Privacy Policy & Cookies

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

This privacy notice applies to Symbio Energy Limited, which is operated by the following data controllers: Symbio Energy Limited with Registration Number No. 07999360.

Our Contact Address is GPF Lewis House, Olds Approach, Tolpits Lane, Watford, WD18 9AB

When we so mention “Symbio Energy”, “we”, “us” or “our”, we are referring to the relevant group company responsible for processing your data. We refer to “Symbio Energy”, as “we”, “us”, and “our”, throughout the notice below. By “you” or “your” we mean any individual, sole trader, company and/or partnership that receives services from us, uses our website or otherwise interacts with Symbio Energy Limited.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you and those activities are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which applies across the European Union .We are responsible as “data controller” of that personal information under GDPR.

Please read this notice carefully as it provides important information about how we handle your personal information and the steps you can take to control it.

If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

Symbio Energy will never willfully disclose any personally identifiable information about our online audience to any third party without first receiving the user’s permission. We do not collect personally identifiable information from our visitors other than what is supplied to us on a voluntary basis.

Visitors to the Symbio Energy Web Site may voluntarily supply certain personally identifiable information in connection with the enquiry forms and the services advertised on the website.

Our site may contain links to other sites whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

Symbio Energy may use such information only for conducting the activities stated above, for internal marketing and promotional purposes.

If the visitor does not want this information collected and used by us for the disclosed internal purposes, the visitor is given an opportunity to ‘opt-out.’ Our visitors need to recognize, however, that under certain circumstances, if they select to ‘opt-out’ they may not be eligible for certain activities for which the personally identifiable information is needed. If the visitors wish to opt-out please write to us or email us at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

We, or third parties on our behalf, collect your personal information when you use our website, communicate with us by phone, letter, email, and social media or in person, receive our products and/or services, or request to join schemes which you are eligible for.

We may collect the following personal information and we refer to this as “personal information” throughout this notice:

your name; title, billing address; supply address; telephone numbers; e-mail addresses;   alternate contact (e.g. name and phone number); energy usage (e.g. meter readings and  electricity units used over a period of time);  financial information (e.g. bank account details); contract details;  tariff details; personal requirements and lifestyle; permissions (e.g. we will record if you have consented to e-mail marketing); your preferences (e.g. if you would prefer paperless billing);  if you are a landlord or tenant; your Meter Point Administration Number (MPAN) to identify your electricity supply; your IP address, if we suspect that someone has committed fraud or stolen energy, e.g. by tampering with a meter or diverting the energy supply, we will record that information; your customer account number the date of your application.

We need this personal information so we can provide services and/or products to you.  If you don’t provide us with that personal information you may not be able to access certain products and/or services.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We, or third parties on our behalf, collect, use and store the personal information collected about you to:

Provide services, benefits, and rewards; respond to any enquiries or issues you have;  Identify you; detect and prevent crime, fraud or loss; contact you, or authorised third parties, about our services and/or products, such as sending you information when you sign up or change tariffs, service announcements and administrative messages; Train our staff and improve our products and services, which may mean that we monitor and record communications that we have with you including phone conversations, emails; conduct, advice tailored to your needs or lifestyle; Make decisions about the products and/or services and terms and conditions that we can offer to you e.g. if you ask for certain tariffs we will assess if anything prevents us from offering that tariff to you; Make personal projections about the amount of energy you are likely to use in a given period; Use information collected from your visit to our website for administrative purposes; for troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and statistical and survey purposes; to ensure content is presented in an effective manner; and to enable you to participate in interactive features; Use data collected from your smart meter to enable us to work out your bills and to identify and prevent fraud or energy theft. Respond to or resolve any enquiries or requests that you may have from social media; Enable internal corporate reporting, business administration, adequate insurance coverage, the security of company facilities, research and development, and to identify and implement business efficiencies; Comply with any procedures, laws and regulations which apply to us – including where we reasonably consider it is in our (or others) legitimate interests to comply; and Establish, exercise or defend our legal rights – including where we reasonably consider it is in our (or others) legitimate interests. If you elect to either go on our Priority Services Register or you agree for us to record details of your health etc. we need your consent to do so. We may share information about your circumstances with agents and service providers (like metering companies) who carry out services on our behalf. If you agree we may also share your information with energy distributors and transporters so they can tailor their services to help you e.g. if there is a power loss.

We may contact you in writing, by phone and (where you have consented) via email or SMS with information on products, services and rewards offered by Symbio Energy, identified at the time we collect your information.

Your email may be used to show you digital advertisements via your social media newsfeed, on search engine results pages, or on other websites. Unless, you have asked us not to.

Your data may be profiled by us, to provide you with marketing and offers that are relevant to you.  If you opt out of profiling, we will still run analysis that includes your data, but any decisions or marketing output that result from that analysis will not be used to market to you. The generic marketing that we send may not be relevant to you. To opt out of receiving marketing messages, or to object to our use of profiling for direct marketing purposes, contact us on 0800 206 2330 or email us at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

With your consent, we will use the information that we collect about your (or a member of your household’s) requirements for your welfare (e.g. due to age, health, disability or financial circumstances), to:

ensure your welfare and the welfare of other householders e.g. ensuring we do not stop your supply and can respond appropriately during a major incident or emergency situation; provide products and/or services to you in the most appropriate way e.g. if you require large print or braille communications; manage staff and third party contractors;.

With your consent, we may also share this information with the following individuals or organisations:

other energy suppliers if we believe you are considering changing supplier as part of the Energy Retail Association ‘safety net procedures’; relevant metering agents or network operators; and/or other relevant organisations, such as emergency responders or local authorities, which may be able to provide support.

We use details of any criminal offences you have been accused of, together with information about whether the electricity supply to your property has been tampered with or stolen in the past (or if we suspect that it has), for the following purposes:

To make decisions about what products and services we can offer you, and the relevant terms and conditions; to make decisions about whether to disconnect you; and To detect and prevent fraud or crime in collaboration with the relevant third parties.

Information we receive from third party sources

We also receive your personal information from the following third party sources:

• Other electricity suppliers– including meter readings, equipment and payments from your existing energy supplier when you ask to switch your account to us. We may also receive details of suspected fraud or energy theft for the purposes of identifying and preventing fraud or crime;
• Metering Agents and Data Collectors – we collect information from third party data providers, These customer insights help us to plan our marketing activities and conduct market research and business development;
• Councils, local authorities or housing associations– we may receive your name, address and contact details where they would like carbon-saving measures applied to your property under relevant government funding schemes;
• Letting agents, landlords, cohabitants or previous tenants– if you have recently moved into a rental property that we supply energy to or if that third party introduces you to Symbio Energy Ltd., for the purposes of setting up your account;
• Ofgem– as a regulated entity, we may receive your personal information from our regulator, Ofgem, in order to satisfy our regulatory obligations;
• Law enforcement agencies(such as the police) to identify and prevent fraud or crime;
• Symbio Energy group companies– for internal administrative purposes such as ensuring consistent delivery of our services to customers;
• Third party introducers(such as price comparison websites) to set up an account for you and to provide the services that you have requested; and

Legal Bases for Processing

We’ve assessed that the legal bases for using your personal information as set out in this notice are as follows:

Contract – use of your personal information is necessary to perform our obligations under any contract we have with you; or

Legal Obligations – our use of your personal information is necessary for complying with our legal obligations; or Our Legitimate Interests – to:

operate and develop our business further, detect and prevent fraud; Enhance the security of our network and information systems; Ensure that our own processes, procedures and systems are as efficient as possible; Better understand how people interact with our website; Analyse and enhance the information that we collect; Determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and advertising; and  Enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services and communications for the benefit of our customers.

Consent – In the following specific circumstances we rely on your consent to use your personal information in a particular way:

• We use information about vulnerabilities to ensure the welfare of you or your household, or to provide our products and services in the most appropriate way for you; or to send you marketing information by email.

If you have previously provided us consent for using your personal information but have now changed your mind please write to us or email us at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

Sharing your personal information

We will share your personal information with the following categories of third parties:

• any company that is an affiliate of the Symbio Energy group;
• where appropriate, family members or cohabitants, previous tenants, landlords, or letting agentswho/which may require information about you or your premises, or who introduced you to Symbio Energy;
• our third party suppliers, partners and sub-contractorsthat provide, review and/or receive services in relation to our website, services and/or products, which include: payment processors; suppliers of technical, support and installation services; insurers; logistics providers; security providers; cloud services providers; research agencies; broadband and phone line suppliers; and, if you are entitled to claim government  funding for energy efficiency measures, installers, energy performance assessors and sales advisers.
• if we’re under a duty to disclose your information in order to comply with any legal obligation, government or law enforcement officialsas may be required to meet national security or law enforcement requirements or prevent illegal activity;
• Other energy suppliers– if you choose to leave us, we’ll share your information with the other suppliers to assist the switching process, including energy usage and any debts on the account.  We may also share your personal information where they carry out services for us, e.g. if they carry out meter readings at your property for us;
• regulators or other legally appointed bodies(such as Ofgem) for legal or regulatory purposes, e.g. if requested we may send your information to Ofgem to prove that you qualify for relevant government funded schemes;
• companies or partner organisationswhich provide services in relation to, or use information as part of, market research;
• third parties that help us with advertising and marketing.For example, we share limited personal information with the following third parties who serve advertising on their platforms on our behalf: Facebook and Google Adwords;
• relevant metering agents or network operators;
• debt collection and tracing agentsif we provide you with services and you fail to make payments;
• authorised third parties or named account holderson any account you hold with us;
• if we sell, merge, or perform any internal re-organisations in relation to any of our (or any third party’s) business or assets, the personal information will be one of the transferred assets to the relevant buyer and/or new data controllerof such business or assets;
• any third partywhere required to:

enforce or apply our terms and conditions or any other agreement or to respond to any claims, to protect our rights or the rights of a third party, to protect the safety of any person or to prevent any illegal activity; and protect the rights, property or safety of Symbio Energy, our staff, customers or others.

• credit reference agencies 

Where it is necessary to credit check you, we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and they will give us information about you, such as about your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace and recover debts and prevent criminal activity. We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an on-going 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 www.experian.co.uk/crain/index.html.

• fraud prevention agencies

To help us identify fraud and energy theft, we will give details of your account to fraud prevention agencies who will use the information to check public and other databases they hold and may provide information to us to help identify fraud and energy theft. Checks will be performed on a regular basis whilst you hold an account with us.

If we suspect or can confirm theft of energy has occurred, a record will be kept by fraud prevention agencies which may include sensitive information about alleged criminal offences. The fraud prevention agencies may provide the information to other energy companies to help identify fraud and detect energy theft but only in limited circumstances where you have accounts with them. Where theft has been identified, your account terms may change, but we will notify you separately if this is the case.

Personal information transferred outside of the EEA

• We, or a third party who we share personal information with, may host, store and handle that personal information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
• We will only permit this to happen if adequate safeguards have been put in place to protect your personal information.
• This means that we will:
  • ensure that the country in which your personal information will be handled has been deemed “adequate” by the European Commission under Article 45 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR);
  • include standard data protection clauses approved by the European Commission for transferring personal information outside the EEA into our contracts with those third parties (these are the clauses approved under Article 46.2 of the GDPR); or
  • (in the case of transfers from the EEA to the USA), ensure that the recipient of the personal information has certified with the US-EU Privacy Shield Framework, as permitted by Article 46.2 of the GPDR.

HOW LONG DO WE HOLD YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We keep your personal information for no longer than is necessary of the purposes for which the personal information is processed. The length of time we retain it for depends on the purposes for which we use it and/or as required to comply with applicable laws and to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.

This means that some of your personal information will be kept for a short time e.g. we may keep copies of correspondence and complaints for up to three years following resolution. Other information may be kept for a longer period of time, e.g. we keep details of your address for a period of up to six years after your account has settled (but for a shorter period if that is possible).

HOW WILL WE CHANGE THIS PRIVACY NOTICE?

We may update our privacy notice from time to time. Any changes we make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on the Symbio Energy website and, where appropriate, notified to you by post or email.

What choices and rights do you have in relation to your personal information?

You may contact us using the contact details provided below to request that we:

• confirm whether your personal information is being processed;
• provide you with further details about how we process your personal information;
• provide you with a copy of any personal information which we hold about you;
• where we rely on your consent as a legal basis to justify using your personal information, withdraw your consent to that use;
• consider any valid objection to the processing of your personal information (including the right to object to processing where we are relying on our legitimate interests as a legal basis for processing);
• ask us to update or delete personal data which we hold about you;
• restrict the way that we process your personal data;
• consider any valid request to transfer your personal data relating to an energy account to a third party provider of services (data portability); and
• where we carry out automated decision-making that has legal or similarly significant effects on you, ensure that we manually review that decision, provide an explanation of that decision and/or consider your appeal of that decision.

However, certain personal information may be exempt from those requests in certain circumstances, which may include needing to keep processing your personal information for our legitimate interests or to comply with a legal obligation.

If an exemption applies, we will tell you this when responding to your request.

We may ask you to provide us with information necessary to confirm your identity before responding.

By using this site, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this Symbio Energy Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use the site. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time.

From time to time, Symbio Energy may update this privacy notice. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personally identifiable information by placing a notice on our site. We encourage you to periodically check back and review this policy so that you always will know what information we collect, how we use it, and to whom we disclose it to. Your continued use of the Symbio Energy Web Site following the posting of any changes to these terms shall mean that you have accepted those changes.

Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please email us at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:

• whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used by anybody for direct marketing purposes
• if you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us at info@symbioenergy.co.uk.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write thought a form on contact us page.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

If you would like to contact us in relation to your rights or if you are unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please give us a call on 0800 206 2330

If you would like to contact our Data Protection Officer, you may do so using the following details:

Email:operations@symbioenergy.co.uk
Phone:08002062330
Postal: Symbio Energy, GPF Lewis House, Olds Approach, Tolpits Lane, WD18 9AB

If you’re not satisfied with our response to any complaint or believe our processing of your information does not comply with data protection law, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) using the following details:

Address: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Telephone number: 0303 123 1113

Website: www.ico.org.uk

RELATED LINKS

Terms and Conditions

http://symbioenergy.co.uk/terms-conditions/

Complaints

http://symbioenergy.co.uk/complains/