Privacy policy.

Who is responsible for your information

Sun Savings is the responsible party for the personal information collected through this website. We install and finance solar systems in the Western Cape and we are the people who will contact you about an enquiry you send us.

Questions about your information, including anything on this page, go to our information officer at sales@sunsavings.co.za, or by phone on (021) 879-5374 during office hours. You can also write to us at 4 Loop Street, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000.

What we collect, and exactly where

There are three forms on this site and they are the only places it asks you for anything. Nothing is collected in the background, and there is no account to create.

The enquiry form on the home page asks for your first name, last name, email address and contact number, all required, and optionally your current monthly electricity bill and any notes you want to add.

The contact form asks for your first name, last name, contact number, email address and a subject, all required, and an optional message.

The form on the solutions page asks for your email address, and optionally which solution interests you, whether you own or rent the property, your monthly bill and your suburb or town.

Alongside whatever you type, our host records the ordinary technical details every web server sees, including your IP address, the browser you used and the pages you requested.

The savings calculator does not send anything

The calculator is worth singling out, because typing your electricity bill into a box looks exactly like submitting a form. It is not. The figure you enter is used inside your own browser to pick the package that matches it. It is never transmitted to us, never stored, and disappears when you close or reload the page.

If you then choose to send an enquiry and fill your bill into the enquiry form, that figure does reach us, because you sent it.

Why we collect it

To answer you. A solar enquiry cannot be answered generically: the monthly figure depends on how much electricity you currently use, and whether a system suits you depends on the property. We use what you send to size a system, prepare a quote and arrange a site visit.

The lawful ground is that the information is necessary to take the steps you asked for before any agreement is concluded, and that we have a legitimate interest in replying to somebody who contacted us. We do not use your details for automated decision-making, and we do not build a profile of you.

Whether you have to give it

No. Every form on this site is voluntary and you are free to phone us instead. The fields marked as required are required only in the sense that we cannot do anything useful without them: an enquiry with no email address and no phone number is one we have no way to answer.

If you would rather not fill anything in, (021) 879-5374 reaches the same team.

Who else sees it

We do not sell your information, we do not rent it, and we do not add you to an advertising list or pass you to a lead broker. It is shared only where it has to be for the thing you asked us to do:

• The Sun Savings team who respond to enquiries, quote and install.
• Our hosting and email providers, who carry the message in transit and deliver it to our inbox. They process it on our instruction and do not use it for their own purposes.
• The registered credit provider behind a rent to own agreement, but only if you decide to apply for one. Credit applications are separate from this website, and that provider will be named to you before you apply. Nothing you send through this site is passed to them automatically.

When it leaves South Africa

This site is served from an international content network, and our email is handled by providers whose infrastructure sits outside South Africa. That means your enquiry may be processed in another country on the way to us.

POPIA allows this where the receiving party is bound to a standard of protection comparable to South African law. We use established providers who contract to that standard, and we do not transfer your information anywhere for any other reason.

How long we keep it

An enquiry that does not turn into an installation is kept for no longer than 24 months, so that we have context if you come back to us, and is then deleted.

If you become a customer, we keep the records connected to your system and your agreement for as long as that agreement runs, and afterwards for the period that South African tax and company law requires financial records to be retained.

You can ask us to delete your details sooner, and unless the law requires us to keep a particular record, we will.

How it is kept safe

The whole site is served over HTTPS, so anything you type is encrypted in transit. There is no customer database attached to this website and no login: the site itself stores nothing about you, and an enquiry is forwarded to our inbox rather than held here.

Inside the business, access to enquiries is limited to the people who need it to do the work. No system is perfectly secure, and we will tell you and the Information Regulator if a breach ever affects your information, as POPIA requires.

Your rights, and how to use them

POPIA gives you real and specific rights over your information. You can:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and who we have given it to.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete information we no longer have grounds to keep.
• Object to us processing your information, on reasonable grounds.
• Withdraw your consent to marketing at any time, without affecting anything you asked us to do before that.
• Complain to the Information Regulator.

Making a request

Email sales@sunsavings.co.za and say what you want. You do not need to use particular wording or fill in a form to ask us informally, and we will not charge you to correct or delete something.

We may ask you to confirm who you are before we hand over information, which protects you rather than us. We aim to come back to you inside 30 days, and if a request is going to take longer we will say so and why. A formal access request under PAIA is also open to you, and we will explain that route if you want it.

Complaining to the Information Regulator

If you think we have handled your information badly, you are entitled to complain to the Information Regulator directly. You do not have to raise it with us first, though we would rather you did, because most things are quicker to fix than to adjudicate.

Information Regulator (South Africa), Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191. Email enquiries@inforegulator.org.za, telephone 010 023 5200, toll free 0800 017 160.

Changes to this policy

If what we do with your information changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. We will not quietly start using information you already gave us for something new without telling you.