Privacy Policy

Austin Engineering Limited

ABN 60 078 480 136

• Introduction

Austin Engineering Limited ABN 60 078 480 136 and all its subsidiaries (“we”/ ”us”/ ”our”) endeavour at all times to comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles which together will be referred to in this policy as “Australian Privacy Law.”  As a global business, we also strive to collect and handle personal information to align with global privacy best practice and in compliance with the laws of the other countries in which we operate.

This Privacy Policy applies to all persons accessing any of our websites, mobile applications and digital tools (“Platforms”), completing one of our digital or paper forms (“Forms”), dealing with us, or from whom we otherwise collect personal information, including actual and prospective customers. We also collect personal information, sensitive information and commercial credit information provided by persons dealing with us, applying for or receiving commercial credit from us, and applying for commercial credit from external credit providers to finance the purchase of goods and services from us and, in doing so, endeavour at all times to comply with Australian Privacy Law.

You may ask for a hardcopy of this Privacy Policy by email or post to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details” and one will be provided to you.

• Pseudonyms

You are not required to provide us with your name or any personal information if you do not wish to. You are free to use any name allowed by law. We, however, may not be able to deal further with you without obtaining your real name and other verifiable pieces of personal information.

If you do not provide personal information to us, we may be unable to tailor the content of our Platform to your preferences and your experience of our Platform may not be as enjoyable or useful.

We are not permitted by law to provide you with commercial credit nor are any external credit providers permitted to provide you with commercial credit without obtaining proof of your identity.

• The kinds of personal information we collect

As a result of your visit to our websites, we may collect and store information about your visit including:

• the domain name and IP address of the computer from which you accessed the internet;
• the date and time you accessed the website;
• the internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our website; and
• the pages you accessed while visiting the website and your interactions with the website.

Your internet service provider or the providers of your internet browser software may also collect such information for their own purposes. We are not responsible for the collection, storage and use of such information by these entities and refer you to their respective privacy policies.

As a result of you dealing with us (whether as a prospective or an actual customer, guarantor, contractor, supplier, service provider, employee, user of one of our Platforms or in some other capacity), we may collect and store personal information from you or third parties about you, such as:

        

• your name;
• address;
• date of birth;
• your employer, previous employers and how long you have been in such employment;
• your email address; and
• your telephone numbers.

If you apply to us for commercial credit we will collect and store commercial credit information in addition to the above personal information. Details of the kinds of commercial credit information we collect, how we use it and with whom we share it are set out below under the heading “Commercial Credit Information.”

If, having received commercial credit from us, you apply to vary your payment arrangements with us on the grounds of hardship, you may supply us with sensitive information in addition to the above personal information and commercial credit information. Details of the kinds of sensitive information we may collect, how we use it and with whom we share it are set out below under the heading “Hardship Information.”

If you apply to us for employment, we may also collect and store personal and, in addition, sensitive information about you including your:

• education, training and other qualifications;
• work history;
• professional or trade associations or union membership;
• hobbies and other interests;
• criminal history;
• other personal statements about your attitudes to:

• life;
• work;
• relationships; and
• other workers.

Details of how we deal with such employment information are set out below under the heading “Employment Information.”

If you sign up for an account with us, complete one of our Forms, or use one of our Platforms, we may collect the following personal information about you:

• your gender;
• your contact details including your postal / delivery address;
• billing information and credit card information;
• photographs and videos;
• details of the products and services you have purchased from us or which you have enquired about, together with any additional information necessary to deliver those products and services and to respond to your enquiries;
• information you provide to us through our service centre, customer surveys or discussions with our representatives from time to time; and
• additional information relating to you that you provide to us directly or indirectly through our Platforms, such as when and how often you use our Platforms, and the functionality you access on those Platforms.

We may also collect information about your device’s operating system, the name of your mobile carrier and network, details of your location, and with your permission, your GPS/geo-location.

If you sign up for one of our Platforms using a third party connection or login (such as Facebook), then that third-party may pass some information about your use of its services to us.  This information may include (but is not limited to):

• an ID associated with your third party account;
• any information you have permitted the third party to share with us; and/or
• any information you have made public in connection with the third party provider.

• How we collect your personal information

As a result of you dealing with us, we may collect personal information directly from you and this may be in person, over the telephone, by mail, over the internet, through your use of a Platform, by other electronic means, by email or fax or by completion of a Form.  

If you:

• inquire about our goods or services or about becoming our customer, or if you become our customer, in relation to a motor vehicle or other goods or services;
• apply to us for commercial credit or through us for commercial credit;
• agree to guarantee commercial credit from us or commercial credit through us to another person;
• receive commercial credit from us;
• apply to us to vary the terms of your payments under your commercial credit contract on the grounds of hardship;
• apply for employment with us;
• apply to and agree to join a loyalty program through us whether such program is offered by us or by a manufacturer or distributor of motor vehicles or other goods or services supplied by us or by any other organisation;
• apply to us for grants or other assistance;
• complete one of our Forms;
• sign up for an account with, and use, any of our Platforms; or
• otherwise deal with us,

we may collect personal, credit and sensitive information about you from other sources when it is impractical or unreasonable for us to collect it directly from you. Among these other sources may be:

• a credit reporting body;
• someone authorised by you such as an agent, broker, accountant, solicitor, financial counsellor, introducer or a guarantor;
• a referee;
• an employer;
• a government body;
• financial institution;
• a professional or trade association or trade union; or
• our agents such as commercial agents, debt collectors or solicitors,

and we may collect that information directly from them in person, over the telephone, by mail, over the internet, through their use of a Platform, through a Form, by other electronic means, by email or by fax.

We may collect information about you from your visit to our website through the use of technologies such as anonymous identifiers, session variables, and/or cookies.  You may be able to set your internet web browser to block or limit cookies.  Some features of our website may not work as efficiently or not at all if you have done so.  We will not match information collected in cookies with any other information we hold about you.

• How we hold your personal information

We use reasonable endeavours and take reasonable steps to secure your personal information which include steps such as:

• maintenance of a secure environment for storage of information whether in hard copy or in electronic form;
• requiring that access to such information be confined to authorised personnel only;
• using technology such as encryption and/or password protection to secure information kept in electronic form.

We are not responsible for the security of any computer, mobile phone, tablet computer or other device which you use to access our website or to communicate with us and through which we provide communications to you.

• The purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information

If you are a user of any website of ours, a prospective customer, a customer or guarantor of a customer’s credit, a contractor or supplier of goods and services to us, a job applicant or other person from or about whom we collect, hold, use and/or disclose personal information we shall do so only for the following purposes:

• any purpose permitted or required by the Australian Privacy Law or any other any law;
• the administration of any contract of supply of goods or services to or by us;
• the provision of products and services to our customers (actual and prospective);
• the provision of Platforms to users, including personalising and customising your experience;
• the administration of any warranty provided to you;
• the consideration of any proposed guarantee of credit;
• to contact you to ask about your experiences with or impressions of goods or services supplied to you or in respect of which you have made enquiries;
• to contact you regarding product recall;
• assessment and processing of any job application or other Form;
• for the administration and management of our business, including for the purposes of data storage, website hosting, software and system development, maintenance and support, and information processing, analysis and reporting;
• where your information is about your use of our Platforms, to improve website useability to measure traffic patterns, transaction patterns, research your habits so that we can continually improve our Platforms, analyse trends, administer our Platforms, and gather broad demographic information;
• any purpose required by law so as to identify you as required by the Anti- Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act;
• in order to investigate or assist with any investigation into any complaint about the conduct of our business;
• to otherwise enforce any term of any contract or other right which arises out of or in relation to our dealings with you;
• to communicate with you by way of direct marketing, information about our products and services or those of other organisations;
• to search and/or register any Personal Property Securities;
• to conduct competitions or promotions on our behalf;
• as part of a prospective sale, transfer or restructure of our business;
• to allow the manufacturer or distributor of any products or services purchased by you or in respect of which you have made enquiries or which you get serviced or repaired with us, to achieve any of the purposes outlined above (and this includes the disclosure of your personal information to the manufacturer or distributor for such purposes and we are able to refer you to their Privacy Policies); or
• to communicate with you for the purposes outlined above.

Our Platforms include user-generated profiles, interactive messaging services and webcam services (“Interactive Services”). These are designed to enable you to communicate with other users of the Platforms (“Other Users”).  Information that is provided by you during your use of the Interactive Services may be seen, copied and used by us and Other Users.  There is no expectation of privacy when using the Interactive Services and we have no control over how Other Users may use the information you provide.  You should exercise caution and discretion before deciding to provide that information.

In addition, if you apply to us for commercial credit or receive commercial credit from us, we will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information and commercial credit information in order to:

• assess your credit application;
• manage your credit contract;
• consider any application for variation of your payments whether or not on the grounds of hardship;
• collect any debt or otherwise enforce any rights arising under your commercial credit contract.

In addition, if you apply through us for commercial credit to an external credit provider, we will collect, hold and disclose your personal information and your commercial credit information in order to:

• progress your commercial credit application to the relevant external credit provider;
• report to you on the progress of your application for commercial credit; and
• otherwise manage the provision of commercial credit to finance your purchase from us.

To find out more on how we deal with your commercial credit information or sensitive information if you apply to us for commercial credit or receive commercial credit from us, please see below under the heading “Commercial Credit Information.”

We may disclose your personal information, including commercial credit information, and sensitive information, to other parties as part of a process of merger, acquisition, sale of our business or our other assets. If you do not wish this to happen, you may notify us by email or post to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details”.

If, for any of the above purposes, we disclose your personal information to any supplier of services to our business or to any prospective purchaser of our business we shall do so only if it is reasonably necessary for the purposes listed above and we shall:

• do so in accordance with Australian Privacy Law;
• obtain assurances from those suppliers that they keep your personal information confidential and/or comply with Australian Privacy Law, if required by law to do so.

• How to opt out of receiving direct marketing material

If you wish to raise any concern about direct marketing material you receive from us or through use by others of our databases, please contact us by email or post to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details” on page 8.

Where we send you direct marketing material we will also provide you with a means to advise us that you no longer wish to receive some or all of this material, and/ or that you do not wish to receive specific means of communication from us.

If at any time you wish to change your preferences so as to opt out of receiving that direct marketing material which you no longer wish to receive from one or more of us, you may do so by contacting us by email or post to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details” or by any other means referred to in our direct marketing material.

• Whether we supply your personal information to overseas recipients

Your personal information may be transmitted to overseas recipients as part of our ordinary business or normal use of our information technology systems. Although it is not practicable to list all the countries in which these recipients are located, they are likely to be in the USA, Indonesia, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, Canada and Peru.

When we supply your personal information to any overseas recipients, we shall do so only for the purposes listed above and we shall do so in accordance with Australian Privacy Law.

• Commercial Credit Information

“Commercial Credit” is credit to finance the purchase of goods or service from us which are for business use and not for personal, domestic or household purposes.

As notified above, we will collect, hold, use and disclose commercial credit information about you if you:

• apply for or receive commercial credit from us.
• agree to provide a guarantee for any other person or company which applies for or receives commercial credit from us.

The commercial credit information which we may collect from you includes:

• Identification information.
• Financial Information including:

• Assets; and
• Liabilities.

• Credit liability information about any credit accounts you have applied for or hold with us including:

• type of account;
• when it was opened and, if applicable, closed;
• if a credit account, then the maximum amount of credit approved;
• other specific terms and conditions of the account.

• Repayment history information of credit accounts you now hold or which you have held with us including:

• Whether or not payment was made in any month it was due;
• Any late payments;
• In what month the payment was ultimately paid.

• Information about the credit application including:

• The type of credit;
• The amount of credit sought.

• Default information about you when you have failed to make a payment owed to us or to another credit provider which remains overdue for more than 60 days and which, we may disclose to a credit reporting body or which has already been disclosed to a credit reporting body by another credit provider.
• Court proceedings information about a judgment of any Australian court that was made against you in relation to any credit that was provided to or applied for by you.
• Publicly available information about the customer that is not otherwise described above but which is relevant to their credit worthiness.
• Credit worthiness or credit eligibility information which we obtain from a Credit Reporting Body.

As notified above, we hold, use, collect and disclose your personal and commercial credit information to:

• assess your credit application and that of any proposed guarantors of your commercial credit;
• manage your credit contract;
• consider any application for variation of your payments whether or not on the grounds of hardship;
• collect any debt or otherwise enforce any rights whether by court proceedings or otherwise arising under your commercial credit contract;
• assist you if we consider you may be at risk of default;
• undertake securitisation activities or any assignment of debt;
• deal with any complaint by you through our complaints handling procedures.

We shall not disclose your credit information to any other party for the purposes of direct marketing though we may disclose other personal information for that purpose as described above.

In order to obtain credit information about you from Credit Reporting Bodies we may be required to disclose to them commercial credit information about you which we hold. Those Credit Reporting Bodies may then include that commercial credit information about you in reports they provide to other credit providers.

We may disclose your commercial credit information to other credit providers on production of your written consent and at our discretion informed by our obligations under Australian Privacy Law.

This includes all the commercial credit information described above with the exception of your Financial Information. It does, however, particularly include:

• Credit worthiness or credit eligibility information;
• Information about your credit application.

The details of the Credit Reporting Bodies to which we may disclose are available upon request.

• Hardship Information

“Hardship Information” is information supplied by you or otherwise collected by us in relation to consideration of a variation in the terms of repayment of any commercial credit granted by us to you.

As notified above, we may collect such information if you:

• have received credit from us;
• are experiencing difficulty in meeting your repayment obligations under your commercial credit contract with us; and
• have applied for or approached us for a variation in those obligations on the grounds of hardship whether as result of receiving a notice or statement from us or otherwise.

In the course of you applying for a variation in repayment terms on the grounds of hardship, or us otherwise considering such a variation, we may collect from you or from other sources information about illness, unemployment or other reasonable causes of hardship. This will, in some cases, be “sensitive information” under Australian Privacy Law.

We will only collect personal and/or sensitive information that is relevant to consideration of a variation in your repayment terms on the grounds of hardship. Such information may include:

• health information about you or another member of your family;
• the reasons for your current financial position or that of your business;
• changes to your marital status;
• other matters relevant to consideration of a variation to the terms of repayment of your commercial credit and which are not otherwise usually collected by us as personal information or commercial credit information

We will only collect, use, hold and disclose your sensitive information for the following purposes and in the following ways to:

• assess your application for a variation to the terms of repayment under your commercial credit contract on the grounds of hardship (‘ hardship variation’).
• explain our decision whether or not to agree to a hardship variation.
• administer, monitor and record any agreed hardship variation.

We shall not disclose your sensitive information to any party except for the purposes described above and as permitted by Australian Privacy Law.

In particular, we shall not disclose your sensitive information to any credit reporting body or any other credit provider except as described above and as permitted by the Australian Privacy Law.

• Employment Information

As notified above, we may collect personal and sensitive information from you in relation to an application for employment with us. We will collect, hold and use that information solely for the purposes of assessing your application.

We will not, without your express written consent, disclose any such employment information to any person or entity.  We will destroy our record of your application within six (6) months of any unsuccessful employment application unless you approve otherwise. If you are successful, your information will become part of your employment record with us.

• Notifiable data breaches scheme

In the event of any loss, or unauthorised access or disclosure of your personal information that is likely to result in serious harm to you, we will investigate and notify you and the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable, in accordance with Australian Privacy Law.

• How you may access your personal information

You may request access to your personal and credit information held by us by sending your request by email or post to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details”.

If we are unable to grant your access to personal or credit information, we will give you our reasons in writing within a reasonable time. These may include where providing the information to you may:

• reveal personal information about another individual person;
• pose a threat to the health or safety of another individual person;
• not be permitted by law;
• reveal internal information of a commercially sensitive nature which is not required to be disclosed to you by Australian Privacy Law.

There is no charge to make a request for access to your personal or credit information but we may apply an administration fee for providing access to your personal or credit information.

We cannot give you access to credit information held about you by any credit reporting body whether that body obtained the information from us or not. We refer you to the Privacy Policy of that credit reporting body.

• How you may correct any personal information we hold about you which is incorrect

If you believe any personal information which we hold about you is incorrect, please contact us by post or email to our contact details referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details” and tell us what information which we hold about you is, in your belief, incorrect and how you want it changed.

We will deal with your request according to Australian Privacy Law and, if required by law, will provide you our response and/or reasons within seven (7) business days of our making our decision and, in any case, no later than thirty (30) days after receiving your request.

If we have supplied credit information which we have agreed to correct to a credit reporting body, we will notify that body within seven (7) business days of making that decision.

If you have an account for one of our Platforms, you will be able to access and update your details on the Platform.  We request that you keep your information up-to-date.

• How you may complain about how we deal with your personal information

If you are not satisfied with our response to any request you make in relation to your personal information or otherwise have any complaint about how we collect, hold, use or disclose your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at our contact details referred to below. Our Privacy Officer will then follow our complaints handling process to resolve the dispute.

• External services

If you have contacted our Privacy Officer and are not satisfied with the outcome of our complaints handling procedures in relation to your personal information, you may also refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as follows:

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001

Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Fax: 02 9284 9666

Website: www.oaic.gov.au

or such other body as may replace this office from time to time.

• Our Contact Details

All communications you send to us must be sent by post or email to the following address AND marked to the attention of “The Privacy Officer”:

By email:        privacy@austineng.com.au 

By post:        PO Box 2052

Milton

Queensland

4064

Australia

• Changes to this Policy

From time to time, we may make changes to this Privacy Policy for various reasons including:

• changes to the law;
• changes to technology; or
• changes to our business practices, procedures and/or systems.

We will notify such changes by including the updated policy on our website and Platforms.  Where the changes may affect you in a particular way, and you have a contract with us, we will notify you if required by the contract or Australian Privacy Law.

• ADDITIONAL RIGHTS UNDER EU LAW

        (This section applies if you are located in the European Union (EU) or the United Kingdom (UK))

In addition to the rights outlined elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, under certain conditions you may have the right under UK and EU data protection law to ask us to:

• provide you with further details on how we use and process your personal information;
• delete personal information we no longer have grounds to process; and
• restrict how we process your personal information while we consider an enquiry you have raised.

In addition, under certain conditions, you have the right to:

• where processing is based on consent, withdraw the consent;
• lodge a complaint with the appropriate data protection authority if you have an issue with how we process your personal data;
• object to any processing of personal information that we process on the “legitimate interests” or “public interests” grounds, unless our reasons for the underlying processing outweighs your interests, rights and freedoms; and
• object to direct marketing (including any profiling for such purposes) at any time.

You can exercise these rights by contacting us (referred to under the heading “Our Contact Details” above).

These rights are subject to certain exemptions set out in applicable UK and EU privacy laws.