Nova Energy is committed to protecting our customers’ personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020.
This Privacy Policy will help you understand how we collect, use, disclose, store and protect your personal information when you visit our website and/or use our energy, telecommunications and related products and services (including the rental of any energy supply equipment).
In this privacy policy, the terms ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘our’ refer to Nova Energy Limited.
This policy applies to all of our products and services, including our website(s), mobile applications and support channels. By using this website or our energy, telecommunications and related products and services, you acknowledge that you have received notice of this policy.
In addition to our Privacy Policy, our website Terms of Use applies to your use of this website. Please read it in conjunction with this policy.
Personal Information – what do we collect?
In order to supply you with energy, telecommunications and/or related products and services, we need some personal information from you.
‘Personal information’ is any information that identifies you. This can include your name, contact details, credit card or bank details, information about your energy or broadband usage or anything else that would enable someone to identify you from that information - even if your name doesn't appear.
In general, the personal information that we collect about you includes, but is not limited to your name, your contact details (including phone numbers, email addresses and physical address) your banking details and information about your energy or telecommunications usage.
In some circumstances, we may also request identifying information (such as driver’s licence details or proof of address) or other personal information to verify your identity and for credit assessment purposes.
We record telephone calls, both when we call you and when you call us. We may keep call recordings for fraud prevention, internal training and quality assurance purposes.
How do we collect it?
We collect personal information in a variety of ways, including:
- directly from you during the course of your use of our website or app, or when you speak to someone in our call center;
- from third party service providers (such as such as credit reporting agencies);
- from your representatives (such as authorized contact persons on your account or your legal, budgeting or accounting advisers); and/or
- automatically when you use some of our services (see below under “Information collected via this website”).
If you provide personal information to us about another person (such as a spouse or relative) and you have been authorised to do this, then you are responsible for making that individual aware that you have disclosed their personal information to us and that we can use their information as set out in this policy. Please direct them to this policy.
If you choose not to provide us with your personal information, then we may not be able to provide you with our energy, telecommunications and related services.
How can I update it?
You have the right to seek access to and to update the personal information that we hold about you. If you make an access request we will ask you to verify your identity. If you would like to seek access to personal information that we hold about you or if you have any questions of complaints about how we collect, use, disclose, manage or store your personal information, you can contact us.
How do we use it?
Unless we have your permission (or it is otherwise required by law) your personal information will only be used or disclosed by us for purposes related to supplying you with energy, telecommunications and related services, including, but not limited to:
- confirming your (and others authorised on your account) identity, creditworthiness and other aspects of our assessment of your application to become a customer;
- helping us determine the best energy or telecommunications solutions for you;
- setting up your account and to supply (and to continue to supply) you with energy, telecommunications and related services;
- providing customer support, including monitoring, assessing and following up on requests, queries and complaints and contacting you to offer assistance with online applications;
- contacting you with updates and news, offers and promotions regarding our website, our energy/telco products and related services;
- enabling third-party service providers to provide you with information about our products and services;
- invoicing, account maintenance and on-going credit control activities including debt recovery purposes; and
- corresponding with you about issues regarding your account(s) and the products and services you receive from us;
- helping us to run our business, including staff training, quality control, network monitoring, testing and maintenance of computer and other systems and in connection with the transfer of any part of our business in respect of which you are a customer or a potential customer;
- administering any competition or promotion you have entered;
- inviting you to participate in surveys;
- improving our customer services, optimising and personalising your experience of our services, and for carrying out market research;
- complying with our legal responsibilities and obligations in connection with any legal, governmental or regulatory requirement or in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution, including complying with all applicable requirements and lawful requests in accordance with statute, or industry rules and regulations.
You may, at any time, elect not to receive marketing or promotional emails from us or our third-party service providers.
How do we protect it?
In accordance with the Privacy Act 2020, we take all reasonable steps to ensure that any personal information we collect, hold, use or disclose is secure, accurate and up to date and is protected by security safeguards against loss, theft, unauthorised access, use modification or disclosure, or other misuse.
We may transfer, store and process your personal information in New Zealand and overseas using services provided by a third-party service provider. That includes cloud service providers with data centres located in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Singapore.
When we send your information overseas to be held by a third-party service provider on our behalf, we take steps to ensure that:
- the information is not used by the third-party service provider for its own purposes; and/or
- the third-party service provider is subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 or comparable privacy laws; and/or
- appropriate practical and contractual information handling and security arrangements are in place with the third-party service provider to ensure that the information is stored in compliance with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.
Who do we provide it to?
Other than as stated in this Privacy Policy, we will not use, disclose, sell, distribute or share your personal information with third parties, except where we are required to do so by law, or where authorisation has been given by you.
In order to fulfil the purposes listed above, we may disclose your personal information to (but not limited to) the following:
- our employees, contractors, agents, representatives and suppliers in order to provide you with the services or products you receive from us;
- our related companies;
- our agents who are responsible for carrying out, on our behalf, any of the purposes' listed above, including our associated metering companies;
- our service providers for the purposes of meeting our obligations to you or to communicate directly with you on our behalf;
- energy and telecommunications network and transmission system owners/operators for the purposes of operating the relevant network or to communicate with you;
- the Electricity Authority, the Commerce Commission, the Gas Industry Company, Utilities Disputes Limited, or any other industry regulator, industry body or complaints scheme;
- courts, law enforcement, government agencies or other third parties where required by law and we believe that disclosure is appropriate or permitted by the Privacy Act 2020;
- credit risk assessment agencies (credit reporters) / debt collection agencies in accordance with the Credit Reporting Privacy Code; and
- reputable market research organisations that requires information about you for the purpose of conducting market research or contacting you;
- other energy and telecommunications retailers and wholesalers (including where we are required to do so in accordance with industry reconciliation or switching rules.
Also, if you have told us, or it appears to us, that you are reliant on electricity to prevent a clear threat to your health and wellbeing or you have mains-powered critical medical equipment, we may also disclose your personal information to Work and Income, District Health Boards and other social agencies and private healthcare providers.
Where we disclose your personal information to any third parties for the above purposes, this will be on a strictly confidential basis.
What happens if there’s a privacy breach?
A privacy breach occurs when:
- personal information held by Nova is subject to unauthorised or accidental access, modification, disclosure, use, destruction or loss; or
- any action occurs that prevents Nova from accessing the personal information that it holds.
Nova has policies and procedures in place to identify, contain, evaluate, notify, and prevent the reoccurrence of privacy breaches. In the event that any privacy breach (or any suspected privacy breach) is discovered by or notified to Nova, we will immediately initiate a process of containment by taking whatever steps are reasonably possible in the circumstances to contain and mitigate the privacy breach. For example:
- stopping the practice which contributed to or caused the breach;
- recovering physical or electronic documents (if possible);
- shutting down or locking the system that was breached;
- commencing an IT incident response procedure; and/or
- revoking, changing, or blocking IT access as appropriate.
If we suffer a privacy breach that causes (or is likely to cause) serious harm to someone, we will notify the affected individual as well as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as soon as possible after becoming aware of the breach, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020.
How can I make a privacy complaint?
If you have a privacy-related complaint, please contact us using the details listed below. We’ll do our best to resolve your complaint straight away but if it is complex, or involves other parties, we may need to investigate it for you. If you’re not satisfied with our response or the way we've handled your complaint, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Links to other websites
Our website provides links to other websites for your convenience and assistance. If you use these links, then you will leave our website. Please note that these websites may have different security and privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility and/or any liability for any information that you divulge to these websites and how these websites or the organisations that own and manage those websites may collect or use your personal information. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of these websites
Information collected via this website
When you visit this website, we or third parties may use automated tools and methods (such as first party and third party cookies and tracking code such as Google Analytics) to collect and transmit anonymous information (i.e. non-personally identifiable information) about you (e.g., age, gender and your interests) and your interactions with this website. Except as set out in this privacy policy, we will not disclose such information other than in an aggregated form. We may gather more extensive information if we are concerned about activities on our website, for example, abnormal website usage patterns or attempted website security breaches.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics uses automated tools and methods (including by issuing cookies from their own servers), to track information about visitors to our website. This means that when you visit this website, these automated tools and methods will collect and transmit anonymous information about you, your use of and interactions with, this website and the internet to Google’s data collection servers. Nova then receives aggregated forms of this data. If you want more information regarding Google Analytics, please review How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps.
We do not control these automated tools and methods, or the data that they store. Please refer to Google Analytics for more information on how to safeguard your data.
If any personal information is disclosed to Google for the purposes of analysing website usage, such information is stored by Google in accordance with Google’s Privacy Policy.
Nova currently uses the following Google Analytics Advertising Features:
- Remarketing: This feature enables Nova and other third parties, to show Nova’s advertisements to you, while you browse the web, based on your previous visits to Nova’s website and your interests.
- Google Display Network Impression Reporting or DoubleClick Campaign Manager: This feature reports on the interaction between you, Nova advertisements on the web generally and your visits to this website so as to enable us to assess how effective our advertisements are.
- Demographics and Interest Reporting: This feature collects demographic information about you (age, gender and interests) to enable us to analyse behaviour by attribute and (if we choose to utilise Google’s Remarketing feature in the future) enable targeted interest-based website advertising to you.
To find out how you can control the information that is shared by your web browser when you visit or interact with Google services on partners sites on the web, please see the information on the Google partners’ privacy page. Alternatively visit Google’s Analytics opt-out page.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We may from time to time and at our discretion review and update this policy, including taking account of any change in law, new technology and/or changes to our business operations. All personal information held by us will be governed by the most recent policy. Any changes will take effect immediately once they are posted on our website. We will also specify the date of the last update.
We recommend that you routinely review our Privacy Policy.