Our Policies

Your privacy

This policy describes how consumer.org.nz protects your privacy.

Our commitment to your privacy
We respect your right to privacy and your right to view and update your personal information which we hold about you. We are committed to protecting your privacy when you visit our site or contact us in any way.

Free services
You may visit the free parts of our site without identifying yourself in any way.

Your personal information
Some consumer.org.nz services can only be accessed by becoming a consumer.org.nz member or on a pay-per-view basis. These are called "Fee-Based Services". If you access any of our Fee-Based Services, you will need to provide us with certain personal information, including:

• your name;
• your email address
• Your credit card number, type (Visa, etc), the name on your card, and the expiry date;
• Your residential or postal address;
• Your contact telephone number(s)

(collectively, "your personal information").

Collecting your personal information
We collect and use personal information about you to:

• Supply what you want or give you the access you need: for example, if you want to become a member of consumer.org.nz or our magazines, or purchase any other product from us; receive one of our email newsletters; or contact us;
• To administer your membership efficiently;
• Conduct market research surveys;
• Tell you about our new products and services;
• Protect the rights or property of consumer.org.nz, Consumer NZ, or any consumer.org.nz user.

Changing your personal information
You have the right to view and change any personal information we hold about you at any time.

Consumer.org.nz membership and account holders can do this on the Site by entering their email and password and going to the "My Consumer" page. (Click the link at the top of the page.).

Alternatively, you may contact Customer Services at onlineservice@consumer.org.nz.

Your account details
When you become a consumer.org.nz member, or purchase a product from us online, you set up a Consumer account as part of the signup process.

Your account details are stored securely in our membership management system.

You can review your personal information and update it as necessary. Your personal information is only able to be accessed by entering your email address and password.

Comments & community contributions

When you submit a comment, your name is displayed with your comment. Alternatively, you can choose a "screen name" to display instead of your name. You can setup your screen name on your community profile page.

We don't publicly display any other personal information in our community areas. We strongly advise that you do not post your email address, home address, or phone number as part of your community contributions.

The messages you post in our community areas may be used by Consumer as part of our research and publication, and we reserve the right to copy or quote them here or in other media.

No disclosure
We will not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to any third party unless:

• We need to do so to provide you with the content, service or features you have requested;
• We are completing financial transactions with our bank;
• We need to do so to protect the rights or property of consumer.org.nz, Consumers NZ, or any consumer.org.nz user;
• We are required to do so by law.

Collecting site usage information
We monitor site usage by analysing aggregated user information. This helps us improve the site to give you the information, services and features you want. This information is aggregated and does not identify you individually.

We do monitor the number of successful logins on each Consumer account. This allows us to identify potential abuse or unauthorised use of the Site.

Cookies
Consumer.org.nz uses "cookies" to improve your use of consumer.org.nz services.

We use temporary (per-session) cookies, for the following purposes:

• To "remember" that a consumer.org.nz member has logged in. This means that you don't have to enter your email and password more than once a visit.
• To help us keep track of items you have added to your shopping basket for purchase, so we can process your order.
• To personalise some parts of your site visit.

Please note: Our temporary cookies must be accepted in order to login and gain access to the Fee-Based Services on the Site, or to purchase a membership or product from us. If your browser is set to notify you when you receive a cookie, you will be prompted to accept the cookie (Yes/No). Please select "Yes".

Our temporary cookies will disappear when logout of consumer.org.nz.

We use permanent (persistent) cookies for our automatic login feature. When enabled on a computer, this feature means that members don't have to manually login each time they visit consumer.org.nz from that computer. Your browser must be set to accept permanent cookies for this feature to work.

You can choose not to enable this feature. If you do choose to use the automatic login, this feature can be turned off at any time by logging out.

Important! You should not use the automatic login feature unless you are the only person who has access to the computer. Never enable this feature on a public access computer - this could allow other people to access the site under your login and access your consumer.org.nz account details.

We also use cookies with some of our polls and surveys, to help manage user responses, for some aspects of the site search function, and for tracking conversions from some of our online advertising and promotions.

Contacting you
If you are an Online member, we may contact you to:

• Clarify details about your membership or purchase decisions;
• Advise you of changes to our services or new products or promotions;
• Respond to any enquiries you make; or
• Provide any information necessary for the operation and security of our Site.

Email newsletters
All consumer.org.nz members receive our "What's New" newsletter. All Site users can 'opt-in' to receive this and our other email newsletters.

You may choose to remove yourself from any email newsletter group, by following the "unsubscribe" prompt at the bottom of each email.

Links to other websites
Consumer.org.nz provides links to other websites when we consider you may be interested in the content on those sites. We do not necessarily endorse those sites or their content and we have no control over the conduct of the companies or organisations operating those sites.

Before you disclose any personal information to another site, we advise you to check its terms and conditions, including its privacy and security policies.

Privacy complaints
Consumer.org.nz is committed to dealing quickly and appropriately with any complaint you make about your privacy.

If you are concerned that this Privacy Policy may have been breached or your privacy has been violated, please email us immediately editor@consumer.org.nz. Please include your email address or a daytime telephone number where we can contact you.

More information
For more information on privacy see the The Privacy Commissioner's Website.