Genesis privacy policy

1. Introduction

1.1 At Genesis, our customers are at the heart of what we do, we are “With You For You” – that includes how we deal with your personal information. We value your trust and respect your rights to privacy. This is reflected in how we treat your personal information.

1.2 Transparency builds trust. This privacy policy sets out how we collect, protect, use and share your personal information. ‘Personal information’ is any information that identifies you. This can include your name, contact details (such as your email address, phone number and postal address), credit card details, information about your energy usage, photographs of your premises or anything else that would enable you to be identified from that information - even if your name doesn't appear. It does not include aggregated and de-identified or anonymised information.

1.3 This policy applies to all of our products and services, including our website(s), mobile applications (apps) and support channels. Your use of any of those products and services indicates your authorisation for us to collect, use, store and share your personal information in accordance with this policy. We manage your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020.

If you notify us that you do not consent to any of the authorisations provided in this policy, we may not be able to provide you with our products or services. 

1.4 We may need to update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law and/or our practices. We will let you know about any changes to this policy, including by posting on our website.

1.5 Our privacy principles

Collection: We collect your personal information either directly from you, automatically from your device and/or our systems or from third party service providers and publicly available sources. If you choose not to provide your personal information to us, we may not be able to provide you with access to our products and services.

Use: We use your personal information for a range of purposes, including to run our business and provide our products and services, to research and market our products and services and to comply with our legal obligations.

Access: We may need to share your personal information with our related companies, third party service providers, others in the energy industry (e.g. network companies that provide services to us), credit reporting agencies, government and law enforcement agencies and to prevent and report on different types of harm.

Security: We store your personal information securely both in New Zealand and overseas.

Your rights: You may request access to and correction of the personal information we hold about you.

We elaborate on each of these principles in greater detail below.

2. Collection: How we collect your personal information

2.1 We collect personal information in a variety of ways, including directly from you, indirectly from third parties and automatically when you use some of our services.

2.2 You are free to choose not to provide your personal information to us, but if you don’t we may not be able to provide you with access to our products and services.

Information collected directly from you:

• Identification and account information: when you sign up to use our services, including engagement and completion of application forms, profiles, identity verification and credit application services.

• Profile information: when you sign up to our services and create an account profile.

• Communications: when you communicate with us including by telephone, email, social media or Web chat. We record telephone calls, both when we call you and when you call us.

• Promotions, offers and feedback: when you participate in any of our competitions or promotions, respond to surveys or other research activities or provide information or feedback to us, including through Web chats and posts on our blogs and on social media sites.

• Financial information: we collect financial and payment information like bank account and/or credit card details and transactions when you set up and make payments to us.
• Property: as our services are provided at your property, we may need to record the circumstances that we encounter or that arise (e.g., we may take a photo of blocked access ways, damage to property, or health and safety issues).

Information collected automatically:

• Our online services: when you visit one of our websites (including Energy IQ), download or use one of our apps or any of our other online applications, portals or services (together, our online services), we may collect the following information, including using third party providers: your user name, activity logs, IP address and cookie, and operating system identifiers and event information (e.g. crashes, browser type), as well as the pages, applications or services you’ve viewed or engaged with before or after using our online services. This information may be collected even if you have not created an account or logged in to our online services.

• Cookies: we use cookies, pixels, beacons and other digital tracking tools across different devices (cookies) to collect and store information about your use of our online services. Some cookies are installed only temporarily and expire when you close your browser, while others may remain for a period of time covering multiple sessions. We also engage third party service providers such as Google to use cookies on our online services for advertising and retargeting purposes on non-Genesis websites, to understand your preferences so we can provide a more personalised experience and to enable us to operate our online services efficiently. You can disable cookies in your website browser settings but please note that you will need to have cookies enabled to access all the features of our online services.

• Analytics: we use third party tools (for example Google Analytics) to track and monitor online behaviour and to improve the performance of our marketing efforts.

• Location information: we may collect mobile device location identifiers where you agree to let us access that information. Most devices allow you to control or disable the use of location services for applications in the device’s settings menu.

• Other websites: when you visit a third party website that contains interactive Genesis content and/or any Genesis-branded social media pages, we may collect personal information about you, your household and the way you and your household use our websites, apps and the other products and services that we provide.

Information collected from third parties, including:

• Commercial information service providers: such as credit reporting agencies, market research, data and/or analytics providers and advertising networks.

• Your representatives: such as authorities on your account or your legal, budgeting or accounting adviser(s).

• Selected business partners: to improve, optimise and personalise your experience of our products and services. If you link, connect, or log in to your account with a third party service like Facebook, they may send us information such as your registration and profile information from that service.

• Sometimes our business partners provide information relating to offers, products and services available to you as a Genesis customer. For example, we may receive information from companies like Power Switch when you sign-up through their website.

• Public sources: Information from public sources: to the extent permitted by law, we may obtain additional information about you that is publicly available, such as from social media platforms and public information service providers such as public registers. For example, we may collect information about your property held by local councils for our Property Insights Service.

• Other information: If you ask any other third party to share your information with us for any other reason.

3. Use: What we do with your personal information

We use personal information in connection with the original purpose for which it was collected, for a directly related purpose or for the following purposes.

To provide our products and services and administer our relationship with you:

• So you can register for and we can administer your account(s), including billing you and managing our relationship with you.

• To provide our products and services to you, and communicating with you over the course of our relationship with you about any changes to our products and services or any other relevant information (eg product trials, or updates to terms and conditions).

• To confirm your identity and the identity of others authorised on your account.

• Where required to enable us to run our business, including staff training, quality control, network monitoring, record keeping, testing and maintenance of computer and other systems and in connection with the transfer of any part of our business in respect of which you are a customer or a potential customer.

• To provide customer support and manage our relationship with you, including: (i) monitoring, assessing and following up on requests, queries and complaints; (ii) confirming or assessing circumstances relevant to the delivery of our products and services; and (iii) contacting you to offer assistance with online applications (including those you do not complete).

• To improve, optimise and personalise your experience of our services.

• To enforce or establish our rights under contracts or other arrangements with you or your network operator or metering company.

• To enable an organisation to pay you a benefit, such as a rebate to customers of a network operator.

• To carry out credit checks when you open an account with us and to collect any debt that you owe us.

• We may also share your personal information with third parties, who have accepted appropriate confidentiality obligations, where you have consented to your information being shared (eg, budgeting agencies).

• For fraud prevention, internal training, quality assurance and disputes resolutions purposes.

To research and market our products and services

• To develop and improve our products and services, including to help us work out the best energy solutions for you. For example, we may communicate with you on the best energy plan for your usage and, unless you ask us not to, offer you trials of new products and services.

• Unless you ask us not to, to inform or contact you about our products, brands, special offers, events, appeals, publications and other promotions, or those of carefully selected third parties, that are relevant to your relationship with us, including by email or text message where we have the relevant contact details.

• To enable other reputable companies or organisations that offer services connected with our products or services to contact you. For example, if you own an EV, we may put you in contact with our service partners.

• To conduct market research and analysis about our brand, products, services and offers either ourselves or using a market research company to carry out a study on our behalf, both while you are a customer and for a reasonable time afterwards.

To comply with our legal obligations, laws and regulations

• So we can meet our responsibilities in connection with any legal or regulatory requirements and complying with lawful requests (including any Electricity Authority guidelines to assist vulnerable or medically dependent customers as outlined here). This also includes our ability to support lawful requests and legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution where permitted under the Privacy Act 2020.

4. Access: Who has access to your personal information

We may need to share your personal information with other organisations on a confidential basis as permitted under the Privacy Act 2020, including the following.

• Authorised users: anyone who is a joint customer or has authority on your account.

• Other energy retailers: including where you have switched to another energy retailer and consented to that energy retailer or an agent receiving a copy of your data for the period of time that we supplied your energy at the same property.

• Legal compliance or law enforcement: we may disclose your personal information to courts, law enforcement, government agencies or other third parties where required by law and we believe that disclosure is appropriate or permitted by the Privacy Act 2020. That includes the Electricity Authority, the Commerce Commission, the Utilities Dispute Limited Scheme or any other industry regulator or industry body.

• Credit reporting agencies: debt collection agencies and credit reporting agencies who may share your information with other organisations (including their customers) and who may keep a record of the searches we make against your name, to assist other energy retailers with their credit enquiries or for the purposes of switching your energy supplier and in relation to debt collection activities, including the sale of debt to third party collection agencies.

• Mergers & Acquisitions: any entity that we transfer our business to in respect of which you are a customer or a potential customer.

• Cyber: where necessary to report a cyber or privacy breach incident or for cyber security purposes, including to prevent unauthorised access to, or attacks on, our systems.

• Health & safety: When it appears to us, that you are reliant on electricity to prevent a clear threat to your health and wellbeing, or you have mains powered critical medical equipment.

5. Security and Retention: Storage of your personal information

We are committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure and to following generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information we hold against unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We may transfer, store and process your personal information in New Zealand and overseas using services provided by a third party provider. That includes cloud service providers with data centres located in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Singapore and Japan. When we send your information overseas, we take reasonable steps to ensure that appropriate practical and/or contractual information handling and security arrangements and/or obligations are in place, and the information is stored in compliance with New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.

The Privacy Act 2020 also requires that companies only retain personal information for so long as they have a legitimate purpose for using that information. We understand the importance of this requirement and have implemented policies to help ensure that we are compliant. We note that these policies are reviewed and updated periodically to reflect changes in laws and our own company practices.

6. Your rights

We do our best to ensure the personal information we hold about you is accurate. To ensure that we are able to maintain the accuracy of your personal information, please tell us as soon as you can if any of your contact or payment details change, including your name, address, telephone or mobile numbers and email address so we can keep your information accurate and up to date and continue to provide a quality service to you.

Access and correction of your information

You or an appointed agent can contact us at any time in writing to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you. We may charge a reasonable fee to process your request to cover activities such as locating, collating and supplying the information to you.

We may need to take steps to check the identity of the person making any such request. We will provide you with access to your information where it is stored in such a way that it can be readily retrieved.

Under the Privacy Act 2020, there are certain circumstances where we are not required to correct or provide access to your personal information. For example we may refuse to correct information if we have reasonable grounds to believe the current information is correct, or may not be able to disclose some personal information if it would prejudice another person’s privacy If that is the case, we will explain why and provide information about how you can complain if you want to.

How can I make a privacy complaint?

If you have a privacy-related complaint, please contact us using the details listed below. We’ll do our best to resolve your complaint straight away but if it is complex, or involves other parties, we may need to investigate it for you. If you’re not satisfied with our response or the way we've handled your complaint, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

How to contact us

Website: Make a privacy enquiry or complaint

Phone: 0800 300 400

Email: Privacyoffice@genesisenergy.co.nz