This is OurPower's privacy policy for all new users, and existing users starting from April 1st 2020.

Personal Information

OurPower collects, holds and uses your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1993 (and the Privacy Principles). OurPower may collect your personal information in a variety of ways when you request or use our products or services, including use of the website or any other means of communication with OurPower. Please note that any telephone calls with us may be recorded.

OurPower may use any personal information collected for a range of purposes, including:

• confirming your identity, administering your account and managing our relationship with you;
• supplying you with energy and any other products or services you have requested;
• improving our customer service and our online services;
• developing or improving our products and/or services;
• carrying out credit checks and credit scoring, and the provision of credit information to credit agencies and credit reporters (ie, weekly repayment history);
• debt collection (including the sale of debt to third party collection agencies);
• to enable OurPower to conduct surveys and analyse information pertaining to users of OurPower products or services, and the OurPower website;
• to carry out our responsibilities, including complying with any requirements and any lawful requests in accordance with any statute, regulations, or industry rules, and to enable OurPower to comply with obligations in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution;
• enforcing our rights under contracts with customers, or arrangements with the customer's network operator or metering company;
• commissioning a market research company to carry out a study on our behalf; and
• informing you about our products, services, brands, special offers, publications and other promotions.

Disclosure

OurPower will not disclose, sell, distribute or share your personal information with third parties, except where you have given authorisation or in accordance with the Privacy Act. For the purposes listed above, OurPower may disclose your information to (but not limited to):

• OurPower agents, contractors or suppliers who are responsible for carrying out activities on our behalf for any of the purposes listed above (and whom may change from time to time);
• the Electricity Authority, the Commerce Commission, Utilities Disputes Limited or any other industry regulator, industry body, complaints scheme, government or law enforcement agency;
• debt collection agencies and credit agencies (credit reporters);
• our legal, financial and other professional service advisors;
• energy related companies that provide us with services including (but not limited to) any network company (and/or the trust or co-operative that owns the network operator), and any metering company relevant to your premises;
• our related companies as defined in the Companies Act 1993; and
• other energy retailers (including where you have switched to another energy retailer and consented to that energy retailer receiving a copy of your data for the period you were supplied by OurPower).
• any entity to which we transfer our business.
• for cyber security purposes, and where necessary to report a cyber or privacy breach incident

Where you have nominated an Energy Navigator on your OurPower account, you consent to OurPower disclosing your account information with them (including personal information and communications related to any credit action).

If you have told us, or it appears to OurPower, that you are reliant on electricity to prevent a clear threat to your health and wellbeing or to power critical medical equipment, we may disclose your information to the Ministry of Social Development, District Health Boards, social agencies and private health providers.

Any disclosure of your personal information by OurPower to third parties will be on a strictly confidential basis.

Security

OurPower will take all reasonable steps to ensure that information we collect, use or disclose is accurate and stored in a secure environment accessed only by authorised persons for legitimate business purposes.

OurPower does not keep your credit card or bank account details. Your full credit card details will be encrypted and securely stored by a PCI compliant third party online payment provider.

Any communications between you and OurPower (including but not limited to this website) may be subject to monitoring by us or authorised third parties for security purposes. Please note that when you send us an email, it is not encrypted and therefore not secure.

OurPower may store and process your information using services provided by a third party provider, including cloud-based providers located in New Zealand and Australia. If OurPower sends your information overseas, we take all reasonable steps to ensure that contractual arrangements exist that place appropriate information handling and security obligations on the recipients or holders of the information. New Zealand laws may not apply to some of these third party providers.

OurPower will not keep personal information for longer than is required.

Access

You may access, update or correct your personal information held by OurPower via the customer portal.

For any personal information request, OurPower will take steps to verify your identity and provide you with personal information that can be readily retrieved.

If you have a privacy complaint, please contact OurPower through the contact page of the OurPower website. We will try to resolve your complaint promptly, however, if you are dissatisfied with how we have handled your complaint, you may wish to contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner – www.privacy.org.nz

Changes

OurPower may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes to this policy will apply from the date of publication on our website.

Personal Information

Your information that OurPower collects is held in accordance with the Privacy Act 1993 (and the Privacy Principles). OurPower may collect your personal information in a variety of ways when you request or use our products or services, including use of the website or any other means of communication with OurPower.

It is important that your information is up to date, so please access the OurPower customer website and amend your information if any of your details or information changes.

OurPower may use any personal information collected for the following purposes:

• confirming your identity, administering your account and managing our relationship with you;
• supplying you with energy and any other products or services you have requested;
• improving our customer service and our online services;
• developing or improving our products and/or services;
• carrying out credit checks and credit scoring, and the provision of credit information to credit agencies and credit reporters (ie, weekly repayment history);
• debt collection (including the sale of debt to third party collection agencies);
• to enable OurPower to conduct surveys and analyse information pertaining to users of OurPower products or services, and the OurPower website;
• to carry out our responsibilities, including complying with any requirements and any lawful requests in accordance with any statute, regulations, or industry rules, and to enable OurPower to comply with obligations in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution;
• enforcing our rights under contracts with customers, or arrangements with the customer's network operator or metering company;
• commissioning a market research company to carry out a study on our behalf; and
• informing you about our products, services, brands, special offers, publications and other promotions.

Security

OurPower will take all reasonable steps to ensure that information we collect, use or disclose is accurate and stored in a secure environment accessed only by authorised persons for legitimate business purposes.

OurPower may store and process your information using services provided by a third party provider, including cloud-based providers located in New Zealand and/or Australia. If OurPower sends your information overseas, we take all reasonable steps to ensure that contractual arrangements exist that place appropriate information handling and security obligations on the recipients or holders of the information. New Zealand laws may not apply to some of these third party providers.

• OurPower will not keep personal information for longer than it is lawfully required.

Disclosure

OurPower will not disclose, sell, distribute or share your personal information with third parties, except where you have given authorisation or in accordance with the strict exceptions within the Privacy Act. For the purposes listed above, OurPower may disclose your information to (but not limited to):

• OurPower agents, contractors or suppliers who are responsible for carrying out activities on our behalf for any of the purposes listed above (and whom may change from time to time);
• the Electricity Authority, the Commerce Commission, the Utilities Disputes Limited Scheme or any other industry regulator, industry body, complaints scheme, government or law enforcement agency;
• debt collection agencies and credit agencies (credit reporters);
• our legal, financial and other professional service advisors;
• energy related companies that provide us with services including (but not limited to) any network company (and/or the trust or co-operative that owns the network operator), and any metering company relevant to your premises;
• our related companies as defined in the Companies Act 1993; and
• other energy retailers (including where you have switched to another energy retailer and consented to that energy retailer receiving a copy of your data for the period you were supplied by OurPower).

If you have told us, or it appears to OurPower, that you are reliant on electricity to prevent a clear threat to your health and wellbeing or to power critical medical equipment, we may disclose your information to:

• Work and Income, District Health Boards and other social agencies; and
• Private health providers.

OurPower gathers generic information about visits to our website (page views, time on site, how you got to the site etc.) to understand how we can make your experience on our website better.

Any disclosure of your personal information by OurPower to third parties will be on a strictly confidential basis.

Access

You may access, update or correct any of your personal information held by OurPower by using the OurPower website.

OurPower will take steps to verify your identity in response to any such request. OurPower will provide you with access to information that can be readily retrieved.

If you have a privacy complaint, please contact OurPower through the contact page of the OurPower website. OurPower will try to resolve your complaint promptly. If you are dissatisfied with the way OurPower has handled your complaint, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Changes

OurPower may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, on 30 days' notice. Any change made will apply from the date stipulated on our website.

Website security

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used for all traffic interactions with OurPower's online services. Browsers unable to support SSL will not allow a customer to log onto OurPower's online services.

OurPower does not keep your credit card or bank account details. Your full credit card details will be encrypted and securely stored by a PCI compliant third party online payment provider.

(Please note that when you send us an email, it is not encrypted and therefore not secure)

Any communications between you and OurPower (including but not limited to this website) may be subject to monitoring by us or authorised third parties for security purposes.

Use of cookies and internet statistics

OurPower's website uses both non-persistent and persistent cookies to manage a customer's visit to the site. You should enable cookies in order to enjoy all features of OurPower's website.

OurPower uses services such as Google Analytics to analyse Website use. Google uses cookies to collect standard web log information and visitor behaviour information (in an anonymous form). OurPower does not control how those cookies are issued, or the data stored.