Important Information | Property Update

At Metropole we are committed to meeting the highest standards of Customer Service and will rectify any problem which may occur due to any failure on our part to perform to these standards.

We will always consider all feedback and suggestions on how we may improve our services.

We recognise the importance of privacy protection, so this page details information about our privacy policy and our policy for dealing with any personal information that you might disclose to us while visiting this website or when speaking to one of our team.

1. Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy Statement sets out the policy of the Metropole Property Group Pty Ltd, its related entities and any Metropole franchisee (together "we", "us", "Metropole") with respect to the way in which we obtain, use and disclose information about you, including through our various Metropole websites as well as at www.PropertyUpdate.com.au We adopt and are bound by the Australian Privacy Principles ("APPs") contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) ("the Act").

We understand and appreciate that you are concerned about privacy, particularly in relation to the use and disclosure of Personal Information. We are committed to providing a high level of privacy in relation to all Personal Information that is collected by us.

Your Consent

You consent to your Personal Information being used in accordance with this Privacy Policy Statement by any one or more of the following:

by communicating with us or by continuing to request our services, including but not limited to by attending one of our offices, attending an open for inspection, making enquiries via internet, email or phone;
providing us with your contact details and consenting in writing for such details to be conveyed to a mortgage broker or financier;
by visiting our website or participating in an online enquiry;
by visiting any website or social media site established by us, including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Youtube and Linked In ("Social Media Sites"); and
by participating in any activity on a Social Media Site including but not limited to entering competitions, subscribing to our blog, posting, pinning or uploading any material on any Social Media Site, following, liking and/or commenting on us or anything on any Social Media Site ("Social Media Activity").

What is Personal Information?

For the purposes of this Statement, "Personal Information" is information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether or not the information or opinion is true and whether or not it is recorded in a material form. The types of Personal Information generally collected by us may differ, depending on whether you are or would like to become a subscriber to our Property Update newsletter, an investor, landlord, tenant, supplier, employee.

What Personal Information do we collect from you?

The type of personal information that we collect from you will depend on how you use our website. You can be certain that the information we receive about you will be treated as strictly confidential.

The names of persons who subscribe to Michael Yardney’s Property Investment Update newsletter are added to our database and will be sent regular property updates by email. We will also inform you of upcoming events. You can always unsubscribe if you wish.

If you log onto one of our websites and read or download information our Internet Service Provider/Hosting Provider, will record your server address, domain name, the date and time of your visit to our site, the pages viewed and the information downloaded. This information is used for statistical and web site development purposes only and does not identify you.

Via Social Media Sites, we may be able to obtain other information about you which may itself constitute Personal Information or which, when combined with other information, is capable of identifying you, including photos, videos and any other information that you include on our Social Media Sites or sites linked to our Social Media Sites ("Other Sites"). The level of information to which we have access may depend on your privacy settings on such Other Sites.

Tracking technologies such as cookies may be used on our website to recognise a user’s browser each time that user visits our site and to track which pages the user visits whilst on our site and also to push advertisements to your internet protocol address. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to a computer’s hard drive for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept tracking technologies such as cookies. These tracking technologies do not personally identify the user. If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse them. However, your use of our websites may be affected.

This website uses remarketing to advertise services you may be interested in. We may use third party vendors, such as Google and Facebook, to store your information once you visit our site. We may then remarket to you when you visit other websites that are part of the third party vendors’ advertising network. We use cookies to store this information in your web browser. You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings.

How do we collect your Personal Information?

Personal Information may be collected as follows:

when you make a general or specific telephone enquiry;
when you engage us or discuss engaging us to provide services or advice to you;
when you negotiate with us in respect of purchasing or renting a property;
when you provide your details to us at an "open for inspection" property;
when you provide to us or we collect your business card;
when you visit our website and complete an on-line enquiry or a form for the purpose of requesting and/or accessing certain services on our website;
when you send an email to us;
through analysis of the Social Media Sites conducted by us or by third parties on our behalf;
any other collection of or incidental or directly or indirectly related to the services we may be able to provide to you.

The circumstances under which we disclose information about you

It is our policy not to sell or pass on any personal information that you may have provided. An exception to this is where we may be required by law to disclose certain information.

From time to time, Metropole or its related entities may contact you to provide information about other products and services offered by Metropole, Metropole related entities and business partners that may be of benefit to you and your family.

This may include information about products or services made available by Metropole, or by other companies within the Metropole Group.

Metropole may also share your personal information on a confidential basis with its related entities so that they can offer you products and services and fulfil offers to you.

When you become a client, you consent to Metropole and its related entities using your personal information for direct marketing purposes (for an indefinite period) by post, email, phone or SMS, unless you contact Metropole to withdraw your consent.

Disclosure of your Personal Information via Social Media Sites

By engaging in any Social Media Activity on our Social Media Sites, you agree to and are subject to the terms and conditions of such Social Media Sites. Any Personal Information pinned or posted or uploaded by you onto Social Media Sites can be disclosed in accordance with the terms and conditions and privacy policies of such Social Media Sites.

Generally, photos and other material pinned or posted to Social Media Sites will be able to be viewed by the general public. Such photos and other material may be re-pinned and re-posted by others indefinitely and will be visible by anyone visiting the locations to which the photos or other material have been re-pinned. You may be able to remove the photos or other material that you have pinned or posted from the location at which you pinned or posted it. However, any material that has been re-pinned will be out of our control and neither you nor we will be able to remove it from any re-pinned location. We are not responsible for any material that has been re-pinned or re-posted.

We reserve the right to remove any photos, comments or other material that is in any way inappropriate or offensive (in our opinion) from our Social Media Sites.

Direct Marketing

You acknowledge that where we reasonably determine it to be appropriate, we may add some of your Personal Information including your name and email address to our databases or databases of our related companies. The databases will be used for ongoing marketing and related purposes or to advise you of the other services we or our business partners or affiliates can offer.

The type of marketing and sales activities that we undertake includes sending material to you so that you are kept updated in relation to various property related issues or other services that we can offer you.

In each direct marketing communication that you receive from us we will attach prominent and simple instructions on how you can immediately unsubscribe from our mailing list. In any event, you can opt out from receiving direct marketing material by emailing our Privacy Officer or the Privacy Officer of any of our franchisees and asking to be removed from the mailing list. Alternatively, you can fax or mail a request asking for deletion. Contact details are set out below. There is no fee for such deletion.

Security

We are committed to ensuring the security of your Personal Information and we will take all reasonable steps to protect this Information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, including:

ensuring the physical security of our premises and databases/records;
restricting access to personnel who need that information in order for us to be able to provide our products and services; and
industry standard technological measures, such as computer passwords, data back-up, anti-virus software and firewalls.

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure the Information is accurate and up-to-date and relevant for the purposes for which it may be used pursuant to this Privacy Policy.

Please note that our website does not provide systems for secure transmission of Personal Information across the internet, except where otherwise indicated. When emailing or providing Personal Information to us via our website, please be aware that there are risks involved in transmitting such information across the Internet.

Our websites contains links to other websites. We have no control over the privacy practices employed at other websites and we accept no responsibility for Personal Information provided via unsecured websites.

We cannot provide any guarantee with respect to the security of your Personal Information and we will not be liable for any breach of security or unintended loss or disclosure of information due to the website being linked to the Internet.

How we handle emails

We will preserve the contents of any e-mail message that you send us if we believe that we have a legal requirement to do so.

What to do if you believe the information we hold about you is inaccurate

If you believe that any information that we hold about you is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review the relevant information.

How to contact us if you wish to discuss this policy

If you wish to discuss any aspect of this policy please contact us at [email protected]

Changes To The Statement

From time to time we may decide to amend or update this Privacy Policy Statement. When this occurs, we will post any changes on the website. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy Statement so that you remain informed as to how we are protecting your Personal Information.

2. Complaint handling and dispute resolution policy

How to make a complaint

Metropole and it’s various entities, some of which are licensed estate agencies aims to make it easy for you to bring any problems or complaints to our attention.

You should first raise your issue with the agent, representative or property manager who is handling your business.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome, you can make a complaint to us by:

telephone (during business hours): call 03 9591 8888 and ask to speak to Ramez Khalil
email: [email protected]

Please provide as much detail as possible about your complaint, including the outcome you would like.

If you need help to describe or send your complaint, or if you would like to discuss your concerns informally first, please feel free to contact us.

How we will handle your complaint

Our complaints officer will oversee the complaints process.

This person is responsible for working with you and relevant agency staff, to ensure that the issues you raise are fully examined and that your complaint is handled in accordance with this process.

We will treat the process, and all the details of your complaint, in strict confidence. If we need to discuss any issues arising from your complaint with someone outside of the agency, we will obtain your consent first.

We will always try to give you a fair opportunity to explain your case. You should make your initial complaint as clear as possible. Sometimes we may want to meet you in person to discuss your concerns and try to find a satisfactory solution.

How long will it take?

We will try to resolve your complaint as soon as possible. However, how long this takes will depend on the nature and complexity of the issues you have raised.

We will send you acknowledgment of receipt of the complaint within two business days. We will give you an estimate of how long it may take us to deal with the matter and we will try to finalise the matter within five business days.

What action will we take in response to your complaint?

If we decide that your complaint is justified, we will then decide what action we should take in response. We will always try to match our response to the nature of your complaint and your desired outcome, but this may not always be possible.

Some of the things we might do include:

take steps to rectify the problem or issue you have raised
give you additional information or advice so you can understand what happened or how we have dealt with it
take steps to change our policies or procedures if your complaint identifies a problem in the way we are doing things.

What if you’re still unhappy?

Sometimes it will not be possible to resolve a complaint to everyone’s satisfaction, and you might want to escalate the matter to the Estate Agents Resolution Service (EARS) at Consumer Affairs Victoria.

EARS can deal with enquiries and complaints about real estate agents and offers information, advice and dispute resolution services on real estate issues.

You can telephone EARS on 1300 73 70 30 weekdays to discuss your complaint.

3. Purchases

When purchasing products and services via our websites, you will be billed by Metropole Education Services Pty Ltd and your credit card details and related personal information will be processed by third party payment processor and its secure servers. The name of the payment processor will be disclosed to you in the payment process. Please refer to Third Party Payment Processor for details of their privacy policy.

Our website contains links to this and other web sites which our privacy policy does not apply. Our Privacy Policy cannot be extend beyond our domain, and web pages therein.

Returns and refund policy

Return of faulty goods: If any product is received in faulty, non-working or damaged condition we will exchange the item at no cost to the customer. Please email us with the order number that you were provided, so that we can arrange for the goods to be collected.

Returns on non-faulty goods: We believe all our products represent quality and value for money and therefore do not give refunds on non faulty items.

If you are unable to attend a seminar or workshop your payment will be credited for a future workshop or towards other goods available at our on line store.

Disclaimer

The information provided on this website is for use of a general nature only and is not intended to be relied upon as, nor to be a substitute for, specific professional or investment advice.

While we do our best to provide accurate and up-to-date information, there will inevitably be parts of the site that contain errors, omissions or are outdated. The fun part is figuring out which parts those are.

No responsibility for loss occasioned to any persons acting on or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted. Readers should seek professional advice from suitably qualified professionals regarding their own specific needs.

In plain English: We hope you find this site useful, but you've got to own your actions and take professional advice where needed.