Privacy policy.
Hearing & Balance (referred to in this Privacy Policy as "we", "our" or "us") aims to provide our customers with the best possible products and services. We acknowledge that personal and health information about customers is given in trust and confidence, and as such, the privacy and protection of patient information are of absolute importance to us.
We comply with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (the Act) and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 (the Code) when handling personal and health information.
This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, disclose and protect your personal information. It does not limit or exclude any of your rights under the Act or Code. If you wish to seek further information about your privacy rights, please visit www.privacy.org.nz or call the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on 0800 803 909. By providing your personal information or using our services, you agree to this Privacy Policy.
We may amend this Policy at any time by uploading a revised version to www.bayaudiology.co.nz. By continuing to provide information and use our services, you agree to any changes to this Privacy Policy.
We're a member of the Marketing Association and abide by the Codes of Practice for Marketing in New Zealand. The Codes have been developed by the Marketing Association and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). You can download a copy of the codes here.
What is Personal Information?
Personal information is any information about you that identifies you, or by which your identity can reasonably be ascertained.
Health information, as defined by the Code, includes information about an identifiable individual's medical and treatment history, disabilities or accidents, contact with any health or disability service providers (for example, ACC), in relation to the services or communications that we provide to you.
How do we collect information?
We ordinarily collect information directly from our clients and suppliers, including from employees or officers of our customers and suppliers.
We collect information through, for example, online enquiries (including website and email), phone calls, written communications, and consultation appointments.
We may also collect information from our customers' use of our products and services. This may include hearing aid usage (for example, information related to volume control adjustments, battery charging, duration of daily use, listening environments and behaviours and habits).
The type of information we collect on our website depends on how you make use of the site.
When you visit the site, our host records your server address, domain name, the date and time of the visit and the pages viewed. This information may be collected by using cookies (data sent to your web browser, which generally allows our site to interact more efficiently with your computer). If you disable the use of cookies, your use of our site may be affected.
When visiting our site, you will not be required to provide us with any personal information unless you request information about a Hearing & Balance product or service or respond to a Hearing & Balance competition or promotion. In that case, we will ask you to provide contact details along with other information required to respond to your request or allow you to enter the competition or promotion. The information provided may also be retained for product planning purposes, and unless you tell us that you don't want it used for direct marketing purposes, may be used for those purposes.
If you send us an email containing personal information, we will take reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of that information. The content of emails is sometimes monitored by our internet host for maintenance and fault detection purposes. Emails may also be sent to our suppliers, partners or contractors when they relate to product or service enquiries or complaints. They also treat the information confidentially and may record it in their in-house database.
Although we take steps to protect information sent by email, email is not a secure method of communication and if you are concerned about sending your personal information to us in this manner you may prefer to contact us by any of the other means set out below.
Why do we collect your information?
Hearing & Balance collects personal information from our customers and suppliers, employees or officers of its customers and suppliers, for purposes relating to the products and services we offer. Those purposes include:
responding to enquiries about products, accessories and services we offer;
receiving feedback and dealing with complaints;
processing orders and administering accounts;
providing client support;
providing clients with our, and our commercial partners' incentive rewards;
applications for employment;
for us, or our commercial partners to implement and notify you of marketing and promotional activities, including market research, product development and direct marketing;
improving our services and procedures;
to assist withsales profiling activities for marketing and to improve our products and services;
product development; and
meeting our regulatory and legal obligations.
How will we use your information?
In providing you with a product or service, we may sometimes need to disclose your personal information to others. It is generally our policy not to disclose information to external organisations.
Sometimes, the law requires us to disclose personal information. We may also disclose personal information where the individual consents to us doing so. That consent may be written, verbal or implied from your conduct.
By providing your email address and/or mobile phone number, you consent to us sending you information connected with the above collection and use purposes via email or text message. The messages you receive from us will have instructions for how you can remove yourself from our mailing list if you wish.
From time to time, we may use personal information to inform our clients about our products and services, or about special offers and promotion that we think may be of interest to you. You can let us know at any time if you no longer wish to receive marketing material (by contacting us by any of the means set out below) and we will remove your details from our direct marketing database.
We may also use your information to improve the services and products offered to clients and to target our marketing of these products and services.
Except as stated in this Privacy Policy, Hearing & Balance does not disclose personal information to outside organisations for the purposes of allowing them to direct market their products.
We may also need to use and disclose your information to improve our services, if we are selling our business, to assist in law enforcement agencies or if we are compelled to under law.
How can you update and access your information?
We do everything we can to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date whenever we collect or use it. This means that from time to time, we will ask you to tell us if there are any changes to your personal information. If you find that information we hold about you is incorrect, please contact us immediately and we will correct it.
Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out respectively in the Act and Code, you have the right to access your readily retrievable personal or health information that we hold and to request a correction to your personal or health information. We reserve may ask to see evidence to confirm you are the individual to whom the personal or health information relates.
Security of personal information
Security of personal information is important to us and we take all reasonable precautions to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
Some of the ways we protect personal information include:
external and internal premises security;
restricting access to personal information only to staff who need it to perform their day to day functions;
maintaining technology products to prevent unauthorised computer access or damage to electronically stored information, such as requiring identifiers and passwords, firewalls and anti-virus software; and
maintaining physical security over paper records.
Our website may contain links to websites which are owned or operated by third parties independent of Hearing & Balance including websites owned or operated by Hearing & Balance service providers and partners. Those websites should contain their own privacy statements and their owners or operators are responsible for informing you about their security and privacy practices.
If you believe that the privacy of your personal or health information has been compromised, please let us know. You can make a complaint by contacting the person you were dealing with or by sending us an email to admin@hearingandbalance.co.nz. We will respond to complaints as soon as possible.