Car Expert Pty Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy and complying with its obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) in respect of that information. If you are located in, or are a citizen of the European Union, you may have additional rights under the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If you are located in California, you may have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). If you are located in another jurisdiction, additional local requirements will apply.
This Privacy Policy explains how and why Car Expert Pty Ltd collects your personal information, how we use it and what controls you have over our use of it. Please read this policy carefully. Your use of any part of our Website, our Products or our Services will constitute your consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure and other uses of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy, please do not use our Website, Products or our Services.
In this Privacy Policy:
(a) “personal information” means information about you which personally identifies you or may reasonably be used to personally identify you;
(b) “sensitive information” has the meaning given to that term in the Act;
(c) “Products” means physical and digital products that Car Expert Pty Ltd and its partners may provide to you from time to time for free or for a fee;
(d) “Services” means the services set out on our Website (including the provision of a forum for users to research and ask questions regarding the purchase of a new vehicle) and such other services we provide from time to time (including physical test drives of vehicles);
(e) “we”, “us” or Car Expert” means Car Expert Pty Ltd ACN 636 729 836, a proprietary limited company trading under the name Car Expert and its associated entities as appropriate;
(f) “Website” means www.carexpert.com.au or any other website from time to time from which the Products and Services are promoted and/or delivered; and
(g) “you” means you and anyone acting on your behalf or with your implied authority.
As part of our Products and Services we connect users with Car Expert Team Members and associated entities for the purpose of recommending a new car for the customer. This inherently means that contact details of users will be provided to Team Members and associated entities under specific circumstances as confirmed and authorised by you or by accepting our terms and conditions of use during the registration or purchasing process.
Collection of your personal information
Car Expert collects and holds various types of personal information when you register a user profile, use our Products and Services or otherwise access the Website, including:,
(a) your name and contact details, including your e-mail address;
(b) usage data including information about how you use our Website, Products and Services;
(c) profile data including your username and password, your vehicle interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses;
(d) technical data including your internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our website;
(e) marketing and communications data including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences; and
(f) information necessary for or incidental to the provision of the Products and Services.
Quality and integrity of personal information
You are responsible for the quality, accuracy, and integrity of any information provided in your account details, profile or use of our Products or Services. If the personal information you provide to us is incomplete or inaccurate, we may be unable to provide you with the products and services you are seeking. You can update your personal information at any time by logging onto our Website and editing your account information and profile or by contacting us using the details set out below. We may still however store previously recorded data in archive for record keeping, security and audit purposes. You can view your updated profile at any time to confirm your edits have been made.
Use and disclosure of your personal information
The personal information that we collect and hold about you depends on your interaction with us. We will generally collect, use and hold your personal information if it is reasonably necessary for or directly related to the performance of our functions and activities and for the purposes of:
(a) providing Products and/or Services to you or our other users;
(b) providing you with promotional material and information about the services that we, our related entities and other organisations that we have affiliations with, offer that may be of interest to you;
(c) related companies to enable them to better understand your requirements and preferences, and (if you interact with that business) to personalise and improve their offer to you and to offer products or services to you or send direct marketing to you (where you have consented to receiving offers or direct marketing from them);
(d) personalising our on-site user experience, newsletter content and other promotions;
(e) conducting trend analysis to understand consumer behaviour and provide feedback to third party advertisers, vehicle manufacturers and others;
(f) facilitating our internal business operations, including the fulfilment of any legal requirements; and
(g) analysing our Products, Services and customer needs with a view to developing new or improved products and services.
Personal information will generally be collected directly from you through the use of any of our standard forms, over the internet, in person at our retail stores, through our ‘Ask the Expert’ function, at the time of purchase, or otherwise on our Website.
We may hire third parties to provide limited services on our behalf, such as processing payment transactions, or performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those third parties with the personal information they need to deliver the specific services and take reasonable steps to ensure that these third parties maintain the confidentiality of your information and are prohibited from using that information except for the purposes for which it was supplied.
Car Expert may also disclose your personal information to authorised regulatory bodies or otherwise if required to do so by law.
Security of your personal information
Car Expert is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access, use, or disclosure. We store the personal information you provide on computer systems with limited access that are located inside our controlled facilities. Whilst we adopt all protections over your personal information within our control, we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted via the internet. As such, transmission of personal information via the internet is at your own risk and we cannot be held responsible for the security of such information.
Direct Marketing
We will only send you direct marketing communications and information via mail, email or our social media platforms about our Products or Services with your consent, including to inform you of other products or services available from Car Expert and its affiliates. Car Expert may also provide you with the option to participate in customer surveys and provide customer reviews on our Website to allow us to evaluate our current Product or Service offerings and the potential for new Products or Services.
If you do not provide your consent to receive direct marketing communications, you may opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us by updating your communication preferences on our members preference centre, contacting us at the details below or by using opt-out facilities provided in our communications. We may, from time to time with your consent, provide your personal information to other organisations for the purposes of their direct marketing. We will not sell, rent or lease our customer lists to third parties.
Overseas disclosure
It is unlikely that we will need to disclose your personal information to an overseas recipient or otherwise store your personal information overseas. If we are ever required to do so, we will obtain your informed consent or ensure that the overseas recipients comply with the APPs.
GDPR compliance
If your Personal Information is governed by the GDPR, you may have additional rights as set out below:
(a) Request erasure of your Personal Information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your Personal Information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
(b) Object to processing of your Personal Information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
(c) Request restriction of processing of your Personal Information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in the following scenarios
(d) If you want us to establish the information’s accuracy;
(i) where our use of the information is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
(ii) where you need us to hold the information even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; and
(iii) you have objected to our use of your information but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
(e) Request the transfer of your Personal Information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your Personal Information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
(f) Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your Personal Information. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
CCPA compliance
The CCPA requires Car Expert to make certain disclosures that already are covered in this Privacy Policy. If your personal information is governed by the CCPA, this section provides an overview of the information required by CCPA and how to exercise your additional rights:
(a) In order to operate the Products or Services we may collect and use the various categories of personal information including your name and contact details, usage data including information about how you use our Website, Products, Services, profile data, technical data, marketing and communications data and other information necessary for or incidental to the provision of the Services.
(b) Our Privacy Policy describes how we share or disclose your personal information. We may share personal information automatically collected from your device and location information, if you have agreed to share it, with selected third party service providers, including vehicle manufacturers.
(c) As described in this Privacy Policy, when permitted by you, we may use and share your personal information with trusted partners for advertising and related services that they provide to us. Some partners may also use this information for their own purposes. The transfer of your information to such partners may be considered a “sale” under the CCPA. Information on how you can opt out of sharing your information with these partners for purposes beyond the advertising services they provide us is provided below. You also can opt out of sharing your information for personalised advertising through available web-related opt outs and mobile application-related opt outs described above.
(d) You have the right to:
(iv) Know your Personal Information. You can request information about the Personal Information collected from your use of the Products or Services.
(v) Delete your Personal Information. You can request that we delete the Personal Information that we have collected from your use of the Products or Services. We will delete your information unless it is necessary for purposes permitted by CCPA.
(vii) Opt out of sale of your Personal Information. You can opt out of the sale of personal information at any time by accessing the “Do Not Sell My Information” link in the footer of our Website.
(e) Non-discrimination. If you choose to exercise any of these rights, we will not deny goods, products or services to you or provide different quality of services, unless that difference is reasonably related to the value provided by your personal information.
If the CCPA applies, Car Expert may maintain records of consumer requests and how Car Expert responded to those requests for a period of 24 months in order to demonstrate compliance with the CCPA.
Using our Website and cookies
To improve your experience on our website, we may use ‘cookies’: small data files that are served by our Website and stored on your device. These are used by us or third parties for a variety of purposes including to operate and personalise the Website. Cookies may be used for recording preferences, conducting internal analytics, conducting research to improve our offering, assisting with marketing and delivering certain website functionality. You may refuse to accept cookies by selecting the appropriate setting on your internet browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of our Website.
Third party sites
For your convenience and to improve the usage of the Website, Products and Services we may insert links to or utilise the services of third-party websites and applications, for which this Privacy Policy does not apply. Car Expert is not responsible for those third party websites, applications or resources, including all payment gateways. If you access such websites, applications or resources, you do so at your own risk and we make no representations or warranties regarding third parties’ privacy practices.
We encourage you to read the privacy statements/policies of every website, application or resource you use. When we do link to a third party website, application or resource, this does not automatically imply that Car Expert endorses that website, application, resource and their contents. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the use of cookies by any third parties.
Data Retention
We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
Where we anonymise your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Accessing or correcting your Personal Information
We are committed to maintaining accurate, timely, relevant and appropriate information.
Where requested, we will provide you with a copy of the personal information that we hold which relates to you, provided that the request is made in accordance with the APPs (contained in the Act). We will also update any inaccurate information about you if you inform us that the information is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
There are no charges for requesting access to or the correction of your personal information, however if the volume of information we hold is excessively large, we reserve our rights to charge you any reasonable administration fees (including fees for photocopying) associated with your request. You can contact our privacy officer regarding access to or correction of your information by any of the following methods:
Email: privacy@carexpert.com.au
Post: Shop SEG12, The District Docklands, 101 Studio Lane , Docklands, Victoria 3008, Australia
We will respond to those requests within 30 days in accordance with our obligations under the Act. If we refuse a request to access or correct personal information, where reasonable, we will provide you our reasons for doing so and information about your ability to complain about such refusal.
In order to protect the confidentiality of your Personal Information, details of your information will only ever be passed on to you where we are satisfied that the information relates to you. Accordingly, we may request documentation from you which confirms your identity before passing on any personal information which relates to you.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Car Expert will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect company and customer feedback. If we do so, the latest version of our Privacy Policy will be available on our Website and will apply to all your personal information held by us at that time. Car Expert encourages you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to be informed of how Car Expert is using, collecting, protecting and disclosing your personal information.
Further information
If you require any further information or have any queries regarding our Privacy Policy, please contact our privacy officer at the details set out above.
Should you wish to read more information on the Act, we recommend that you visit the website of the OAIC at www.oaic.gov.au.