Duncombe & Co Pty Ltd (we, our, us) recognise the importance of protecting the privacy and the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information. This document is our privacy policy and it tells you how we collect and manage your personal information.
What is Personal Information?
When used in this Privacy Policy, the term “Personal Information” has the meaning given to it in the Act. In general terms, it is any information that can be used to personally identify you. This may include your name, address, telephone number, email address and profession or occupation. If the information we collect personally identifies you, or you are reasonably identifiable from it, the information will be considered Personal Information.
What personal information do we collect and hold about you?
We may collect any of the following information about you if you are a current or prospective vendor, purchaser or landlord of real estate or if you visit our website or make an enquiry with us via another method:
- contact details (including, name, address, telephone number and email address);
- driver’s license number;
- current property ownership and title details;
- desired property ownership details; and
- details of properties sold or acquired by you
If you are a current or prospective tenant for a rental property, we may collect the following additional information from you:
- contact details (including, name, address, telephone number and email address);
- driver’s license number;
- employment details such as your employment status, employer, salary, length of employment;
- other sources of income; and
- personal and financial referees whom we may contact about your application.
Sometimes Duncombe & Co may also need to ask you for other forms of Personal Information to enable us to provide services to you.
How do we collect your personal information?
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 various ways, including emails, letters, telephone calls.
We may collect information about you from the following third party sources:
- databases in the public domain such as telephone indexes, Australia Post database, Titles Office or other property databases; and
- referrals and recommendations from existing clients of Duncombe & Co
- your representatives (lawyers, accountants and financial advisers)
- your employer
- publicly available sources of information or any other organisations where you have given your consent
- Cookies
When you access our website, we may send a “cookie” (which is a small summary file containing a unique ID number) to your computer. This enables us to recognise your computer. It also enables us to keep track of your activity on our website for a period of time. We also use cookies to measure traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to research our users’ habits so that we can improve our online products and services. Our cookies do not collect personal information. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.
We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website and track users movements.
As part of the process of entering into lease or rental agreements with you, we may disclose your information to authorised credit or tenant checking agencies.
What happens if we can’t collect your Personal Information?
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 our services to you, either to the same standard or at all; or
- we may not be able to provide you with information about services that you may want, including information about new properties that are available for lease or purchase;
- we may be unable to tailor the content of our websites to your preferences and your experience of our websites may not be as enjoyable or useful.
For what purposes do we collect, hold, use and disclose your Personal Information?
We collect personal information for a range of purposes including:
- enable our agency to provide you with the services and/or products you may require;
- to comply with local, state and federal legislation or regulations, and those specifically related to real estate property sales, rental and administration;
- to enable our agency to assist you with related services, as required;
- for our internal administrative, marketing, planning, product development and research requirements;
- to update our agency’s records and keep your contact details up to date;
- to deal with your queries or customer service issues promptly, whether by email, telephone or mail;
- to conduct relevant business processing functions; and
- to process and respond to any complaint made by you.
Your Personal Information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this Privacy Policy.
How do we use the Personal Information held about you?
Any Personal Information about you that our agency collects and records will only be used or disclosed by our agency for the purpose of:
- compliance with obligations under real-estate regulations and laws applicable for all states in Australia;
- for our agency’s administrative, planning, product or service development, quality control and research purposes; and
- complying with any other relevant laws or regulations.
Duncombe & Co may also use or disclose the information it collects for any other purpose specified to you at the time of collection.
Direct marketing?
Our agency may send you direct marketing communications and information about our services that we consider may be of interest to you. These may include:
- offering to provide you with products or services provided by our agency and third party providers; or
- sending you news and other information about our agency’s activities and general promotional material which we believes may be of interest to you.
These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS and email, in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). When our agency does this, we will provide you with the opportunity to opt-out from receiving any further communication from our agency. You may at any time request not to receive direct marketing from Duncombe & Co by contacting our agency 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.
How can you access and correct your personal information?
You may request access to your Personal Information held by our agency, at any time by contacting us. We will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing your Personal Information (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you). We will respond to your request for access within 7 days and endeavour to provide the requested information within 21 days.
There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to the Personal Information we hold. For example, we may not be able to provide access to information in the following situations:
- where in our opinion providing the information your request, may create a serious threat to the life or health of any individual or may be an unreasonable intrusion into the privacy of another individual;
- where your request for access is, in our agency’s opinion, frivolous or vexatious; or
- where providing access would be unlawful, may prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity, may prejudice enforcement of law, or denying access is specifically authorised by law.
If for any reason our agency does not allow you to access your Personal Information, we will provide you with reasons in writing for our decision.
If you believe that Personal Information that our agency holds about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request that we amend it. Duncombe & Co will consider if the information requires amendment. If our agency does not agree that there are grounds for amendment, then we will add a note to the Personal Information stating that you disagree with it.
Do we disclose your personal information to anyone?
We may disclose your Personal Information to the following:
- to employees of our agency and our contractors or service providers for the purposes of operation of our website or our business, fulfilling requests by you, and to otherwise provide services to you;
- if you are a tenant of any property that we are managing, to a National Tenancy Database;
- to suppliers and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, marketing, and related purposes; and
- to any organisation for any authorised purpose with your express consent.
There are some instances when our agency may need to provide your Personal Information to third parties. Duncombe & Co may be bound by law to provide your details to government-related bodies, including the Titles Office or the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority.
Duncombe & Co does not sell your personal details to other organisations. We may however use the information about you to assist us with internal marketing and research.
We may disclose your Personal Information to entities located outside of Australia, including our data hosting and other IT service providers, who may pass information to secondary data hosting providers located outside of Australia.
What is the process for complaining about a breach of privacy?
If you believe that your privacy has been breached, please contact us using the contact information below and provide details of the incident so that we can investigate it. Our procedure for investigating and dealing with privacy breaches is set out in our current complaints handling procedures.
How do we keep your Personal Information secure?
We will take reasonable steps to ensure information collected, used or disclosed is stored in a secure environment that is accessed only by persons authorised by our agency so as to prevent interference, misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
If the Personal Information is no longer needed for any purpose, our agency will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify the Personal Information.
Duncombe & Co endeavours to provide a secure environment and a reliable system but you should be aware that there are inherent risks associated with the electronic storage and transmission of information (particularly via the Internet) which cannot be guaranteed to be 100% secure.
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.
Contacting us
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, any concerns or feedback regarding the treatment of your privacy, please use the contact link on our website.
If you have a complaint or concern?
If you have a complaint or concern you can email, admin@duncombes.com.au or phone our agency. We will do our best to try and resolve your complaint within 30 days.
Changes to our privacy policy
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. Any updated versions of this privacy policy will be posted on our website. This privacy policy was last updated on 9th August 2022.
