Privacy policy

This policy (together with our cookie policy) sets out how we will treat your personal data. Please read it carefully.

This policy covers:

data that we collect from you directly in order to provide you with a quote or enter into a contract with you
data that is provided to us by a third party, such as your energy broker or your existing supplier
data we collect from you via our website.

For the purpose of Data Protection regulations, the data controller is SEFE Marketing & Trading Retail Limited t/a SEFE Energy, a company registered in England and Wales under number 3904624, whose registered address is 20 Triton Street, London NW1 3BF.

Our website contains links to other websites which are managed by third parties (including their use of cookies). If you are a user of these links, it is your responsibility to understand how those third parties will use your data as once you leave our website using these links we have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by any third parties. We are not responsible for these other websites.

What information do we collect from you, and how do we collect it?

We will collect and process the following data about you:

Quoting, Entering into a Contract and Performing the Contract

Information provided to us by you, your energy broker or our outsourced call provider for the purposes of providing you with a quote and/or entering into a contract. This information will include your name, date of birth, business name, e-mail address, correspondence, billing and site address(es) (one of which may be your home address), phone numbers, gender, MPRNs/MPANs and details of your gas and/or electricity consumption.
Details of contracts you enter into with us, including contact details of individuals which you provide at the time of entering into a contract with us.
Records of any correspondence we have with you. We may also monitor and record any communications we have with you, including phone conversations and e mails, to help us to maintain service levels and meet our regulatory and legal duties.
Information about your energy supply, such as consumption data, MPRNs/MPANs, meter reads and information about your meter, which we receive from you, your energy broker and other market participants, such as ECOES and Xoserve.

Using the Website

Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site www.sefe-energy.co.uk (“our site”). This includes information provided at the time of subscribing to any of our services or mailing lists, requesting further services or using our online quote tool. We may also ask you for contact information when you report a problem with our site.
Details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, and the resources that you access.
We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

Other Ways we May collect Data

Your responses to any surveys we may ask you to complete (although you do not have to respond to them).
From time to time as permitted by applicable law(s) we may collect information about you and update any existing information that we currently hold from other third party sources, including publically available data sources, publically available social networking sites such as LinkedIn and data brokers.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use, the purposes for which we use them and how to remove them see our Cookies policy.

How do we use your information?

We use information held about you in the following ways:

Quoting, Entering into a Contract and Performing the Contract

To provide you with a quote for the supply of electricity, gas or both
To carry out our obligations under any supply contracts entered into between you and us
To enable us to produce accurate invoices
To process payments from you or to process payments to you
To respond to your requests and queries
In order to process your application we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and they will give us information about you, such as your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace, recover debts, and prevent criminal activity. We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. The identities of the CRAs, and the ways in which they use and share personal information, are explained in more detail at http://www.experian.co.uk/crain/index.html

We may use the information you provide to us and we obtain from other sources such as CRAs for automated decision making and/or profiling in relation to your credit worthiness. Information may also be provided to CRAs for the ongoing monitoring of your credit worthiness during the life of our contract.

We may provide your information to trade insurers for the purposes of obtaining trade credit insurance.

Ensuring the Quality of our Services & Effectiveness of our Website

To help train our staff.
To request your participation in surveys, focus groups or other initiatives which help to gather information used to develop and enhance our products and services.
To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so including our online live trading platform.
To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us.
To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
To provide access to restricted parts of the website.

Marketing

To provide prospective and existing customers with information regarding our products and services that may be of interest. Please note that if you use our online quote tool, we may contact you from time to time in relation to your initial enquiry, even if you decide not to enter into a contract with us. You can ask us not to contact you at any time by contacting marketing@sefe-energy.com.

Internal Business Purposes

For internal purposes, such as internal reviews, website and system administration, internal audits.
For the purposes of carrying out data analytics, to predict future trends in the energy consumption of our customers and trends in price movements.

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

To help prevent and detect debt, fraud, loss and energy theft.
Where necessary to comply with applicable laws.

On what basis are we entitled to process your data?

In most cases, we process your data in order to take steps at your request before entering into a contract with you, or because the processing is necessary to perform our contract with you.

If the processing is not related to your contract, we will process your information on one of the following bases:-

Our legitimate interests, which include reducing our exposure to bad debt, marketing our products and services and carrying out data analytics to help us predict future market trends and behaviour.
You have given clear consent for us to process your personal data.
As required to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes and to enforce our contractual agreements.

How long we will keep your data for?

Unless a longer retention period is required by applicable laws, we will retain your information for as long as your account is active as well as for an additional period afterwards to cover any outstanding issues or queries that may arise in relation to your account. We will periodically review retention periods to check they are appropriate. We will not keep your data for any longer than is necessary.

If you are not an active customer, and you do not wish to hear from us, you can contact us at marketing@sefe-energy.com and we will delete your information immediately.

Who do we disclose your information to?

Our service providers

We disclose information to service providers who provide services on our behalf. During the life of your account it is likely that the identity and categories of third parties will change. Your data will only be used by our third party providers to provide the requested services to us and each service provider is subject to a set of terms consistent with this Privacy Policy.

We use the following types of third party providers to provide us with services:

Providers of website management and hosting services
Providers of an online live trading platform
Providers of Database, sales administration and market interaction software
Payment solution providers
Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies to help us make decisions about your ability to make payments, decisions about credit, identity checks, prevention of fraud and money laundering and management of the account. Credit reference agencies (CRAs) will record the search on your credit file whether your application is successful or not.
Trade credit insurers
Survey and market research providers
Providers of email communication tools and webinar platforms
Providers of services relating to the installation, maintenance and removal of meters and meter readers/providers of data services
Debt recovery agents, including agents who carry out pre-disconnection visits, should it be necessary to disconnect your meter
Providers of outsourced printing services
Third party auditors, where necessary to meet our legal and regulatory obligations
Providers of cash allocation and payment matching software
Providers of telemarketing services
Providers of online brokering and marketing services

Other market participants

We also have to provide data to other participants in the energy market. These include central data service providers such as Xoserve and ECOES, network operators and other suppliers and shippers. If you have engaged an energy broker to act on your behalf in relation to your energy supply, we will also share your data with that broker on request, if you have authorised them to receive it.

If we suspect someone has committed fraud or stolen energy by tampering with the meter, or diverting the energy supply, we will record these details on your account and may share this information with Ofgem and other people who are interested such as other energy suppliers. Also if the gas or electricity supply to your property has previously been tampered with or gas or electricity stolen, we may take this into account when we decide what products and services we can offer you and the terms and conditions we give you.

Other third parties

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
You request or authorise the disclosure of information to a third party
If SEFE Energy or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions of supply and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of SEFE Energy, our customers, or others.

Transfers of your data outside the European Economic Area ("EEA")

A minority of our service providers are based outside the EEA. At the date of this policy, two of our service providers are based in the USA. This may change if we decide to start using different service providers.

As such the data that we collect from you may be transferred to, stored at, and processed in a destination outside the EEA.

Processing will only take place where it is necessary for the purposes of the service being provided to us. We will only transfer data outside the EEA where we have made arrangements to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at marketing@sefe-energy.com. Any promotional emails that we send will include a link at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe.

As a data subject, you have the following rights:

The right to be informed of the use of your personal data
The right to access and/or to require the correction or erasure of your personal data
The right to block and/or object to the processing of your personal data
The right to not be subject to any decision based solely on automated processing of your personal data
In limited circumstances, you may have the right to receive personal data in a format which may be transmitted to another entity.
If you have a complaint in relation to the processing of your data carried out under this privacy policy, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. If you are located in the European Union, you can find the details of your local supervisory authority [here].

You may seek to exercise any of these rights by updating your information online (where possible) or by sending a written request to marketing@sefe-energy.com.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to marketing@sefe-energy.com.