Privacy Policy

Conwell Property Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy Statement sets out the policy of Conwell Property (ABN: 35 087 207 007) concerning the way in which we obtain, use and disclose information about you, including through our website at https://www.conwellproperty.com. We adopt and are bound by the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“the Act”).

We understand and appreciate that you are concerned about privacy, particularly about the use and disclosure of Personal Information. We are committed to providing a high level of privacy about all Personal Information that is collected by us.

For the sake of clarity, this Privacy Policy Statement covers Personal Information collected, used, and disclosed by Conwell Property about any of the following:

  • prospective or actual vendors, purchasers, landlords and tenants;
  • prospective or actual suppliers;
  • agents or independent contractors, any person who applies to become such an employee, agent or independent contractor;
  • employees, except where the use or disclosure is directly related to the relationship between us as employer and you as the employee and relates to an “employee record” about you as a present or past employee.

Your Consent

You consent to your Personal Information being used by this Privacy Policy Statement by any one or more of the following:

  • by communicating with us or by continuing to request our services, including but not limited to by attending one of our offices, attending an open for inspection, making enquiries via internet, email or phone;
  • providing us with your contact details and consenting in writing for such details to be conveyed to a mortgage broker or financier;
  • by visiting our website or participating in an online enquiry; and
  • by visiting any website or social media site established by us, including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Youtube and Linked In (“Social Media Sites”); and
  • by participating in any activity on a Social Media Site including but not limited to entering competitions, subscribing to our blog, posting, pinning or uploading any material on any Social Media Site, following, liking and/or commenting on us or anything on any Social Media Site (“Social Media Activity”).

What is Personal Information?

For this Statement, “Personal Information” is information or an opinion about an identified individual or a reasonably identifiable individual, whether or not the information or opinion is true and whether or not it is recorded in a material form. The types of Personal Information generally collected by us may differ, depending on whether you are or would like to become a Conwell Property vendor, purchaser, landlord, tenant, supplier, employee, agent, or independent contractor of us.

Personal Information does not include an “employee record”. An “employee record” is a record of personal information relating to the employment of the employee. This includes health information and personal information relating to the:

  • engagement, training, disciplining of an employee,
  • resignation or termination of an employee;
  • terms and conditions of employment of an employee;
  • employee’s performance or conduct;
  • hours of employment, salary or wages;
  • personal and emergency contact details;
  • employee’s membership of professional or trade associations or trade union membership;
  • employee’s recreation, long service, sick, personal, maternity, paternity and other leave;
  • employee’s taxation, banking and superannuation affairs.

Having said that, we treat the personal and health information of each of our employees with absolute confidentiality and strict controls are placed on who has access to such information. We will not disclose your employee records to any third party other than as permitted by law or this Privacy Policy without your prior consent.

What Personal Information Do We Collect From You?

Generally, the type of Personal Information collected by us includes your name, address, mobile and telephone numbers, date of birth, identification documents including passport, drivers licence, payslips, utility bills (for tenant applications) and email address. If applicable, we may also require details of your company’s ABN and/or ACN, financial information including bank account and credit card details, profit and loss statements, balance sheets, your employer and occupation details, and title and mortgage details of any relevant property. We may be required to take images of the inside of your home via photos or video.

From our employees and/or prospective employees, we may also collect the following information: emergency contact details, qualifications, previous employment details, driver’s license numbers, medical and health information, passports, leave summaries, wages and salary information, date of birth, superannuation information, tax file numbers, where relevant visa and immigration information, information relating to performance and conduct.

From time to time, photos may be taken for marketing and promotional purposes which may include employees and/or clients, from which individuals may be able to be identified.

Via Social Media Sites, we may be able to obtain other information about you which may itself constitute Personal Information or which, when combined with other information, is capable of identifying you, including photos, videos, and any other information that you include on our Social Media Sites or sites linked to our Social Media Sites (“Other Sites”). The level of information to which we have access may depend on your privacy settings on such Other Sites.

In some circumstances, you may deal with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. However, in most circumstances, it is impracticable to do so because if you do not provide us with the Personal Information that we require or if you provide it in a way that does not identify you, we are likely to be unable to carry out the services requested by you.

How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

Personal Information may be collected as follows:

  • when you make a general or specific telephone enquiry;
  • when you engage us or discuss engaging us to provide services or advice to you;
  • when you negotiate with us in respect of purchasing or renting a property;
  • when you provide your details to us at an “open for inspection” property or an auction;
  • when you inspect a rental property or property for sale;
  • when you provide to us or we collect your business card;
  • when you visit our website and property marketing portals and complete an on-line enquiry or a form for the purpose of requesting and/or accessing certain services on our website;
  • when you send an email to us;
  • from third parties such as credit reporting agencies;
  • from publicly available sources of information; and
  • through analysis of the Social Media Sites conducted by us or by third parties on our behalf;
  • any other collection of or incidental or directly or indirectly related to the services we may be able to provide to you.

We can obtain information through our website if you send an e-mail message and complete an online inquiry. When you look at our website, we may make a record of your visit. Information may be logged for statistical purposes including your Internet protocol (IP) address, the date and time of your visit to the site, the pages you have accessed on the site, and documents downloaded from the site; and the type of browser you were using. 

Tracking technologies such as cookies may be used on our website to recognize a user’s browser each time that user visits our site and to track which pages the user visits whilst on our site and also to send advertisements to your internet protocol address. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to a computer’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept tracking technologies such as cookies. These tracking technologies do not personally identify the user. If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse them. However, your use of our website may be affected.

If you view the online webpage relating to any of our properties for lease or sale, you may enquire further about the property by manually completing an online inquiry form or by authenticating your details through your Facebook or LinkedIn account. If you choose to authenticate your details via your Facebook or LinkedIn account, we will be provided with the following information and/or Personal Information:

  • Facebook or LinkedIn username;
  • Email address;
  • Phone Number; and
  • Address (if you have provided Facebook or LinkedIn with these details).

If you ‘like’ or ‘follow’ us or a property via our Facebook or Linked In pages, we may be able to view your Facebook page, subject to your Facebook privacy settings.

How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

Any Personal Information that we collect will be used by us to enable us to provide you with the services that you have requested or otherwise to enable us to carry out our functions as professional real estate agents and for the following purposes:

  • supplying our products and services to you;
  • providing quality assurance for our services;
  • responding to your enquiries and feedback regarding our business, our products and services;
  • monitoring the performance of our business;
  • marketing including email marketing, promotional and educative activities, including advising you about investment opportunities and other matters that we believe may be of interest to you;
  • enforcing the terms and conditions of our engagement with you;
  • ensuring compliance with our statutory obligations;
  • conducting appropriate credit checks; and
  • referral to a mortgage broker or financier, subject to express consent.

How Do We Disclose Your Personal Information?

We do not and will not rent, sell or otherwise disclose your Personal Information to any other company or organization, without your prior consent, or where that consent is required by law.

You specifically authorize us to use and disclose your Personal Information in the following ways and for the following purposes:

  • of or incidental to promotion and marketing to you of our services or those of our business partners or affiliates, including but not limited to advising you about investment opportunities and other matters that we believe may be of interest to you;
  • to media organisations, including on the internet, to potential buyers or to existing or potential clients, to property inspection consultants, property valuers, business valuers, to owners corporations, to government and statutory bodies, financial institutions or financial products and services providers;
  • to the vendor of a property where you are a purchaser or a prospective purchaser;
  • to other real estate agents or other third parties if required by a landlord or a landlord’s financier or legal representative, for the purpose of appraising or valuing a property;
  • to potential tenants, to trades people and to other persons to whom we outsource functions of or incidental to acting for a landlord;
  • to the general public when advertising or marketing your rental property (or your home if you are our tenant) including internet advertising or marketing, for the purposes of re-leasing or selling the property;
  • to the landlord, referees, the relevant Bond Authority, other agents and third party operators of tenancy reference databases including where a tenant has failed to comply with any contractual obligations specified in the relevant tenancy agreement and to other sources necessary to identify and evaluate a potential tenant;
  • to lending institutions, financiers, creditors and suppliers
  • to third party consultants who may from time to time manage our database or computer system;
  • of or incidental to a sale of all or part of our business to a third party;
  • as required by law, including where requested by police; and
  • any other disclosure of or incidental to our carrying out our functions as professional real estate agents.

Disclosure Of Your Personal Information Via Social Media Sites

By engaging in any Social Media Activity on our Social Media Sites, you agree to and are subject to the terms and conditions of such Social Media Sites. Any Personal Information pinned or posted or uploaded by you onto Social Media Sites can be disclosed following the terms and conditions and privacy policies of such Social Media Sites.

Generally, photos and other material pinned or posted to Social Media Sites will be able to be viewed by the general public. Such photos and other material may be re-pinned and re-posted by others indefinitely and will be visible by anyone visiting the locations to which the photos or other material have been re-pinned. You may be able to remove the photos or other material that you have pinned or posted from the location at which you pinned or posted it. However, any material that has been re-pinned will be out of our control, and neither you nor we will be able to remove it from any re-pinned location. We are not responsible for any material that has been re-pinned or re-posted.

We reserve the right to remove any photos, comments, or other material that is in any way inappropriate or offensive (in our opinion) from our Social Media Sites.

Cross Border Disclosure

We do not actively disclose your Personal Information overseas. However, some programs, software, online tools, or Social Media Sites used by us, may be based in and/or housed overseas. Our use of such products may involve the disclosure of your Personal Information to such organizations overseas. Use and disclosure of your Personal Information by such overseas organizations is in accordance with the terms and conditions and privacy policies of such organizations.

If you consent to the disclosure of some of your Personal Information in this manner, we are not required to take steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that such organizations do not breach the APPs to the disclosed information. Having been informed of the possibility that such disclosure may occur, you consent to that disclosure by undertaking or continuing to undertake the type of activities indicating your consent, as specified above.

Direct Marketing

You acknowledge that where we reasonably determine it to be appropriate, we may add some of your Personal Information including your name, address, phone numbers, facsimile number, and email address to our databases or databases of our related companies. The databases will be used for ongoing marketing and sales related purposes or to advise you of the other services we, our business partners, or affiliates can offer.

The type of marketing and sales activities that we undertake includes sending material to you so that you are kept updated to various property-related issues or other services that we can offer you.

In each direct marketing communication that you receive from us, you can opt-out from receiving direct marketing material by emailing our Privacy Officer and asking to be removed from the mailing list. Alternatively, you can email a request asking for deletion. Contact details are set out below. There is no fee for such deletion.

Security

We are committed to ensuring the security of your Personal Information and we will take all reasonable steps to protect this information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorized access, modification, or disclosure, including:

  • ensuring the physical security of our premises and databases/records;
  • restricting access to personnel who need that information in order for us to be able to provide our products and services; and
  • industry standard technological measures, such as computer passwords, data back-up, anti-virus software and firewalls.

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure the Information is accurate and up-to-date and relevant for the purposes for which it may be used according to this Privacy Policy.

Please note that our website does not provide systems for the secure transmission of Personal Information across the internet, except where otherwise indicated. When emailing or providing Personal Information to us via our website, please be aware that there are risks involved in transmitting such information across the Internet.

Our website contains links to other websites. We have no control over the privacy practices employed at other websites and we accept no responsibility for Personal Information provided via unsecured websites.

We cannot provide any guarantee concerning the security of your Personal Information and we will not be liable for any breach of security or unintended loss or disclosure of information due to the website being linked to the Internet.

Access To Your Personal Information

There is a Privacy Officer at our corporate office. Our Privacy Officer will ensure that your Personal Information is accurate, complete and up to date, and relevant to the purpose for which we can use your Personal Information.

We take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify Personal Information that is no longer required. However, we may be required by law to retain our files and file information that contains your Personal Information for up to seven years.

If you wish to view the Personal Information we hold about you, please send your request by email, mail, or fax to one of our Privacy Officers. All relevant contact details are at the end of this Privacy Policy Statement. A fee may apply for such access. If we deny your access request, we will let you know why.

If you wish to amend your Personal Information because it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please contact one of our Privacy Officers. If we refuse to amend the information we hold about you, we will let you know why.

When your Personal Information is amended, we will take reasonable steps to inform third parties to whom we have disclosed your Personal Information, so that they can amend their records.

Changes To The Statement

From time to time we may decide to amend or update this Privacy Policy Statement. When this occurs, we will post any changes on the website. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy Statement so that you remain informed as to how we are protecting your Personal Information.

Complaints

If you believe that we have not complied with our obligations according to the Act, or have a complaint about the use or disclosure of your Personal Information by us, please contact our Privacy Officer.

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for liaising with you and with the relevant agency staff to ensure that the issues you have raised are fully examined and that your complaint is handled in accordance with this process.

We will treat the process, and all the details of your complaint, in strict confidence. If we need to discuss any issues arising from your complaint with someone outside of the agency, we will obtain your consent first.

We will always try to give you a fair opportunity to explain your case. You should make your initial complaint as clear as possible. Please provide as much detail as possible about the nature of your complaint including the outcome you would like in order to resolve the matter. We may want to meet you in person to discuss your concerns and try to find a satisfactory solution.

What Action Will We Take In Response To Your Complaint?

We will endeavor to resolve your complaint as soon as possible. However, the length of this time will depend on the nature and complexity of the issues you have raised.

If appropriate, we will refer the matter to the Privacy Officer. You will receive acknowledgment of receipt of the complaint from us or them within approximately five business days. You will be given an estimate of how long it may take us to deal with the matter, and we will endeavor to finalize the matter within 30 days.

If we decide that your complaint is justified, we will then decide what action we should take in response. We will always try to match our response to the nature of your complaint and your desired outcome, if at all possible.

Some of the things that we decide to do include:

  • Take steps to rectify the problem or issue you have raised
  • Provide you with additional information or advice so you can understand what happened or how we have dealt with it
  • Take steps to change our policies or procedures if your complaint identifies a problem in the way we are doing things

Whilst we will always do our best, sometimes it will not be possible to resolve a complaint to everyone’s satisfaction. If we are still unable to resolve the matter, you may wish to escalate the matter to the Privacy Commissioner via an online privacy complaint form which can be found at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/

Contact Details 

Conwell Property

Privacy Officer

PO Box 1136 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Australia

P: 0412 623 655

admin@conwellproperty.com


Updated text for Dispute Resolution

Dispute Resolution Policy and Complaint Handling 

Conwell Property aims to make it easy for you to bring any problems or complaints to our attention.

You should first raise your issue with the agent, representative, or property manager who is handling your business.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome from the Conwell Property, you can also make a complaint to us by:

  • telephone (during business hours): call 0420 677 579 and ask to speak to The Complaints Officer 
  • Email: admin@conwellproperty.com

Please provide as much detail as possible about your complaint, including the outcome you would like.

If you need help to describe or send your complaint, or if you would like to discuss your concerns informally first, please feel free to contact us.

How we will handle your complaint

We will oversee the complaints process. We are responsible for working with you and relevant agency staff, to ensure that the issues you raise are fully examined and that your complaint is handled in accordance with this process.

We will treat the process, and all the details of your complaint, in strict confidence. If we need to discuss any issues arising from your complaint with someone outside of the agency, we will obtain your consent first.

We will always try to give you a fair opportunity to explain your case. You should make your initial complaint as clear as possible. Sometimes we may want to meet you in person to discuss your concerns and try to find a satisfactory solution.

How long will it take?

We will try to resolve your complaint as soon as possible. However, how long this takes will depend on the nature and complexity of the issues you have raised. We will send you acknowledgement of receipt of the complaint within two business days.

What action will we take in response to your complaint?

If we decide that your complaint is justified, we will then decide what action we should take in response. We will always try to match our response to the nature of your complaint and your desired outcome, but this may not always be possible.

Some of the things we might do include:

  • take steps to rectify the problem or issue you have raised
  • give you additional information or advice so you can understand what happened or how we have dealt with it
  • take steps to change our policies or procedures if your complaint identifies a problem in the way we are doing things

What if you still feel your complaint remains unresolved?

Sometimes it will not be possible to resolve a complaint to everyone’s satisfaction, and you might want to escalate the matter to the Residential Tenancy Authority, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT), or the Real Estate Institute of Queensland. 

These bodies can deal with inquiries and complaints about real estate agents and offer information, advice, and dispute resolution services on real estate issues.

Contact Details 

Conwell Property

Complaints Officer

PO Box 1136 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 

P: 0412 623 655

admin@conwellproperty.com