Privacy Policy

Our commitment to your privacy

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

We will only deal with your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1993 and this privacy policy.

Collecting your personal information

If you access any of our services (including supporting our campaigns, contacting us with a Consumer Trusted business enquiry or signing up for our newsletters), you will need to provide us with some or all of the following personal information:

• Your name.
• Your email address.
• Your residential or postal address.
• Your credit card number, name on your card, expiry date and card verification code (CVC) code.

Collectively, this is known as your “personal information".

Note: We do not handle or store full credit card details. These are captured directly by a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliant payment provider who will only deal with your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act and this privacy policy.

Using your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to:

• Provide you with the products and services you sign up for.
• Administer your membership or Digital Pass access efficiently.
• Conduct market research surveys: if you opt-in to receive Consumer NZ surveys – such as our satisfaction survey of energy providers – we will contact you by email to invite you to participate.
• Tell you about our new products, services and promotions: for example, if you are opted-in to email marketing communications we may email you to let you know about new content you may be interested in.
• To customise our marketing and advertising.

Changing your personal information

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

Consumer NZ members and Digital Pass holders can do this on consumer.org.nz by entering your email address and password and updating your My Consumer profile.

Alternatively, you can contact Customer Services on 0800 266 786 or at info@consumer.org.nz.

Comments and community contributions

When you submit a comment or review, your first name and last name initial e.g. Mary B, or your display name (if you have set one), is displayed with your comment. You can set up or change your display name in your My Consumer profile at any time.

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

Sometimes, we might want to use the messages you post on consumer.org.nz in our articles or marketing material. If so, we will endeavour to get your permission before copying or quoting your message.

Disclosing your personal information

We will not sell or rent your personal information to any third party. But we will share your contact information with trusted third parties that work on our behalf to distribute our email or print communications. We also share your contact information with trusted third parties in order to customise our marketing and advertising.

We do not authorise third parties to use or disclose your personal information except for the purpose of providing the service we request from them. We require any third parties to contractually commit to protect the security and confidentiality of your personal information.

We sell survey results to third parties in an aggregated format. The survey results do not contain any personally identifiable or personal information.

Consumer NZ uses cookies and web beacons to help us understand how visitors engage with our website. These technologies allow us to:

• Improve our website (for example, identify and promote popular reports); and
• Provide you with more targeted information where appropriate.

Temporary cookies: We use temporary (per-session) cookies to "remember" that a member or Digital Pass holder has logged in. This means you do not have to enter your email address and password more than once during a visit.

Please note: Our temporary cookies must be accepted to login and access consumer.org.nz, or to purchase a membership or Digital Pass from us.

If your browser is set to notify you when you receive a cookie, you will be prompted to accept the cookie. Please select "Yes".

Our temporary cookies will disappear when you logout of your member or Digital Pass account.

Important: You should not use a “remember my login” feature on a browser unless you are the only person who has access to the browser. Never enable this feature on a public access computer as this could allow other people to access your personal information.

Third party cookies and other technologies: We use third party cookies and other technologies for marketing and to gather website analytics. This includes:

• Remarketing: we use third party cookies – such as Google Analytics cookies – to keep track of the reports you’re interested in and remarket them to you when you leave our site (as a result, you may see ads from Consumer NZ when you visit other websites).
• Impression reporting: we use web beacons to estimate the number of users that have viewed and clicked on our advertisements (as a result, we’re able to gauge the success of a campaign).
• Demographics and interest reporting: we use cookies and web beacons to get an overview of our readership broken down by age, gender and interests such as home appliances or technology (as a result, we can provide you with relevant information, services and features and also gauge the popularity of our content).

You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting how you visit our site. For more information on opting out of being tracked by Google Analytics please visit this page.

You can also ask your browser to delete or block third party cookies: simply search online for “cookies” + the name of your internet browser (for example, “Google Chrome”) for step-by-step instructions.

We may contact you to:

• Clarify details about your membership or digital access.
• Respond to any enquiries you make.
• Provide any information necessary for the operation and security of our site.

If you are a member we may also contact you to advise of changes to our terms and conditions, services or new products or promotions.

Email communications

All new members and Digital Pass holders will be signed up to automatically receive email marketing communications. You can choose to remove yourself from email marketing communications by following the "unsubscribe" prompt at the bottom of each email.

Our websites provide links to other websites when we consider you may be interested in the contents of those sites. We do not endorse any third party 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.

Complaints

Consumer NZ is committed to dealing quickly and appropriately with any privacy complaints.

If you are concerned this privacy policy may have been breached or your privacy has been compromised, please email us immediately on feedback@consumer.org.nz or call customer services on 0800 266 786.

For more information on privacy see the Privacy Commissioner's website.

Other information

You can find more information about our policies for protecting your personal information in our terms and conditions and our security policy.