Privacy Policy

Heffernan Electrical Automation (HEA Group) is a licensed electrical contractor based in Bendigo, Victoria. REC 37307. We handle your personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

When you enquire, book a consultation or become a customer, we may collect:

• Your name, email address, phone number and the address of the property
• Details about your home — roof, switchboard, appliances, household size
• A copy of your electricity bill, if you choose to send one
• Your National Meter Identifier (NMI) and, with your written consent, your electricity interval data from your distributor
• Photographs of your property that you send us, or that we take on site
• Records of our conversations, including website chat and Messenger
• Basic technical information about your visit to this website — the page you arrived on, the site or advertisement that referred you, and your browser type

To size and quote a system around your actual electricity usage rather than an average; to design and install it; to meet our obligations for grid connection, electrical safety and rebate applications; and to stay in touch with you about your job.

Your interval data is only ever obtained with the written consent you sign, and only for sizing your system.

We share the minimum needed, with the providers that run parts of our business. Several are located overseas, which means your information may be disclosed outside Australia.

We never sell your information, and we never pass it to another solar company or lead broker.

We advertise on Facebook and Instagram. If you arrive here from one of our advertisements, we record which one, so we can tell what's worth paying for. If you then enquire, we may tell Meta that the advertisement led to an enquiry.

When we do, your email address and phone number are hashed first — converted into a scrambled string that cannot be turned back into your details. We do this so the advertising is measurable without handing over a readable customer list.

We do not send Meta your electricity bill, your usage data, your photos, your quote or anything about the work itself.

You can limit ad tracking in your Facebook and Instagram settings, and in your browser and phone settings, at any time. Doing so does not affect your enquiry or your job in any way.

For as long as we need it to do your job and to meet our legal obligations — electrical and safety records have retention periods set by law. Enquiries that don't turn into jobs are kept while there's a reasonable chance of picking the conversation back up, then removed.

An electricity bill you attach to a website chat is a special case: it is forwarded to us by email and then deleted from the website's storage within seven days. The website is a courier for it, not a filing cabinet.

Access is limited to the people who need it — for most jobs, that's Jesse and Alexis. Our systems are password-protected and access is logged. No system is perfectly secure, but we don't collect what we don't need, which is the most effective protection there is.

You can, at any time:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct anything that's wrong
• Ask us to delete it, where we're not required by law to keep it
• Withdraw your consent for us to access your electricity interval data
• Ask us to stop contacting you

Email hea.trades@gmail.com or call 0481 267 812. We'll respond within 30 days.

Tell us first and we'll try to sort it out. If you're still not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

If we change how we handle your information — including adding a new provider to the table above — we'll update this page and change the date at the top.