parties where it is necessary to enable us to provide a product or service, to other third parties or where otherwise permitted by law.  We may disclose your personal information to such entities for the purposes set out above.

We may disclose personal information about you to:

  • other companies related to us;
  • nominated representatives and credit reporting bodies, as permitted by law;
  • external service providers who perform business functions for us;
  • collection agents we engage to collect overdue accounts or purchasers to whom we assign overdue accounts;
  • professional service providers and advisors who perform functions on our behalf, such as lawyers;
  • government, regulatory authorities and other organisations as required or authorised by law; and
  • financial institutions for payment processing.

In the case of contracted service providers, we may disclose personal information to the contracted service provider and the contracted service provider may in turn provide us with personal information collected from you in the course of them providing the contracted services.

Organisations providing professional services to us are required to keep those dealings and personal information provided by us as confidential unless required to disclose such information by law.

Overseas disclosure

We do not disclose personal information to recipients located outside Australia.

How long do we keep personal information?

We will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information that is no longer needed for any purpose that is permitted by the Privacy Act.

Use of Commonwealth government identifiers

We will not use Commonwealth government identifiers (such as driver's licence numbers) as our own identifier of individuals. We will only use or disclose such identifiers in the circumstances permitted by the Privacy Act.

Ensuring personal information is up-to-date

To provide goods and services to you in a quality manner, it is important that the personal information that we hold about you is up to date. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you find that the information we hold is not up-to-date or is inaccurate, please advise us as soon as practicable so that we can update our records and continue to provide quality goods and services to you.

How do we manage data security?

We take reasonable steps to protect the security of your personal information by storing it in a manner that protects it from misuse, loss, interference and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We maintain strict standards and security procedures to prevent unauthorised access to information about you and to ensure the correct use of this information.

You can access and seek correction of your personal information

You may request details of personal information that we hold about you, in certain circumstances set out in the Privacy Act. An administrative fee may be payable for the provision of access to personal information we hold about you, to cover our reasonable costs of retrieving that information.

If we cannot provide access to your information, we will generally provide you with the reasons why and the mechanisms available to complain about that refusal.

If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, or if you would like any of your personal information to be erased, please contact us by email. We rely in part upon customers advising us when their personal information changes. We will respond to any request within a reasonable time. We will endeavour to promptly correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

If the personal information we hold about you is not accurate, complete and up to date, we will take reasonable steps to correct the information so that it is accurate, complete and up to date. If we cannot take reasonable steps to correct the information because such correction is not technically possible or would be impracticable for us to perform, we may be unable to provide goods or services to you. In these cases, we will provide reasons for the denial of your correction request.

If we refuse to correct your personal information you have the right to associate with the information a statement that the information is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. We will take such steps that are reasonable in the circumstances to associate that statement with all records containing the relevant information.

How to make a complaint and how do we deal with complaints?

If you believe that we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles and wish to make a complaint about that breach, please contact us by email at [email protected] setting out details of the breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you in writing setting out the outcome of our investigation, what steps we propose to take to remedy the breach and any other action we will take to deal with your complaint.

If you feel that we have not satisfactorily addressed your complaint, you may also make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by visiting www.oaic.gov.au, emailing [email protected] or writing to GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001.

Management of credit information and credit eligibility information

This part of the Privacy Policy sets out how we deal with credit information and credit eligibility information (together, credit related information) about individuals.

What kinds of credit related information do we collect and hold?

The credit related information we may collect and hold varies.  Details can include but are not limited to:

  • identification information about you including your current and prior names and addresses, any known alias you may have, your date of birth and your driver’s licence number;
  • details of credit (including the name of each relevant credit provider) that you have applied for, the type and amount of that credit and the fact that a credit provider, mortgage insurer or trade insurer has sought information about you from a credit reporting body (CRB) in relation to an application;
  • details of credit that you have or had including the credit provider, the type of credit, the day on which it was entered into, terms or conditions that relate to the repayment of the amount of credit, the maximum amount of credit available and the day on which the credit is terminated or otherwise ceases;
  • default information, which includes details of payments (over $150) more than 60 days overdue in relation to credit which you, as borrower or guarantor, have failed to make;
  • payment information, which includes details of the date on which you have paid overdue amounts that were previously recorded as default information with a CRB;
  • whether, in another credit provider’s opinion, you have committed a serious credit infringement;
  • new arrangement information which includes a statement that the terms or conditions of your credit (in relation to which default information or a serious credit infringement has been disclosed to a CRB) have been varied or that you have been provided with new consumer credit;
  • court proceedings information, which includes information about a judgement against you in proceedings that relate to any credit that has been provided to, or applied for, by you;
  • personal insolvency information, which includes information about any procedures under the Bankruptcy Act which relate to you;
  • certain publicly available information;
  • scores and other information relating to your credit worthiness which is derived by CRBs wholly or partly on the basis of the information above; and
  • certain administrative information, such as account numbers.

How do we collect credit related information?

We may collect credit related information about you from:

  • you or persons acting on your behalf when you apply for credit from us and when you engage in conduct in relation to credit provided by us;
  • your financial institution, if you authorise them to provide information to us;
  • other credit providers;
  • credit reporting bodies; and
  • publicly available sources.

How do we hold credit related information?

We hold credit related information about you in digital form on our information management systems.

We take reasonable steps to protect the security of your personal information by storing it in a manner that protects it from misuse, loss, interference and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We maintain strict standards and security procedures to prevent unauthorised access to information about you and to ensure the correct use of this information.

CP derived information

We may use credit information that we collect and hold to derive scores or ratings summarising your credit risk, which we may use as a factor in determining whether to approve any application for credit by you.

Why do we collect, hold, use and disclose credit related information?

We may collect, hold, use and disclose your credit related information as reasonably necessary for our business purposes and as permitted by law.

We may collect, hold, use and disclose credit related information for the purpose of:

  • assessing whether to provide credit to you;
  • assessing the terms on which to offer to provide goods and services to you;
  • exercising our rights and obligations in relation to credit provided to you;
  • performing business administration activities;
  • to participate in the credit reporting system and provide information to a CRB as permitted by Part IIIA of the Privacy Act and the Credit Reporting Code;
  • to comply with the our legal obligations; or
  • to respond to any queries or complaints you may have.

Some credit related information may only be used or disclosed under the Privacy Act for some of these purposes or in some circumstances.

When do we disclose your credit related information?

We may also disclose credit related information about you to CRBs, other credit providers listed in your application or other permitted recipients of credit related information. We may disclose that information for the purposes of:

  • notifying CRBs or other credit providers of a default by you;
  • ascertaining the status of credit provided to you by us where you are in default with other credit providers;
  • assessing your credit worthiness in connection with determining an application for credit, and
  • responding to any queries or complaints you may have.

We may, as permitted by law, disclose your credit related information to other third parties, including our related companies; organisations that perform credit processing functions, management and debt collection activities on our behalf; or organisations involved in debt assignment.

We may use the credit reporting services provided by:

  • Equifax Australia Information Services and Solutions Pty Ltd
  • Experian Australia Credit Services Pty Ltd, and
  • DBCC Pty Ltd (trading as illion Data Registries)
  • CreditorWatch

and may both receive and disclose credit related information to those entities in accordance with the Privacy Act.

Overseas disclosure

We do not disclose credit related information to recipients located outside Australia.

How you may access your credit related information and seek its correction

You are generally entitled under the Privacy Act to access the credit related information we hold about you (in a manner you request, if this is reasonable and practicable). You may request access to such information by contacting us at [email protected]. If we cannot provide access to your information, we will provide you with the reasons why. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Depending on the nature of the request, we may charge for providing access to this information, however such charge will not be excessive.

If the information we holds about you is inaccurate, incomplete or not up to date you may request that we correct the information by contacting us.

We will normally resolve correction requests within 30 days of your making a request.

If we need more time to resolve your request, we will notify you as to the delay, the reasons for it and seek your written agreement to a longer period. You may refer the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner if you wish to complain about the delay.

If we consider it necessary in order to deal with your request, we may consult with a CRB or another credit provider.

If we do not correct the information, we will give you a written notice setting out why we have not made the correction. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner.

There is no cost involved for you to make a correction request or for the correction of your information.

How to make a complaint and how complaints will be handled

If you believe that we have breached any obligation under Part IIIA of the Privacy Act and wish to make a complaint about that breach, please contact us by email at [email protected] setting out details of the breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you in writing setting out the outcome of our investigation, what steps we propose to take to remedy the breach and any other action we will take to deal with your complaint.

It would assist us to ensure we properly understand your complaint, and allow us to respond more promptly, if complaints are made in writing and include as much detail as possible.

We will deal with any complaint in a timely, effective and consistent manner.  We will acknowledge the receipt of your complaint within 7 days, and endeavour to make a decision on the complaint within 30 days after it is received.  If we need more time to resolve your complaint, then we will notify you as to the delay. 

If you feel that we have not satisfactorily addressed your complaint, you may also make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by visiting www.oaic.gov.au, emailing [email protected] or writing to GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change this policy at any time and any amended policy is effective upon the posting on our website.  All the personal information we hold will be governed by our most recent Privacy Policy located at www.unitedfasteners.com.au. 

Enquiries

If you have any concerns or queries about our Privacy Policy, or if you would like more information about privacy-related issues, please contact us at [email protected]

 

[1] United Fasteners Australia Pty Ltd, United Fasteners QLD Pty Ltd, United Fasteners SA Pty Ltd, United Fasteners WA Pty Ltd, United Fasteners NSW Pty Ltd and United Fasteners VIC Pty Ltd.