1. We respect your privacy
VetPartners Australia ACN 114 962 453 and its related bodies corporate (referred to in this policy as we, us or our) recognise that your privacy is very important. We respect your right to privacy, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and website visitors in accordance with all applicable privacy laws. This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information. By providing us with personal information, you consent to the terms of this policy and the types of disclosure covered by this policy. If you do not agree with such terms or you have any questions about our handling of your personal information, please contact us by phone or email to discuss.
“Personal information” is information which identifies you or from which you can be reasonably identified. Our veterinarians, veterinary support, and other staff, from time to time, also create and maintain records relating to the animals under their care, in accordance with their legal and professional obligations, which may incorporate or refer to personal information. You might also need to provide us with personal information about other individuals (e.g., your authorised representatives). If so, we rely on you to inform those individuals that you are providing their personal information to us and to advise them about this policy.
2. Purpose of the collection of personal information
We collect personal information for the purpose of providing veterinary services to your pet. These purposes also include communication with you about upcoming appointments, health checks, vaccination schedules and other veterinary related matters, such as responding to your questions and providing you with information or advice about your pet, process your product or service order or for administration of billing, debt recovery, complaint management, quality assurance, service improvement and/or product development, and training.
3. Types of personal information collected
The personal information we collect from you may include your name, phone number, address and email address, your pet ownership details, insurance details for the treatment of your pet, credit card or debit card details, banking details, records of your communications and interactions with us, details of your preferences, interests and behavior relating to the provision of products and services to your pet. We may collect additional information at other times, including when you provide feedback, when you provide information about your personal or business affairs, change your content or email preference, respond to surveys and/or promotions, provide financial or credit card information, or communicate with our staff.
We may also collect other information as required under applicable veterinary surgeons legislation.
4. Applying to work with Us
If you are a candidate for employment or engagement, we may collect information about you including ID information, such as your name, postal address, email address, telephone number, licenses, date of birth, gender identity, information relating to your employment and education history, psychometric testing results, work eligibility rights and referee details, for the purposes of considering you for employment or engagement. This information may be collected from:
- you directly;
- through publicly available networking sites such as Linkedin; and
- via third parties with your consent, such as recruitment agencies that we have engaged to assist us with recruitment, recruitment services platforms such as Seek, individuals that have given us your details with a referral for employment or engagement and event organisers.
We may also collect and disclose information about you through the Australian Government’s online visa verification system, and to a migration agent acting on your behalf, for visa application purposes.
If your application is successful and you are offered employment or engagement with us, as a condition of employment we will ask you to provide evidence of your identity and legal entitlement to work in Australia. We will also ask for personal information, such as emergency contact details, tax file number and bank account details which will form part of your employee file.
We may use your personal information to assess your application, invite you to apply for future positions of interest (unless you notify us that you do not wish this to occur) and if you are successful in securing a position with us, for employment-related administrative purposes.
5. How we collect your personal information
We collect personal information from you in a variety of ways, including from information that is publicly available, or when you interact with us electronically, by phone or in person, or when you access our website, and when we provide our services to you. We may also receive personal information from third parties such as your pet insurer or previous or referring veterinarian. If we do, we will protect it as set out in this policy.
If you choose not to provide certain information about you, we may not be able to provide you with the products or services you require, or the level of service on which we pride ourselves.
If the personal information you provide to us is incomplete or inaccurate, we may be unable to provide you, or someone else you know, with the products or services you, or they, are seeking.
6. Use of your personal information
We may use personal information collected from you to provide you with services, information or updates. We may also use your personal information to improve our products and services, to better understand your needs, make you aware of new or additional products, services, and opportunities, and to respond to your feedback, queries or concerns.
We may use personal information to contact you by a variety of measures including telephone, email, SMS, or mail.
7. Disclosure of your personal information
We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors, or related bodies corporate, to the extent reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. This can include companies that assist us with technological services, processing payments, administrative services, communication of our offers to you, as well as product development and market research. Your personal information may also be disclosed to other veterinary care professionals (such as veterinary pathologists), in accordance with our professional obligations, or to your pet insurer (if applicable), while providing you with veterinary services. Personal information is only supplied to a third party when it is required for the delivery of our services or if you have consented or requested us to do so.
We may from time to time need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal requirement, or in response to a request from a law enforcement agency, a regulator, a health department or contract tracing agency (including any requests to provide information for COVID-19 contact tracing, or the relevant veterinary surgeons board (or equivalent).
We may also disclose your personal information to protect our copyright, trademarks, legal rights, property or safety, or the safety of our customers or third parties.
Information that we collect may from time to time be stored, processed in, or transferred between parties located in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Philippines, Canada and the United States.
If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer to the extent permissible at law our user databases, together with any personal information contained in those databases. This information may be disclosed to a potential purchaser under an agreement to maintain confidentiality.
We would seek to only disclose information in good faith and where required by any of the above circumstances. When we disclose your personal information to third parties, we will use all reasonable endeavours to request that the third party has practices which are consistent with this policy and the law in handling personal information.
8. Security of your personal information
We are committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us or receive from us.
9. Access to your personal information
You may request details of personal information that we hold about you in accordance with the provisions of the privacy laws that apply to us. A small administrative fee may be payable for the provision of information. If you would like a copy of the information, which we hold about you or believe that any information we hold on you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please email us at privacy@vetpartners.com.au
We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you, in certain circumstances as permitted by applicable privacy laws.
10. Will your personal information be used for direct marketing?
We may use and disclose your personal information for direct marketing, including keeping you informed of products and services and new developments we consider may be of interest to you. You may request that you not receive direct marketing communications at any time by emailing us.
If we have collected personal information about you from third parties, we will only use that information for direct marketing purposes with your consent (unless an exception applies under applicable laws).
If we use your personal information in this way, we will give you the opportunity in each direct marketing communication to request not to receive further direct marketing communications.
Your personal information may also be disclosed to third party service providers that aggregate and profile data about consumers’ demographics, interests, and online behaviours, to provide us with insights and assist us in delivering targeted advertising and marketing to new customers. We will only disclose your information in this way, if we obtain your consent (which may be express or implied) and if the third party has confirmed that they have practices which are consistent with this policy and the law in handling personal information.
11. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the European Union (EU)
We will comply with the principles of data protection set out in the GDPR for the purpose of fairness, transparency and lawful data collection and use when collecting or handling personal information about you if you are an EU resident.
We process your personal information as a Processor and/or to the extent that we are a Controller as defined in the GDPR.
We must establish a lawful basis for processing your personal information. By consenting to this policy, we are able to process your personal information in accordance with the policy.
We will only collect your personal information with your express consent for a specific purpose and any data collected will be to the extent necessary and not excessive for its purpose. We will keep your data safe and secure.
We will also process your personal information if it is necessary for our legitimate interests, or to fulfil a contractual or legal obligation.
We process your personal information if it is necessary to protect your life or in a medical situation, it is necessary to carry out a public function, a task of public interest or if the function has a clear basis in law.
We do not collect or process any personal information from you that is considered “Sensitive Personal Information” under the GDPR, such as personal information relating to your sexual orientation or ethnic origin unless we have obtained your explicit consent, or if it is being collected subject to and in accordance with the GDPR.
You must not provide us with your personal information if you are under the age of 16 without the consent of your parent or someone who has parental authority for you. We do not knowingly collect or process the personal information of children.
12. Your rights under the GDPR
If you are an individual residing in the EU, you have certain rights as to how your personal information is obtained and used. VetPartners complies with your rights under the GDPR as to how your personal information is used and controlled if you are an individual residing in the EU.
Except as otherwise provided in the GDPR, you have the following rights:
- to be informed how your personal information is being used;
- access your personal information (we will provide you with a free copy of it);
- to correct your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
- to delete your personal information (also known as “the right to be forgotten”);
- to restrict processing of your personal information;
- to retain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes;
- to object to your personal information being used; and
- to object against automated decision making and profiling.
Please contact us at any time to exercise your rights under the GDPR by mail to the Privacy Officer, VetPartners Australia and New Zealand, Unit 1 Macquarie Link, 277 Lane Cove Road, Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia 2113, or by emailing us at privacy@vetpartners.com.au.
We may ask you to verify your identity before acting on any of your requests.
13. Website
When you visit our website, we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, or website visited immediately before coming to our site. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyze how people use our site, such that we can improve our service.
14. Cookies
We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website. Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyze website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google AdWords. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.
15. Third party sites
Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of every website that collects personal identifiable information.
16. Complaints about privacy
If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaints to the Privacy Officer, VetPartners , Unit 1 Macquarie Link, 277 Lane Cove Road, Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia 2113 or privacy@vetpartners.com.au We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint.
If you are unhappy with the way that we handle your complaint you may make your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
17. Changes to Privacy Policy
Please be aware that we may change this policy from time to time. and all variations will be effective immediately upon posting the revised policy on our website. Please check back from time to time to review this policy.
18. For more information
For more information about privacy in general, you can visit the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website at https://www.oaic.gov.au/.
Version – 22 May 2023