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Stor-Age Property REIT Limited

Privacy policy

The Protection of Personal Information Act is aimed at protecting your personal information and ensuring that entities manage your personal information in a responsible manner that respects your privacy. Protecting your privacy is as important to us as it is to you. This privacy policy explains why and how we collect, use and store your personal information.

This privacy policy forms part of our agreement with you. You should read it along with the terms and conditions that apply to using our services. From time-to-time, Stor-Age Property REIT Limited and its subsidiaries (“Stor-Age”, or the “group”) may have to amend this policy to accommodate changes in our business or services or if legal requirements change.

By agreeing to this privacy policy, you provide us with your express consent and agreement that we may collect, get, receive, record, organise, collate, store, update, change, retrieve, read, process, consult, use and share your personal information in the manner set out in this privacy policy.

If you do not agree with this privacy policy or are concerned about any aspect as it relates to your personal information, please do not continue to use the Stor-Age website or any services offered by us.

Stor-Age is a group of companies that includes various subsidiaries as disclosed in our Integrated Annual Report which you can read here. When you share your information with one of these companies you may also be sharing it with other subsidiaries in the Stor-Age group of companies.

Personal information we collect and use

In the course of operating our self storage business, we collect personal information when you provide it to us, such as your name, address, email address, phone number(s), date of birth, payment details and personal identification such as an identity document if you rent a storage unit with us.

Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources (such as credit reference agencies or our insurers in the event of a claim), which we will add to the information we already hold about you in order to help us provide services to you and to improve and personalise our service to you.

If you give us information on behalf of someone else as an alternate contact or next of kin, you confirm that the other person has agreed that you can give consent on their behalf to the processing of their personal data.

We will not ask you to provide sensitive personal information unless we need to for a specific reason. If we request such information, we will explain why we are requesting it and how we intend to use it. We will only collect your sensitive personal information with your explicit consent.

We do not collect the information of persons under the age of 18 without the consent of their parents or guardians. If you are under the age of 18 you must not provide personal information to us without the consent of your parent or guardian. If you are a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 18 and think that we may have information relating to that child, please contact us. We will ask you to prove your relationship to the child and if you do so you may (subject to applicable law) request access to and deletion of that child’s personal data.

How and when do we collect information from you?

We gather information directly from you face-to-face if you come to one of our stores for information or to sign a lease agreement and over the telephone if you phone us to make an enquiry. We collect personal information via our website and mobile applications or ‘Apps’ and other technical systems. We collect this when you use our website or Apps to sign up to, participate in or receive a service from us, such as requesting a quote online or entering a live chat. Our website also uses and collects IP addresses (which means a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other device on the internet).

We also collect personal information when you contact us, send us feedback, complete customer surveys or participate in competitions that we hold.

When you call our customer contact centre, we collect information that helps us to categorise your enquiry for self storage, query, complaint, or request to respond to it and, if applicable, investigate what went wrong. We also use this information to track potential problems and trends to customise our support responses to provide a better service to you. Calls may be recorded for quality control and record-keeping purposes.

We may monitor and record communications with you (such as telephone conversations and emails).  We may do this for a number of reasons, such as to check the quality of our customer service, for training purposes, to prevent fraud or to make sure we are complying with legal requirements.

If you visit our storage facility, some personal data may be collected from monitoring devices and systems such as closed-circuit TV (CCTV) and door entry systems at the store.

Use of cookies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your computer (or other electronic device such as a mobile telephone or tablet) when you use our website. We use cookies on our website. We do this to find out things such as the device you use to connect to our website and number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify you individually. We use analysis software to look at IP addresses and cookies to improve your experience as a user of our website. We do not use this information to develop a personal profile of you.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies, however, some of our website features may not function as a result.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

Lease agreements

Where you make enquiries about storing with us before you become a customer, we need to collect personal information about you so that we can take steps to enter into a lease agreement with you. Once you have become a customer, we need to collect and use personal information to provide services to you and to claim our right to be paid in return for our services under our standard terms and conditions. This includes collecting and using your personal information to:

  • Enable us to follow up on enquiries made by you in relation to storing with us and to give you a quote;
  • Do a credit check if deemed necessary;
  • Prepare a lease agreement with you;
  • Manage any accounts you hold with us;
  • Contact you for reasons related to storing with us or to provide information you have requested;
  • Deal with payment for our services;
  • Notify you of any changes to our website or to our services that may affect you; and
  • Resolve disputes or collect overdue payments. 

Job applications and recruitment

If you apply for a job with us or work for us for any period of time, we may receive information from the people who provide references and we will collect and use personal information to process your application. In this context, personal information we gather may include: contact details, financial and payment details, details of education, qualifications and skills, marital status, nationality, identity number, job title and CV.

If you take a job with us, we will collect and use your personal information to enter into an employment contract with you and to administer the employment relationship, including making payments to you, accounting for tax, ensuring safe working practices, monitoring and managing staff access to systems and facilities, next of kin details in case of emergency, monitoring absences and performance and conducting assessments.

We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as information from criminal record checks. Stor-Age may also be required to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in South Africa before employment starts. Where we seek this information, we do so because it is necessary for us to carry out our obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on paper-based recruitment documentation, on your online application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

If a job application is unsuccessful, Stor-Age will keep your personal data on file for 12 months in case there are future employment opportunities for which an applicant may be suited. If you do not want us to do this, you can opt out by emailing us. At the end of the 12-month period, your data is deleted or destroyed.

Personal information may also be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

We may transfer personal information to external third-party providers performing certain services for us, such as our outsourced payroll service provider or for further analysis required as part of the recruitment process. Such third-party providers have access to your data solely for the purposes of performing the services specified in the applicable service contract and Stor-Age requires the providers to undertake security measures consistent with the protections specified in this policy. We will not share your data with any other third parties, unless legally required to do so.

Legal obligations

We collect and use personal information from our customers to comply with our legal obligations. 

Legitimate business interests

Our priority is to make sure we provide a high quality and secure service to customers and to follow up effectively on enquiries even though we accept that not all enquiries will lead to a business relationship or contract. We collect personal information to:

  • Follow up on enquiries made by you in relation to storing with us and to give you a quote;
  • Conduct research and analyse website visitor behaviour patterns;
  • Customise our website and its content to your particular preferences;
  • Improve our services;
  • Detect and prevent fraud; and
  • Prevent offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content being sent to or posted on our websites or to stop any other form of disruptive behaviour.

We may also operate CCTV within our stores.  We collect and process CCTV images to:

  • Fulfil our contractual obligation to deliver a secure self storage environment;
  • Establish whether you are doing something that breaches your lease agreement with us; and
  • Assist in the establishment or defence of any crime or other investigation.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses cookies for website tracking allowing us to measure and improve the website experience. Google Analytics will associate the visitation information that it collects from the Stor-Age website with Google information from accounts of users who have consented to this association. This Google information may include user location, search history, YouTube history and data from sites that partner with Google and is used to provide aggregated and anonymised insights into cross device behaviours. Users can manage permissions and associated data at Google My Activity (https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity).

Credit checking

In certain cases, we may do a credit check on you so that we can make credit decisions about you and people or businesses associated with you. These checks may also be used to help prevent and detect fraud.

Our search will be recorded on the files of the credit reference agency. We may also disclose information about how you conduct your account to credit reference agencies.

Marketing communications

We may also communicate with you by SMS text, WhatsApp or email, information about other services we can offer you and update you about our activities and promotions which may be of interest to you unless you have chosen to opt out of receiving these marketing communications.

Marketing communications are separate from any factual communications in relation to services that you receive or have requested from Stor-Age, including follow up calls or emails relating to your price request or enquiry for storage services. Such factual communications will be sent on the lawful basis of it being in our legitimate interest, as set out in detail above.

When will we contact any other person about you?

If you provide us with details of any other person we can contact to discuss your account, we may contact that person and discuss and share the details of your account with that person and deal with that person in relation to your account as if that person was you. We may particularly want to do this if we are unable to get in touch with you for any reason. If you change your mind, you can email or write to us and have this person taken off your account as an alternate contact. You will need to provide us with another alternate contact.

Who your information might be shared with

We may disclose your personal data to:

  • Service providers under contract with us to support our business operations;
  • Credit reference agents – see 'Credit checking' above;
  • Our insurers and insurance brokers;
  • Law enforcement or government agencies in connection with any investigation to help prevent or detect unlawful activity;
  • Any person or agency if we need to share that information to comply with the law or to enforce any agreement we may have with you or to protect the health and safety of any person;
  • Any person who you have named as a person we can contact to discuss your account;
  • Any person who is your agent or representative, such as the holder of a power of attorney, a legal guardian or person administering a will; and
  • Any person who we are negotiating with as a potential buyer of our business or property or if we are proposing to merge our business with another business.

If we pass data on to insurers, they may enter your data onto a register of claims which is shared with other insurers to prevent fraudulent claims. If we use an outside party to process your information, we will require them to comply with our instructions in connection with the services they provide for us and not for their own business purposes.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those people processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable supervisory body of a suspected data breach where we are legally required to do so.
While we will use all reasonable efforts to keep your personal data safe, you acknowledge that the use of the internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal data that is transferred from you or to you via the internet. If you have any particular concerns about your information, please contact us.

Our website contains links to websites and applications owned and operated by other people and businesses. These third-party sites have their own privacy policies and use their own cookies and we recommend that you review them before you provide them with personal information. They will tell you how your personal information is collected and used whilst you are visiting these other websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the content of these sites or the use of your information collected by any of these other sites and you use these other sites at your own risk.

Transfers of your personal information

We only share your personal information with companies that help us to provide our services to you and who have agreed to keep your information secure, confidential and to only use it for authorised purposes. We use suppliers or service providers who we trust to provide services to us and sometimes that involves sharing your information with them. They operate under strict requirements aimed at keeping your personal information secure and confidential and they will only use it for the purpose for which we have sent it to them. We will not sell your personal information.

Some of our service providers may hold personal data on data centres located in other jurisdictions or otherwise rely on sub-contractors located in other jurisdictions. By contracting with us for the services, you explicitly consent to this transfer of data.

If your personal data is to be transferred from within South Africa to outside South Africa, we will only make that transfer if the country to which the personal data is to be transferred ensures an adequate level of protection for personal data and appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We will usually hold your personal information as a customer for the period we are required to retain this information by applicable law or for statistical purposes, unless you have told us you want us to delete the information earlier.

We keep personal information provided during a storage quote for as long as necessary for analytical purposes.

What rights do you have?

You have the right to:

  • Ask what personal information we hold about you;
  • Ask what information was sent to our suppliers, service providers or any other third party;
  • Ask us to update, correct or delete any out-of-date or incorrect personal information we hold about you;
  • Unsubscribe from any direct marketing communications we may send you;
  • Object to the processing of your personal information;
  • Lodge a complaint to the Information Regulator.

It can take us up to 21 days to respond to your request.

If you want us to delete all personal information we have about you, you may have to terminate all agreements you have with us. We cannot maintain our relationship with you without having some of your personal information.

We can refuse to delete your information if we are required by law to retain it or if we need it to protect our rights.

How to contact us

If you wish to contact us, please send an email to feedback@stor-age.co.za or call us on 021 671 3233.

You will need to provide proof of your identity and inform us of the information to which your request relates.