Last Modified: 24 January, 2024

We are Vantage Debt Management (Pty) Ltd (“Vantage”) and we care about your personal information. If you are an existing or prospective client of Vantage, or are just visiting our website, then this notice applies to you. It lets you know how we protect and process your personal information, PIIYour personal information is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. Please read our privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your personal Information in accordance with our website.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, receive, use, store, share, transfer, and process your personal information. It also describes your choices regarding use, as well as your rights of access and correction of your personal information. If you do not agree with the data practices described in this Privacy Policy, you should not use the website or complete the web forms.

What personal information do we collect from the people that visit our blog, website, social media pages, web forms or app?

When filling out a call-back form or registering on our site or social media pages through web forms, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, ID number, marital status, number and age of dependents, your address, your employment details, financial information. phone number or other details to help you with your experience. Personal information also includes navigational information referring to information about your computer and your visits to the Websites such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and pages viewed. This information is used by Vantage to provide general statistics regarding use of the Websites. For these purposes, we do link this automatically collected data to other Personal Information such as name, email address, address, and phone number.

If you apply for debt counselling

If you apply for our debt counselling services, we collect additional personal information directly from you as required by the National Credit Act (35 of 2005), including:

ID number, marital status, number and age of dependents, your address, your employment details, financial information.

We collect your credit score and credit report from a credit bureau. We may also collect information about your financial position from your credit providers, their attorneys, and legal representatives.

When do we collect information?

We collect information from you when you fill out web forms, Use our Live Chat, contact us via our website, enter information on our site, blog, social media, or App; and/or enter into an agreement with us.

How do we use your information?

We may use the information we collect from you when you give consent or register, make a purchase, complete any of our call back forms, sign up for our newsletter, respond to a survey or marketing communication, surf the website or social media pages, or use certain other site features in the following ways:

• To personalize your experience and to allow us to deliver the type of content and product offerings in which you are most interested.
• To improve our website to better serve you.
• To allow us to better service you in responding to your customer service requests, product purchases.
• Develop and improve our products and services.
• Send information via multiple channels such as email, phone, WhatsApp or SMS regarding content which we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means and send you marketing communications relating to our business.
• To administer a contest, promotion, survey, or other site feature.
• To send periodic emails, WhatsApp, SMS or App notifications regarding your order or other products and services.
• To follow up with you via telephone/WhatsApp/email/SMS after correspondence on live chat, email, or phone inquiries or after completing our call back forms.

We may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, we do not transfer your Personal Information to the third party.

We will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you.

Retention of Personal Information

How long we keep information we collect about you depends on the type of information, as described in further detail below.  After such time, we will either delete or anonymize your information so it can be used for reporting/statistical analysis or, if this is not possible, then we will securely store your information and isolate it from any further use until deletion is possible.

We retain Personal Information that you provide to us where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your Personal Information, we securely delete the information or anonymise so it can be used for statistical/reporting purposes or, if this is not possible, securely store your Personal Information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. We will delete this information at an earlier date if you so request.

If you have elected to receive marketing communications from us, we retain information about your marketing preferences for a reasonable period from the date you last expressed interest in our content, products, or services, such as when you last opened an email from us or ceased using our services.  We retain information derived from cookies and other tracking technologies for a reasonable period from the date such information was created for reporting and statistical purposes.

How do we protect your information?

We value the information that you choose to provide us with and will therefore take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, or unauthorised alteration. The information we maintain concerning our customers is stored in databases that have built-in safeguards to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of that information.

Your privacy is important to us. We will therefore not sell, rent, or provide your personal information to unauthorised entities or other third parties, for their independent use, without your consent.

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. We secure the Personal Information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. All Personal Information is protected using appropriate physical, technical and organizational measures.

If at any stage, after you have given us your consent, you no longer wish us to use or share your personal information with an affiliate party; you may at any stage withdraw your consent by clicking the unsubscribe button at the bottom of our marketing emails or you can send us an email on fs@vantagedebtmanagement.co.za.

Third parties who may process your personal information

Vantage makes use of trusted third-party service providers or partners, and we may be required to supply these third parties with your personal information so that they can provide us with proper and efficient services. You hereby agree to these third parties being granted access to your personal information. Please note that we fully assess all our suppliers and service providers and ensure that they enter into comprehensive agreements with us so that they are contractually obliged to protect your personal information to the same extent that we do.

Do we use cookies?

We use cookies unless you adjust your browser setting to refuse them.Yes.. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. They are also used to help us understand your preferences based on previous or current site activity, which enables us to provide you with improved services. We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.

We use cookies to:

• Understand and save user’s preferences for future visits.
• Keep track of advertisements.
• Compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interactions to offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may also use trusted third-party services that track this information on our behalf.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Since browser is a little different, look at your browser’s Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.

If you turn cookies off, some of the features that make your site experience more efficient may not function properly. It will not affect the user’s experience that make your site experience more efficient and may not function properly.

Third-party disclosure

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your Personal Information unless we provide users with advance notice. This does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or serving our users, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release information when it is release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety.

However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Compelled Disclosure

We reserve the right to use or disclose your Personal Information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

Reviewing, Correcting and Removing Your Personal Information

You have the following data protection rights:

• You can request access, correction, updates, or deletion of your personal information.
• You can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information.
• If we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
• You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. Contact details for data protection authorities in your country can be found online.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us by mail to fs@vantagedebtmanagement.co.za, Attention: Privacy. We will respond to your request to change, correct, or delete your information within a reasonable timeframe and notify you of the action we have taken.

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