WEBSITE PRIVACY POLICY
Our Privacy Commitment
The Building Agency is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information. This policy explains how The Building Agency manages the personal information that we collect, use and disclose and how to contact us if you have any further queries about our management of your personal information. This policy does not cover personal information collected or held by The Building Agency Pty Ltd or any of its related bodies corporate (as applicable) about its employees.
The Building Agency is bound by the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (and applicable State and Territory health privacy legislation), which regulate how we may collect, use, disclose and store personal information, and how individuals may access and correct personal information held about them. The Building Agency is also required to comply with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth).
In this policy ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ and ‘The Building Agency’ refers to (and this policy applies to), the following The Building Agency businesses:
The Building Agency Ltd;
Please Contact Us if you have any questions regarding The Building Agency’s Privacy Policy or would like us to send you a copy of this policy please contact us. The Privacy Policy may be amended from time to time. The current version will be posted on our website.
Your Personal Information
Personal information is any information or an opinion, in any form and whether true or not, about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable. Examples include an individual’s name, address, contact number and email address.
Sensitive information is a special category of personal information. Sensitive information includes health information and information about a persons’ race, ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of political, professional or trade associations, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences and criminal history.
Collecting and Holding Your Personal Information
The Building Agency will only collect personal information about you by lawful and fair means. The Building Agency collects personal information in a variety of ways. It is The Building Agency’s usual practice to collect personal information directly from you (or from your authorised representative), for example when:
- you enquire about or seek a quotation for a service offered by our third-party providers;
- you apply for or purchase a service offered by an The Building Agency business and or our third party providers;
- you contact us by telephone, via mail, e-mail or online;
- you visit our website (including when you request a quote);
- we supply any other products or services to you; or
- you enter into any trade promotions, competitions, specials or other offers through The Building Agency or its direct partners.
Sometimes we collect personal information about customers or potential customers from a third party or a publicly available source, or from marketing and similar lists legally acquired by us.
If you provide us with personal information about another person (such as a family member), please direct them to this policy.
Kinds of Personal Information We Collect and Hold
The kinds of personal information that we collect and hold about you will depend on the circumstances of collection, including whether we collect the information from you as a customer, client, contractor, stakeholder, job applicant or in some other capacity.
For example, if you request a quote for a service offered by our third-party providers, we may collect your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth and any other information required to provide you with the quote. If you deal with us in some other capacity (for example, as a third-party provider, a supplier or a stakeholder), we may collect your name, contact details and any other information you choose to provide to us.
Any personal information that you provide via our website or contact centre (for example, to obtain a quote) is collected and stored by The Building Agency.
To provide some of our services, we may be required to collect and hold your sensitive information (such as your contact details, address and information about the property you require inspections services on). We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent (unless we are otherwise allowed or required by law to collect that information).
We may monitor and record calls that you make to us in certain circumstances. For example, calls are monitored and recorded for training and customer service purposes and to meet our regulatory obligations.
Some of the services offered by our third-party providers can cover more than one person (for example, if the property being inspected is being offered at auction and the report is being given to multiple registered bidders). If you provide us with information about your partner or a dependant on the policy, you must obtain that person’s permission to give us the information and inform them of this policy.
If we are not able to collect your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with our services or do business with you or the organisation with which you are connected.
Using Your Personal Information
We use personal information for a variety of reasons including to:
- provide services to our customers;
- answer your inquiries and deliver customer service;
- tell our customers and prospective customers about other services or promotional offers that we think may be of interest to them;
- ensure we comply with the requirements of our third-party providers;
- maintain and improve our customer service;
- meet our regulatory and legal obligations;
- manage and resolve any legal or commercial complaints and issues;
- consider job applicants for current and future employment;
- manage our relationships with our third-party providers, suppliers and stakeholders;
- carry out internal functions including training; and
- conduct marketing research and analysis.
We may also use your information for other purposes required or authorised by or under law, including purposes for which you have provided your consent. That consent may be written, verbal or implied from your conduct.
When Will We Disclose Your Personal Information
In the course of conducting our business and providing our services to you, we may disclose your personal information. In particular, your personal information may be shared between The Building Agency businesses and our third-party providers for the purposes outlined in this policy.
We may also disclose your personal information to, where appropriate:
- if you are a customer, our third-party providers (before deciding if you want to provide your personal information to any of our participating providers directly or via our website links, you should read their privacy policy);
- professional advisers (such as lawyers or auditors);
- our contracted service providers, including building inspection and pest inspection companies, sole traders and the like
- payment systems operators and financial institutions;
- organisations authorised by The Building Agency to conduct promotional, research or marketing activities;
- law enforcement agencies or government authorities; and
- any persons acting on your behalf including those persons nominated by you, executors, trustees and legal representatives.
We may disclose your personal information to third parties for other purposes required or authorised by or under law, including purposes for which you have provided your consent. That consent may be written, verbal or implied from your conduct. In all circumstances where your personal information is disclosed, we will take all steps reasonable to ensure that these third parties undertake to protect your privacy.
Direct Marketing
If you are a customer, or a potential customer, from time to time we may contact you with information about services offered by The Building Agency and any business partners, which we think may be of interest to you. When we contact you it may be by mail, telephone, email, SMS or social media. We will generally give you the opportunity to express a wish not to receive direct marketing communications. Your consent to receive direct marketing communications in the above ways will be deemed to have been given if you do not opt out of receiving direct marketing communications from us and will remain current for an indefinite period of time unless and until you advise us otherwise. You can opt-out of receiving direct marketing at any time.
If you want to know how we obtained your personal information, please Contact Us via our website and we will let you know unless it is impracticable or unreasonable to do so.
Disclosing Your Personal Information to Overseas Recipient
Some of our service providers are located overseas. As a result, The Building Agency may disclose your personal information to overseas recipients as we use third party platforms to deliver or store information. These are sites hosted and managed by organisations other than ourselves, and some of these sites are located overseas.
The email and email marketing platforms used by The Building Agency is maintained overseas. Your personal information may be stored in a secure and encrypted form overseas (e.g. in data storage and cloud computing facilities operated by us (or by third parties on The Building Agency’s behalf).
Data Quality and Security
We may store your information in hardcopy and/or in electronic form. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
This may include a range of systems and communication security measures, as well as the secure storage of hard copy documents. In addition, access to your personal information will be restricted to those properly authorised to have access.
We rely on the personal information we hold in conducting our business. Therefore, it is very important that the information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you believe that your personal information is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, and irrelevant or misleading, please Contact Us and we will take reasonable steps to correct that information.\
Website usage and Cookies
Our website is professionally hosted and operates in a secure environment. You should however be aware that there is always an inherent risk in transmitting your personal information via the Internet.
Cookies are pieces of information that a website downloads to your computer to record your preferences while you browse. Other technologies that may be used by The Building Agency include web beacons (which may operate in conjunction with cookies). The information collected through these technologies may be used by The Building Agency to improve and customize your experience on our website. In addition, we collect aggregated non-personally identifiable data from our website to help us maintain and improve delivery of The Building Agency online service and marketing. This aggregated information assists The Building Agency to improve content and website navigation. You can configure your web browser to reject and block cookies. If you decide to delete or block certain cookies, your experience on our website may be limited.
When you visit any of our online resources, our system may collect information about your visit for statistical purposes, including:
- top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc.);
- the date and time of your visit to the site;
- the pages you accessed and documents downloaded during your visit;
- the previous site you visited;
- if you’ve visited our site before; and
- the type of browser used.
We record this information to maintain our server and improve our services. There are several methods and packages that we use to collect visitor behaviours on each of our online platforms. Like a number of commercial web site operators, The Building Agency use tools to measure and analyse internet usage across our web sites. This enables The Building Agency to track the number of unique browsers to our web sites.
Links to Third Party Sites
Whilst links to third party websites may be provided on our website, we are not responsible for the content or practices of these third-party websites. These links are provided for your convenience and do not represent The Building Agency’s endorsement of any linked third party website. We recommend that you review the privacy policies of these third parties prior to providing them with your personal information.
Make a Privacy Complaint
Please Contact Us if you have any concerns or complaints about the manner in which we have collected or handled your personal information. We will investigate your complaint and respond to you in writing within 30 days.
If you consider your privacy concerns have not been resolved satisfactorily by us, or you wish to obtain more information on privacy requirements, you can contact the Australian Information Commissioner on 1300 363 992 or visit their website at www.oaic.gov.au.
Changes to this Statement
The Building Agency will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect company and customer feedback. The Building Agency encourages you to periodically review this Policy to be informed of how The Building Agency is protecting your information.
How to contact us
If you have queries, concerns or complaints about the manner in which your personal information has been collected or handled by The Building Agency; would like to request a hard copy of this privacy policy or discuss any issues relating to this policy or privacy matters generally; or would like to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you by using the Contact Us link or email to bookings@thebuildingagency.com.au.
