PRIVACY POLICY

 INTRODUCTION   

Pinionz and its related bodies corporate* (we, our, us) recognise the importance of protecting the privacy and the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information this includes existing and prospective customers of our clients, potential and existing employees and contractors whom Pinionz collects personal information from or is provided with such information from our clients. This document is our privacy policy and it tells you how we collect and manage your personal information.

We respect your rights to privacy under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Act) and we comply with all of the Act’s requirements in respect of the collection, use, management, disclosure, quality, security, access to and correction of your personal information.

(* Includes, but is not limited to, PINIONZ PTY LTD ACN: 671 607 908 | ABN: 52 671 607 908)

DEFINITION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

 When used in this privacy policy, the term "personal information" has the meaning given to it in the applicable Act. Generally speaking, "personal information" refers to any data pertaining to a person who may be identified. Name, address, phone number, email address, credit card information, account number, and employment or profession may all be included in this. The information will be regarded as personal information if it personally identifies you or if it can be inferred that you are you from it. 

PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT WE MAY COLLECT & HOLD

The kinds of personal information we collect from you or about you depend on the transaction you have entered into with us, the services you, your agents or your organisation have contracted us to provide, and the services you, your agents or your organisation are interested in. We may collect the following types of personal information:

• name;

• mailing or street address;

• email address and telephone and fax number;

• age or birth date;

• system access passwords;

• profession, occupation or job title;

• where you are our employee, your personnel records including your employment agreement, pay records, leave records, tax status, criminal record checks, superannuation records, training records, and performance and disciplinary records;

• where you are our customer, details of the products and services you have purchased from us or our customers (on whose behalf we may provide products or services) or which you have enquired about, together with any additional information necessary to deliver those products and services and to respond to your enquiries;

• credit card and banking details;

• details of your creditworthiness and credit history;

• any additional information relating to you that you provide to us directly through our websites or indirectly through use of our websites or online presence, through our representatives or otherwise; and

information you provide to us through our service centre, customer surveys or visits by our representatives from time to time.

COLLECTION OF SUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal information is only collected by lawful and fair means in accordance with the Act. We collect your personal information directly from you unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so. When collecting personal information from you, we may collect in ways including:

• through your access and use of our website;

• through your use of telephone and mobile communication (including but not limited to fixed line IVR services);

• through your use of electronic devices, including tablets, supplied by us to you, or otherwise connecting to our systems to facilitate and enable you to perform your duties or to provide services to us;

• during conversations between you and our representatives;

• during correspondence between you and our representatives, including electronic mail; or

when you complete an application, contract or purchase order.

We did not gather some of the personal data Pinionz manages or stores. Being a top supplier of business process outsourcing, Pinionz receives much of the data and personnel information it works with via its clients rather than directly from the individual in question.

Since our client has already gathered the necessary data from you (or another third party) and given it to us for our use in providing services to or on behalf of our client, it is impractical for us to obtain information directly from you when we are acting as the "agent" or service provider of our client. For instance, while sending emails, we do it on behalf of several clients. We may utilise the personal data that our customers have given us and store it in our database to allow us to achieve this. It would be impractical for us to "recollect" this information from you before using it as our customer has asked.

If you do not provide us with the personal information described above, some or all of the following may happen:

• we may not be able to provide the requested products or services to you, either to the same standard or at all, or we may not be able to supply services to our clients that will enable our clients to do the same or

• we may not be able to provide you with information about products and services that you may want, including information about discounts, sales or special promotions, or we may not be able to supply services to our clients which will enable our clients to do the same; or

• we may be unable to tailor the content of our websites to your preferences, or we may not be able to supply services to our clients that will enable our clients to do the same, or

• if you are a client of ours, we may not be able to provide you with the products and services you require; or

• if you are a prospective employee, we may not be able to hire you; or

• if you are our employee, it may be a breach of your employment conditions not to provide us with the information or

if you are a contractor to us, you may not be able to offer your services.

PURPOSE OF COLLECTION, HOLDING, USE & DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

 We collect personal information about you so that we can perform our business activities and functions provide the best possible customer service to you and enable us to provide products and services to our clients. 

We must gather personal information about you to conduct our company operations, fulfil our contractual obligations to you, offer you the highest level of customer care, and supply our customers with goods and services.

• to provide products and services to you and our clients and to send communications requested by you and/ or our clients;

• to answer enquiries and provide information or advice about existing and new products or services;

• to conduct business processing functions, including providing personal information to our related corporate bodies, clients, contractors, field officers, service providers or other third parties;

• to assess the provision of, and provide credit, to you;

• to undertake debt collection services on behalf of our clients;

• for the administrative, marketing (including direct marketing), planning, product or service development, quality control and research purposes of Pinionz its related bodies corporate, clients, contractors or service providers;

• to provide your updated personal information to our related corporate bodies, clients, contractors or service providers;

• to update our records and keep your contact details up to date;

• to process and respond to any complaint made by you; and

to comply with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in cooperation with any governmental authority of any country (or political subdivision of a country).

When you work for us, we may gather, maintain, utilise, and disclose your personal information for all activities related to our working relationship. This involves recruiting you, educating you, overseeing your performance, and maintaining your personnel files (including salary and leave records).

As authorised by the relevant Act, we may also use your personal information for additional purposes associated with those mentioned above and/or for a purpose for which you would reasonably expect it to be used.

Your personal information won't be shared, sold, rented, or divulged unless specifically stated here or in accordance with applicable law. Unless specifically instructed by a customer, we do not divulge any personal data we collect while working on their behalf to any other clients.

Pinionz sometimes handles personal information relying on exemptions under the applicable Act. Under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), these include exemptions in relation to

• (i)   employee records;

• (ii)  related bodies corporate;

• (iii) provision of services to State or Territory authorities; and

(iv) overseas operations relating to personal information of non-Australians. Any permitted handling of personal information under such exemptions will take priority over this Privacy Policy to the extent of any inconsistency.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

We may disclose your personal information to:

• our employees, related bodies corporate, clients, contractors or service providers for the purposes of operation of our websites or our businesses, fulfilling requests by you, and to otherwise providing products and services to you and our clients including, without limitation, IT systems administrators, couriers, payment processors, data entry service providers, electronic network administrators, debt collectors, and professional advisors such as accountants, solicitors, business advisors and consultants;

• Suppliers, clients and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, collection, marketing, credit reporting and related purposes; and

• any organisation for any authorised purpose with your express consent.

We may combine or share any information that we collect from you with information collected by any of our related bodies corporate. Our clients may do likewise.

MARKETING MATERIALS

We may send you direct marketing communications and information about our products and services that we, or our clients, consider may be of interest to you. These communications may be sent in various forms, including email, in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Australian Spam Act 2003 (Cth).

At any time, you may opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us by contacting us (see the details below) or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communications and we will then ensure that your name is removed from our mailing list (or where are using a mailing list provided by our client, we will pass your request on to our client).

We do not provide your personal information to other organisations for the purposes of direct marketing (see also our use of cookies). However, where we are engaged by our clients to act on their behalf in collecting personal information then we will pass that personal information on to our client.

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us at admin@pinionz.com.au . Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing it (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you). We may charge you a fee to cover our administrative and other reasonable costs in making the information available to you and, if so, the fees will be $57 per hour of time spent. We will not charge for simply making the request and will not charge for making any corrections to your personal information.

There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to the personal information we hold. For example, we may need to refuse access if granting access would unreasonably interfere with the privacy of others or would result in a breach of confidentiality. If that happens, we will give you written reasons for any refusal.

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request us to correct it. We will consider if the information requires correction. If we disagree that there are grounds for correction, then as required by the applicable Act we will, where requested by you, take reasonable steps to attach to or associate with the information a statement of the correction sought but not made, or a statement that the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.

MAKING A COMPLAINT

Please get in touch with us using the methods listed below and describe the occurrence in full if you think your privacy has been breached so we may investigate on it.

Our procedure for investigating and dealing with privacy breaches is to ascertain all relevant facts and correspond with those involved (including where relevant, our clients), reach a view as to the existence, scope and cause of the issue, and where relevant and appropriate, implement corrective or rectification measures.   A request for access to the personal information held by Pinionz concerning an individual can be made by that individual to Pinionz’s Privacy Officer and client coordinator on the numbers or address mentioned below or, in cases where Pinionz is acting on behalf of a client, to Pinionz’s client. A fee may apply, the amount of which will be advised at the time of application.

DISCLOSURE OUTSIDE OF AUSTRALIA 

  We may disclose personal information to our related bodies including Pinionz Pty Ltd andthird-partyy suppliers and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above. Some of our employees are located overseas. We also store electronic personal information using cloud technology, which may involve the transfer of data to other foreign countries.

Except where specific individual consent has been obtained, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.

We may disclose your personal information to entities located overseas, including the following:

• our related bodies corporate located in Australia, and the Philippines (including Pinionz Pty Ltd );

• our data hosting and other IT service providers, located in United States of America, Australia, and the Philippines;

our clients and their related entities located in foreign countries, to the extent that we are acting on their behalf or at their direction in using, storing, or collecting your personal information. Applicable foreign countries include Australia, and the Philippines.

SECURITY

We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We may hold your information in either electronic and/or hard copy form. Personal information is destroyed or de-identified when no longer required for any of the purposes for which it may be lawfully used or disclosed. As our website is linked to the internet, and the internet is inherently insecure, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet. Accordingly, any personal information or other information which you transmit to us online is transmitted at your own risk.

LINKS

Our website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third-party website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third-party website. Third-party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices.

Credit Reporting Privacy Policy – Australia only

This Credit Reporting Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information we collect and hold about individuals when providing commercial credit, in particular:

• information we collect and hold about individuals who are directors of a company, when providing commercial credit to that company;

• information we collect and hold about individuals who provide a personal guarantee to us in relation to commercial credit we provide to a company; and

• information we collect and hold about individuals who are obtaining that credit for their own business purposes as sole traders or partners in a partnership.

In this Credit Reporting Privacy Policy, “credit-related personal information” means one or more of “credit information”, “credit eligibility information”, “credit reporting information” or “regulated information”, as those terms are defined in the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

When you apply for or obtain or guarantee credit from us, the credit-related personal information that we collect from you includes information that identifies you, such as your name, postal address, email address and date of birth and your driver’s license number.

We may exchange credit-related personal information about you with credit reporting bodies (CRBs) for the purposes of assessing commercial credit applications from you or companies of which you are a director, and also to assess whether to accept a guarantee from you.

We may use the information we collect from and about you for account management and administrative purposes directly related to the provision or management of the commercial credit we provide to you or to companies of which you are a director.

We may also report defaults in payment terms or guarantee commitments in relation to commercial credit to CRBs. We may also disclose your credit-related personal information to any guarantor of your obligations to us.

We may also use the information we collect from and about you to:

• collect overdue payments;

• assign debts; and

• create assessments and ratings of your creditworthiness.

We may disclose your credit-related personal information to our related bodies, corporate and third-party suppliers and service providers located outside Australia, for the purposes set out in this Credit Reporting Privacy Policy.

Further details about such overseas disclosures are set out in the section “Do we disclose your personal information to anyone overseas?” of this Privacy Policy.

For information about the following topics in relation to our handling of credit-related personal information please refer to the applicable section of our Privacy Policy (of which this Credit Reporting Privacy Policy comprises a part):

• Access and Correction – see section “How can you access and request correction of your personal information?”;

• Complaints – see section “What is the process for complaining about a breach of privacy?”;

• Disclosure outside Australia – see section “Do we disclose your personal information to anyone overseas”; and

• Security – see section “Security”.

CONTACTING US 

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, any concerns or a complaint regarding the treatment of your privacy or a possible breach of your privacy, please contact our Privacy Officer at admin@pinionz.com.au or 1300 283 016

We will treat your requests or complaints confidentially. Our representative will contact you within a reasonable time after receipt of your complaint to discuss your concerns and outline options regarding how they may be resolved. We will aim to ensure that your complaint is resolved in a timely and appropriate manner.

Please contact our Australia-based Privacy Officer at:

Pinionz Privacy Officer / Client Coordinator

Suite 4705, Unit 9, 204 Alice Street, Brisbane QLD 4000

Email: admin@pinionz.com.au 

Phone: 1300 283 016 

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. Any updated versions of this privacy policy will be posted on our website.

Created 30th Sept 2023