Privacy Statement

SmartCo is committed to protecting your personal information. We have created this privacy policy to help you understand how we collect, use, and protect your information when you visit our websites and use our products and services.

This Statement is provided for your information and does not limit or exclude your rights under the Privacy Act 2020

Protecting your information

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we collect, use, or disclose is accurate, complete, and current.

We store most of the personal information we collect and generate electronically on Amazon web servers located in Australia. We also use Microsoft Office 365 for our email and other office productivity applications. This means that the personal information we hold may be transferred to, or accessed from, countries other than New Zealand.

We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is stored securely and protected from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure and misuse or loss. This includes firewalls , antivirus protection, data encryption and secure passwords and login process.  

However, due to the nature of email and the internet, we cannot guarantee your personal information will be completely free from access by an unauthorised person (e.g. a hacker).  

If a privacy breach occurs which has caused or may cause serious harm to you, we will notify you of this as soon as practicable either directly or, if that is not reasonably practicable, by public notice. 

How we collect your personal information

We generally collect personal information directly from you when you first contact us through our Website or over the phone.  

 

To provide you with the service you need, we may also collect additional personal information from third parties where you have authorised this, this is permitted by law, or where the information is publicly available. Smartco collects and processes personal information in several contexts to facilitate the provision of our services. Key sources and types of information include: 

  • Electricity Usage Data: We gather information about electricity consumption at individual properties or connection points primarily from smart meters. This data, referred to as consumption data, helps us manage and monitor electricity usage effectively. 

  • Information from Electricity Retailers: Retailers may provide us with personal information about consumers, such as names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. Additionally, we receive details about medical dependencies and property risks necessary to fulfill service requests related to the installation and maintenance of meters. 

  • Interactions with Consumers: During service delivery, we may collect or generate personal information through various interactions with consumers. This includes call recordings, CCTV footage, and correspondence. We also collect usage data from our websites, detailed further in our website terms of use. 

  • Information from Stakeholders: In the course of our functions and activities, we collect information from various individuals including service providers, contractors, employees, and job applicants. 

Disclosure of Personal Information 

Personal information may be disclosed to: 

  • The Electricity Authority 

  • Contractors or third parties assisting in our service provision 

  • Suppliers of services to us 

This disclosure supports the operational needs of our services and complies with our legal and regulatory obligations. Our privacy policy ensures that all personal information is managed responsibly and securely, protecting it against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, or other misuse. 

Access to personal information we hold about you

Aside from some circumstances set out in the Act, you have the right to access and correct personal information that we hold about you.  To do so, please contact us by sending us an email to privacy@smartco.co.nz and specifying the information that you require changed.

In some cases, there may be a charge associated with providing copies of your personal information to you. If so, we will let you know before sending your information to you.

Some information we hold is necessary to supply you with a service. Wherever practical, we will remove you from our database if requested.

Disposal of your information

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is securely destroyed or deleted, once it is no longer needed for the purposes we collected it. We may be required by law to retain certain personal information.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time and we will tell you about a change in the policy by posting an updated policy on our website. Any change we make applies from the date we post it on the website.