Customer Privacy Policy
Effective from:
Published at:
This Policy sets out how Volvo Cars collects, stores, holds, processes, transfers, uses and discloses personal information in accordance with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Chapter 486, Laws of Hong Kong) (“PDPO”).
The PDPO govern the use of “personal information”, which is information that relates to a living individual and can be used to identify that individual. It must also exist in a form which access to or processing of is practicable.
This Policy describes the information that the PDPO requires us to communicate to all of our customers. We hope it helps you understand how we handle your personal information and deliver the protection that the PDPO affords. Please keep it for future reference.
Volvo Cars
In this document 'Volvo Cars’ refers to Volvo Car Corporation (company registration number 556074-3089 and registered address at Assar Gabrielssons Väg, SE-405 31, Gothenburg, Sweden). Volvo Cars distributes and sells a range of vehicles and related products in Hong Kong through local importer, Wearnes Motors (HK) Limited.
Your personal information
Personal information held by Volvo Cars about you may include:
- Name*
- title*
- telephone numbers*
- e-mail address*
- car model*
- car registration No.*
- preferred contact method*
- type(s) of work required*
- preferred date*
- gender
- date of birth
- address
- social media profiles
- purchase details
- driving licence number and state
- business registration number
- warranty and service transaction information provided by our dealer network, affiliates or third parties
- employment application information
- any other relevant information
*mandatory personal information
If you choose not to provide us with your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with the services you require, or the level of service on which we pride ourselves.
How we collect personal information
Volvo Cars collects personal information in a number of ways, including:
- directly from you, when you provide information by telephone, electronic messages (including email and SMS) or in documents such as 'change of owner details' forms
- directly from you, via our internet site (requests for information)
- from our retailer network when you purchase a vehicle, have your vehicle repaired/serviced or make an inquiry of any nature with our retailer network
- from your agents or representatives who act on your behalf
- from competition entry forms or at our promotional activities or sponsored events
- directly from you, via our internet site (requests for information)
- from third parties we contract to collect and/or manage data on our behalf
- from third parties who you have asked or permitted to provide your personal information (including those parties from whom you purchase goods and services)
- from marketing organisations, including through the use of purchased lists
- from industry databases
- from publicly available sources such as the Internet and telephone directories
- from law enforcement, dispute resolution, statutory and regulatory bodies
Website cookies
We may collect cookies from you about your visit to our website to help us to improve our website. Cookies are small information files which are sent to your computer’s hard drive or mobile device when you visit a website and it will recognise your device on future visits. For example, we may collect the time of your visit, whether you have visited our website previously, whether you used a search engine to find us and some geographical information. For information on disabling these cookies, please go to the privacy settings section within your browser.
We may also use analytical web tools such as Google Analytics to collect visitor information for us to better understand how to improve our products and services for you. In addition to the session cookie, Google Analytics uses other data collection methods such as appending query strings to an image request. We store the data generated by Google Analytics securely and do not share it with third parties.
We also use other external service providers for the following purposes:
- for web hosting services for this website; and/or
- to gather non-personal information (using cookies) in order to evaluate the website’s effectiveness, for example online marketing activities.
How we use your personal information
Your personal information may be used in order to:
- provide and market our products and services and those of our related companies and importer (whether directly or through our related companies and importer)
- communicate to you in relation to our products, services and our promotional activities
- purchase from you
- support your purchase through warranty and road-side assistance (whether directly or through our importer)
- comply with our legal obligations
- monitor our performance and to help us manage our services
- identify and contact individuals who do business with us
- train our employees, agents, retailers and representatives
- conduct customer and market research and analytics to improve the quality of our products and services
- assess and process employment applications and manage employment issues
- handle complaints and disputes; and detect, investigating and preventing fraud
We may contact and communicate with you either via telephone, post, facsimile, email (including a private message on your social media profile(s)) or SMS.
When we disclose your personal information
We may disclose your personal information to organisations outside of Volvo Cars. These organisations may include:
- our appointed importer
- outsourced service providers who manage services we provide to you including but not limited to:
- roadside assistance
- customer research and customer relationship platforms
- financial services and insurance
- mailing systems and marketing (including direct marketing as listed above)
- market research
- government, regulatory and law enforcement authorities and organisations, as required or authorised by law
- our related body corporates
- the agent(s) of any of those entities referred to above
- your employer (where applicable)
- our advisors (including consultants, recruitment advisors, legal and accounting advisors)
Those entities are not authorised by us to use personal information for anything other than the purpose for which we supplied that information to them. We may also disclose personal information where you consent to us doing so. That consent may be written, verbal or implied from your conduct.
Disclosure to overseas recipients
Our related entities and some of our service providers (including information technology service providers) may be located overseas and, as a result, personal information collected and held by Volvo Cars may be transferred overseas. The countries in which these recipients may be located will vary from time to time, but currently are Sweden, China and Japan.
How we hold and store your personal information
Volvo Cars may hold your personal information in a number of ways, including:
- in our computer systems or databases, which may involve storing data on storage or computer systems provided by third party suppliers
- in paper records
- in telephone recordings
Where the information has been collected from our or your agent, or our service providers or retailers, they may also hold copies of your personal information.
We may combine personal information we receive about you with other information we hold about you.
Volvo Cars will store your personal information in a secure environment. It is protected by a combination of physical and technological measures. We have taken all reasonable steps to carefully protect your data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access or disclosure, alteration or destruction. If you want more information about the way we manage the information we hold please contact us as we would be happy to provide you with further information on our processes. Our contact details can be found at the end of this document.
Help us to ensure we hold accurate information
Volvo Cars takes reasonable precautions to ensure that the personal information we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, the accuracy of that information depends to a large extent on the information you provide. We recommend that you:
- let us know if there are any errors in your personal information
- keep us up to date with changes to your personal information such as your name and address
You can access your personal information
You have a right to access your personal information, subject to some exceptions allowed by law. If you would like to access your information, please let us know via the contact information provided in this Policy. You may be required to put your request in writing for security reasons and in some circumstances we may need to charge a fee for searching for and providing access to your information.
How to contact us
If you wish to notify us of your new contact details, update your personal information, make a complaint about a breach of privacy or have any questions in relation to the accuracy of your information or privacy, please contact our Data Protection Officer at:
Attention: The Data Protection Officer
Volvo Car Corporation
Dep 50099, VAK, 405 31 Gothenburg, Sweden
Email: globdpo@volvocars.com
Making a Complaint
If you believe that we have interfered with your privacy in our handling of your personal information, you may lodge a complaint. We will attempt to resolve your complaint in accordance with our internal complaints resolution process.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time for any reason. We will publish changes to this Privacy Policy on this website.