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Privacy Statement

Purpose:

Welcome to the Whittle Knight website. Whittle Knight are committed to protecting the privacy of the personal information that you provide to us. This Privacy Statement outlines how we gather, use, store and disclose your personal information and how we comply with the requirements of the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 in managing personal information.

Consent to Privacy Statement:

Please note that when you contact us via our website, Facebook or Instagram, you are agreeing to this Privacy Statement, and you consent to us collecting, storing, and using your personal information for the purposes for which you provided it.

Types of Personal Information we collect:

Information collected from you and the information you provide to us is only collected when it is necessary. We will only collect your personal information directly from you and in doing so, we will inform you that we are collecting it.

We collect personal information from you when you:

  • Complete any of our online forms –
    • Enquiry forms for rent, sale and valuation
    • Tenancy Application forms
    • Property Appraisal forms
  • When you engage with us via our digital marketing platforms (website, Facebook or Instagram)
  • When you email or write or phone us e.g. when you contact our staff
  • When visiting open homes
  • When you participate in one our marketing campaigns or competitions administered by us (which you can opt out of at any time)

Typically the type of personal information we collect and hold includes:

  • Your name
  • Date of Birth
  • Contact details (email address, phone number, postal address)
  • Details of your enquiry
  • Purchase Information

We collect your personal information where we have received your consent to do so.

The information we collect is used to:

  • Communicate with you
  • Conduct administrative tasks within our business
  • Improve our services
  • Send marketing communications
  • Any other purpose in which you give your consent

Security of Information:

We will electronically record and store personal information which we collect from you. Upon doing so, we will take all reasonable steps to keep it secure and prevent unauthorised disclosure.

Some information we may hold about you will be stored in hard copy form (paper) and if stored in hard copy form, it will be held in locked cabinets, however, most information is stored electronically in the cloud, by cloud-based service providers.

Disclosure of Personal Information:

We will never disclose personal information you provide to us to any outside parties without your written permission, unless it is necessary for us to do so in order to carry out our service to you, for example:

  • Contractors who work with us to provide specific services
  • Or as required by law

Cookies and Local Storage:

Whittle Knight uses various technologies, including cookies and local storage, to collect and store information about you when you visit Whittle Knight.

Cookies and local storage allow us to store information (including your personal information) in a file on the device you use to access Whittle Knight. We use cookies and local storage to deliver information and fresh content specific to your interests and to improve the experience of using Whittle Knight. Cookies and local storage are widely used.

Whittle Knight uses “session” cookies to temporarily store information to help you use Whittle Knight. This information is used to deliver the right content to you as you use Whittle Knight and avoids unnecessarily asking you to log in. Session cookies expire immediately when you close your browser or are deleted after 30 minutes of no activity on Whittle Knight.

Whittle Knight also uses “persistent” cookies and local storage to personalise the user experience, to help protect our members and to provide us with research information (such as how often members visit Whittle Knight each month). Persistent cookies allow us to track users on Whittle Knight and helps us identify users abusing the Whittle Knight service. A persistent auto-login cookie is also stored when you select the “remember me” option when logging in. The auto-login cookie is removed if you log out.

Whittle Knight also participates in Google’s AdWords pay-per-click advertising programme. AdWords advertisements appear on Google’s search result pages and on the Google Display Network.  Whittle Knight ads may also appear on other websites in the Google Display Network.  Google uses cookies to target ads to you, including to measure the number of Google users that click on certain advertisements and visit certain Whittle Knight pages, or who complete certain actions on Whittle Knight (like adding an item to a Watchlist).

Google provides this data to Whittle Knight without identifying users. View Google’s privacy policy.

Third party links

Whittle Knight contains non-advertising links to a variety of third party sites to enhance the user experience. Whittle Knight has no control of either the content or privacy policies of such sites, nor should such links be considered an endorsement of these sites except where otherwise noted.

Other information we collect:

We use additional information to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand and serve you and our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP address.

Users who login have their IP addresses recorded. This information will only be provided to legal authorities in cases of suspected fraud or for law enforcement purposes. This information is stored securely and will not be provided to other members or non-authorised parties.

Cloud-based service providers:

We use third party service providers to store and process most of the information we collect. We use cloud servers located in New Zealand and Australia.

Currently we hold secure accounts with marketing services with:

Rex Software – see their Privacy Policy – https://www.rexsoftware.com/legal/privacy

Palace Property Software – see their Privacy Policy https://www.getpalace.com/nz/privacy-policy/

Tenancy.co.nz – see their Privacy Policy https://www.tenancy.co.nz/privacy-policy/

Viewing Tracker – see their Privacy Policy https://www.viewingracker.com/privacy-policy/

Social Media Advertising  – see their Privacy Policy (for Facebook and Instagram)

https://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Activepipe – see their Privacy Policy https://activepipe.com/au-privacy-policy/

Mailchimp – see their Privacy Policy https://mailchimp.com/gdpr/

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do change our Privacy Policy an updated version will be posted here .

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 23 March 2023. If you do not agree to any change in our Privacy Policy while we continue to hold personal information about you then please promptly contact us.

Privacy Policy Queries or Complaints

If you are concerned about how your personal information is being handled or if you feel that we have compromised your privacy in some way, please contact:

Tania Ellis [email protected] (Ph: 033484149) Privacy Officer

We take Privacy complaints seriously and will acknowledge your complaint within three working days of having received the compliant. We will be in contact with you should we require more information from you to further investigate your complaint. Our aim is to resolve complaints as soon as possible and we would hope to do this within 5 working days. However, sometimes this is not always possible, due to the nature of the complaint. If we are taking longer than anticipated to resolve your complaint, we will keep you updated.

REA Code of Conduct

As licensed real estate agents under the REA Act 2008 we follow the code of conduct which is available below:

https://www.rea.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Resources/Guides/Code-of-conduct.pdf