Your Privacy with Essex Powerlines
Protecting our customer’s privacy and personal information is extremely important to us. It is imperative for you to understand why we collect information about you, what we do with it, and how we dispose of it when we no longer need to have it.
What we collect
When you open an account with Essex Powerlines, we will ask you for different kinds of information about you. This includes:
- Your name and address
- Your phone number and email address
- Address where service is needed (if different from the address where you live)
- Your date of birth
- The name and information details about an additional person to be added to the account
- Banking information
- The name of any third party that you want to have access to the account
We ask for your name and address, contact phone numbers and email address so we can send you bills for the services we provide and so we can get in touch with you if we need to.
We ask you for your date of birth as your unique identifier to prove your identity.
We ask for the name and contact details for any second individual that should be added to the account for billing purposes.
We ask for the name and contact details for any additional individuals you want authorized to discuss your account. For example, snowbirds will sometimes add an individual to the account in the event we are not able to contact the account holder(s).
We will also ask if you are an Owner or Tenant. This helps us when you move out, if there is no one scheduled to move in, to look for an owner’s blanket authorization to change the account back to the Owner or deliver a notice to the property.
And we only ask for banking information if you want to sign up for a pre-authorized payment plan.
How we use your information
Once we have these facts about you, we open your account. The only people at Essex Powerlines who see your information are those employees who need to see it to do their jobs.
Your information is protected while it is with us. If we have paper files about you, they are stored in locked filing cabinets. If the information is electronic, it is protected by security firewalls. Employees who need to see it must log in with a secure username and password.
If we hire an outside company to do work for us, we make sure that company understand our privacy rules and why they are important. Anyone doing work for us, who does not work at Essex Powerlines, has to sign a contract that includes their abiding by privacy and confidentiality rules as part of the agreement. Those companies and organizations only see the information they need to do the job we have hired them to do.
Disposing of personal information
If you close your account with us, we have to keep the information about your file for a period of time, as set out by our energy regulator. Once the time is up, we dispose of your information in ways that mean no one else can see it or use it again. Paper files are shredded securely, and electronic files are disposed of in compliance with our security policy.
For further details, we encourage you to review our Privacy Policy.
If you have any questions about these privacy standards, please contact our Privacy Officer:
By phone 519-946-2000 ext 210
By email privacy@essexpowerlines.ca
Or in writing to
Essex Powerlines Corporation Attention: Chief Privacy Officer
200-2199 Blackacre Dr., Oldcastle, ON N0R 1L0