1. BERNINA Australia privacy policy
1.1 General information
Bernina Australia Pty Ltd ACN 003 227 629, its subsidiaries and affiliates in Australia (hereinafter referred to collectively as “BERNINA”) are committed to managing your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and other applicable privacy laws and regulations.
In this Privacy Policy, “we” and “us” refers to BERNINA and “you” refers to any individual about whom we collect personal information.
This Privacy Policy, in conjunction with the Terms and Conditions of Use, forms the basis for our treatment of your personal information on bernina.com and inspiration.bernina.com. The paragraphs below provide information about the type of user information collected by BERNINA and how this information is used.
This Privacy Policy, and the Terms and Conditions of Use of the website, may be amended from time to time with or without notice to you. Each time you access or visit the website, the versions of our Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions of Use accessible at that time shall apply. Please visit this page every time you visit our website to view the latest versions of our Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy.
By using this website, you acknowledge and consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as stated in this Privacy Policy.
1.2 How does this policy apply to residents of countries other than Australia?
These Online Services are designed exclusively for users located in Australia. If you are located outside Australia, please select your applicable local BERNINA website with respect to your local laws and applicable privacy policy terms and conditions (https://www.bernina.com/en-AU/Footer-en-AU/Country-Selector/Find-a-country). If you are located outside of Australia and you continue to use this website, you accept that your local laws and privacy policy terms and conditions will not apply.
2. What personal information is collected by BERNINA?
When you enquire about our services or when you become our customer, a record is made which includes your personal information.
The type of personal information that we collect will vary depending on the circumstances of collection and the kind of service that you request from us, but will typically include:
- your name, e-mail, postal address, telephone number and other contact details;
- information about your employer or an organisation who you represent; or
- any other personal information you choose to provide to us, or authorise us to collect, as part of your interaction with us.
Importantly, we do
not automatically collect the above personal information when you visit our website. We will only collect the above personal information which you
voluntarily provide us, for example if you:
- fill in a form on our website;
- subscribe to or purchase our products or services;
- correspond with us by email; or
- make contact with us in any other way via the site.
BERNINA may collect personal information about other individuals who are not our customers, such as members of the public who participate in our events, our third party service providers, suppliers and contractors, and other individuals who interact with us on a commercial basis. The personal information we collect in relation to these individuals will depend on the capacity in which we deal with them, and may include such personal information as their names, contact details, and information regarding our interactions and transactions with them.
BERNINA will provide individuals with a reasonable opportunity to remain anonymous or to use a pseudonym in their interactions with us, provided it is lawful and practicable to do so (for example, when a customer makes a general enquiry). However, generally it is not practicable for BERNINA to deal with individuals anonymously or pseudonymously on an ongoing basis. If we do not collect personal information about you, you may have difficulties accessing or utilising our services to the fullest extent.
3. Use of cookies on our website
BERNINA constantly strives to make our website more interesting for all our users. For this reason, statistical visitor data is collected each time the website is visited by a user to establish which pages of the website are visited most frequently by each user. This includes the collection of data regarding the browser, operating system, weblogs and other connection data used by the user, irrespective of whether its collection is required for our or other purposes. In this context, it is sometimes necessary to use cookies.
Cookies are small pieces of text information, which are stored by your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) on your computer's hard drive. These cookies are completely anonymised and contain no personal information. Most of the cookies used by BERNINA are deleted from your hard drive at the end of the browser session (so-called session cookies). Other cookies remain on your computer and make it possible for BERNINA to recognize your computer the next time you visit (so-called permanent cookies). Cookies simplify your use of the BERNINA website and are used to make the BERNINA website pleasant and easier to use. They are used, for example, in the Welcome involving your user name, make it easier to fill in forms with your data and remember your language selection or products in the shopping cart.
At no time is spy software installed or used to gain access to data and information stored on your computer.
Cookies make it easier for you to use the BERNINA website and contain no personal information about the user. Most browsers automatically accept cookies. However, you can configure your browser so that it does not accept or store cookies. Details of how to do this can be found in the operating instructions or help files of your browser.
If you opt out of the use of cookies, your ability to use every function on this website to its fullest extent could be limited.
4. Why does BERNINA collect my personal information and for what purpose?
BERNINA only collects personal information where it is reasonably necessary in order for us to carry out our business, to provide products or services to customers, and to assess and manage our customers’ needs. We may also collect personal information for certain administrative functions in connection with these services.
The purpose for which we may collect, use and disclose your personal information will depend upon the nature of our interaction with you, and may include any of the following:
- responding to requests for information and other general enquiries;
- researching, developing and expanding our products and services;
- informing you of our activities, events, products and services;
- responding to customer enquires and complaints;
- administering billing, payments and debt recovery;
- planning, managing, monitoring and evaluating our products and services;
- quality assurance and improvement;
- statistical analysis and reporting;
- obtaining advice from consultants and other professional advisers; and
- other uses and disclosures explained at the time of collection or otherwise as set out in this Privacy Policy.
We may collect your personal information by phone, by email, over the internet or in person. We may also collect personal information about you from other sources, such as:
- our related or associated entities; and/or
- third party suppliers and contractors who assist us to operate our business.
We also collect and use personal information for market research purposes and to improve the products and services we deliver to our customers. We may use or disclose your personal information for the purposes of informing you about our products or services, any upcoming promotions and events, and any other opportunities that we think may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive such marketing communications, you can opt-out at any time by unsubscribing from the emails or contacting our Privacy Officer (details below).
The personal information which you provide to BERNINA as a user of our website may be used by BERNINA and its related or associated entities (located in Australia and overseas) in order to improve the BERNINA website and to provide individual support to the user. This may include sending information, offers or notifications to you regarding BERNINA's products and services. BERNINA and its related and associated entities will use your personal information strictly in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable laws and regulations, and we will not disclose your personal information to third parties except in accordance with this Privacy Policy, where you have consented to such disclosure, and where permitted or required by law.
BERNINA may disclose your personal information to third parties we engage to provide our services, including contractors and service providers used for data processing, data analysis, customer satisfaction surveys, information technology services and support, website maintenance/development, printing, archiving, mail-outs, and market research.
The anonymized data that is retained when accessing our website via cookies can be used for such purposes in conjunction with our third party service providers. As a result, these third parties can - to a limited extent - themselves collect personal data about BERNINA users, provided that they recognize them, for instance, by means of their own cookies or logins.
4.1 Google Analytics
The BERNINA website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics uses so-called "cookies", text files that are stored on your computer and enable your use of the website to be analysed. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website is usually transmitted to and stored on a Google server in the USA. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics will not be merged with other Google data. BERNINA has also activated the "anonymizeIP" configuration for Google Analytics on this website. This ensures that IP addresses are processed in truncated form, to prevent specific users from being identified. Only in exceptional cases will the full IP address be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and truncated there.
Google will use this information on behalf of BERNINA to analyse your use of the website for BERNINA, to compile reports regarding website activity and to provide other services related to website and Internet usage (in particular functions for display advertising, such as remarketing, reports on Google Display Network impressions, DoubleClick Campaign manager integration and Google Analytics demographic and interest reports).
Under certain circumstances, Google may analyse your usage behaviour over several end devices (PC, smartphone, tablet etc.) and evaluate it for BERNINA using so-called cross-device functions. For this, Google may link information generated by the respective end devices for the purpose of personalised advertising with other such data and with data from your Google Account, if you have a Google Account and your preferences are set to allow Google to link the browsing history to the Google Account and use information from the Google Account to personalise the advertising you receive.
You can prevent Google Analytics cookies from being stored on your computer by selecting the relevant settings in your browser. However, please note that, if you do this, you may not be able to utilise the full functionality of this website. You can also prevent Google from collecting and processing the data generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available from the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
As an alternative to the browser plug-in or in browsers on mobile devices, you can click the following link to set an opt-out cookie that will prevent Google Analytics data collection from this website in the future (this opt-out cookie only works in this browser and for this domain; if you delete your cookies in this browser, you will have to click this link again): Click here to set your opt-out cookie.
4.2 Google AdWords conversion tracking
This website also uses Google AdWords conversion tracking, a web analysis service by Google, Inc., for improving the website and the advertising activities. The cookie for conversion tracking is set when a user clicks on an ad controlled by Google. These cookies become invalid after 30 days and are not used for personal identification. If you visit certain pages of our website within these 30 days, both we and Google in the USA can recognize that you clicked on the ad and were routed to this site. Every Google AdWords customer gets a different cookie. As a result, cookies cannot be tracked via the websites of AdWords customers. The information obtained by conversion cookies is used to generate conversion statistics for us. We learn the total number of users who clicked on our ad and were routed to our site. However, we do not receive any information by which you can be personally identified.
If you do not want to participate in the tracking, you can simply disable the Google conversion tracking cookie in your web browser's user settings. In that case you are not included in the conversion tracking statistics. Additional setting options can be found on the web page about disabling Google ads at https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/.
4.3 Use of A/B testing by Visual Website Optimizer
Less frequently, the BERNINA website uses the Visual Website Optimizer web analysis service by Wingify Software Private Limited, Inc., which is used for A/B and multi-version tests. This service uses cookies to identify a user's browser and to analyze the use of this website. The cookies placed by Visual Website Optimizerv do not collect personal data.
More information about how Visual Website Optimizer processes your data can be found at https://vwo.com/privacy-policy/. You can disable Visual Website Optimizer tracking at any time by following the instructions at https://vwo.com/opt-out/.
4.4 Web shop inspiration.bernina.com
If you wish to order something from our web shop, in order to conclude the contract, you are required to provide the personal data necessary to process your order (mandatory information). The mandatory information required to process the order is marked separately; all other information is voluntary. We process the data you provide for the purpose of processing your order.
You can also voluntarily create a customer account, enabling us to save your data for further purchases. When you create a customer account, the optional data you have provided and your previous purchases will be stored unless consent is revoked. One of the advantages of this is that you can download digital content you have purchased (e.g. a digital edition of our customer magazine) from your customer account at any time.
If you order print media, we will pass on your details to Medienwerkstatt AG, Steinackerstrasse 8, 8583 Sulgen, Switzerland. Medienwerkstatt AG is responsible for shipping single issues ordered and issues covered by a subscription. If you pay by credit card or PayPal, we will pass on your payment details to the payment service provider SIX Payment Services AG, Hardturmstrasse 201, 8021 Zürich, Switzerland. Credit card information is stored and processed exclusively by SIX Payment Services AG. BERNINA does not save or process your credit card information. If you choose to pay by invoice, the invoice will be issued by Medienwerkstatt AG.
Due to commercial and tax regulations, we are obliged to save your address, payment and order data for a period of ten years. Your data will be deleted when the purpose for which the data was collected no longer applies and there is no legal basis for its continued storage. In your customer account, you can edit or delete all optional data yourself under "Addresses" or "Profile data". Your entire customer account can be deleted on request (which you can send to [email protected], for example). More information about your information and consent revocation rights is available in Section 9 of this privacy policy.
If you open a customer account, we will link the data you provided when you opened the account and the purchases made with other information that we have stored about you in a customer profile. In doing so, we comply with the principle of purpose limitation and only link data that has been collected for the same purposes (e.g. for personalized advertising).
4.5 Does Bernina transmit your personal information overseas?
BERNINA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bernina International AG, a company located in Switzerland.
The personal information we collect is transmitted and stored on servers located in Austria. The information will be treated in Switzerland in accordance with the applicable Swiss data protection regulations. However, the information may be processed outside of Switzerland by personnel working for us or for our suppliers. Unless you consent otherwise, or an exception applies under the Australian Privacy Principles, we will only disclose your personal information to overseas recipients where we have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients will not breach the Australian Privacy Principles in relation to your personal information.
5. Social media content
BERNINA may use social media plugins, e.g. by Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, on this website. These platforms have their own privacy policies over which BERNINA has no control.
If you are logged in at a social media provider's site while simultaneously visiting our site, the possibility of the provider matching the visit to your network account cannot be ruled out. If you use the plugin functions (e.g. clicking on the "Like" button, posting a comment), this information is similarly transmitted from your browser directly to the particular social network and possibly stored there. The purpose and the extent of the collection, further processing and use of the data by the networks can be found in the privacy policy notices of Facebook, Twitter and Google.
If the user does not want any of these plugins to be loaded, it is recommended to log out of the particular social media service. In addition, various browsers can be set or upgraded with add-ons (e.g. Facebook blocker) so that the social media plugins are not loaded.
6. Children as users of the website
A note to children and their parents: children are increasingly using the Internet. Parents should ensure that their children do not submit any personal information about themselves or their parents to BERNINA. However, if personal information is transmitted by children to BERNINA, we ask parents to contact BERNINA if they want the information to be deleted. The relevant information will then be deleted as soon as possible.
7. Data security
BERNINA stores your personal information in paper or electronic form. Electronic records are stored on secure databases (including trusted third party storage providers based in Australia and overseas). BERNINA will only cooperate with third party service providers and internet service providers who implement appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal information.
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We maintain computer and network security through, for example, the use of firewalls (security measures for the internet) and other security systems such as user identifiers and passwords to control access to our IT systems.
Unfortunately, the transmission of data over the Internet is not absolutely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of the data transmitted by you as a user, and our websites do not necessarily use encryption or other technologies to ensure the secure transmission of information via the internet. Any transmission of data is undertaken at your own risk. We encourage all users of our websites to exercise care when transmitting their personal information over the internet, and to install the latest up-to-date anti-virus software.
We will also take steps to destroy or de-identify users’ personal information where we no longer require it.
8. Data breaches
If we become aware of, or have reasonable grounds to suspect that, an eligible data breach has occurred within the meaning of the Privacy Act, we shall as soon as practicable take reasonable steps to notify you of such data breach, the nature of the personal information that has or may have been leaked or disclosed, and any recommendations we have about the steps you should take to safeguard your information. We will also provide a copy of this notice to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). If it is not practicable for us to notify you individually (if, for example, it is a large data breach affecting many users), we will as soon as practicable publish a copy of the notice on our website.
9. Your right to seek access to, and correction of, your personal information
You are entitled to request access to your personal information held by BERNINA. To request access, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below. You can also request a copy of your personal information held by our parent company BERNINA International AG. Please send all requests in writing to BERNINA International AG, Seestrasse 161, 8266 Steckborn, Switzerland, or by email to [email protected].
You will not be charged a fee for making a request to access your personal information. However, you may be charged a fee for the reasonable time and expenses incurred by us in compiling the information at your request.
We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. Please notify us as soon as possible if you discover any errors or discrepancies in the personal information we hold about you, or if your personal details change.
If you believe any personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, you may request correction or rectification of the information. After receiving such a request from you, we will take reasonable steps to correct your information.
We may decline your request for access to, or correction of, your personal information under certain circumstances in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles. If we do refuse your request, we will provide you with written reasons for our decision.
10. What should you do if you have a complaint about our handling of your personal information?
You may contact us at any time if you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or the way in which your personal information has been or may be collected, used or handled.
You may make a complaint to our Privacy Officer, whose contact details are set out below.
The Privacy Officer will first consider your complaint and determine what steps can be taken to resolve your complaint. We will aim to respond to your complaint within one week.
If your complaint requires detailed consideration or investigation, we will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within one week, and we will endeavour to complete our investigation promptly. We may ask you to provide further information about your complaint and the outcome you are seeking.
In most cases, we will investigate and respond to your complaint within 30 days of our receipt of the complaint; however, more complex complaints may take longer to investigate.
If you are unsatisfied with our response to your complaint, or if you believe BERNINA may have breached the Australian Privacy Principles or the Privacy Act, you may lodge a complaint with the OAIC. The OAIC can be contacted through their website www.oaic.gov.au.
11. Who should you contact at BERNINA?
Please refer all enquiries or complaints in respect of this Privacy Policy to:
Privacy Officer
BERNINA Australia Pty Ltd
Unit 10 / 15 Carrington Rd
Castle Hill NSW 2154
[email protected]
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 30 April 2020.