Privacy Policy

Highveld Garage Equipment CC ("HGE", "we", "us") respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with and what your rights are under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). We do not sell or publish customer information.

Who is responsible for your information

Highveld Garage Equipment CC is the responsible party for the personal information described here. Our Information Officer is the Managing Director, who can be reached at info@hge.co.za.

What we collect

• Account details — your name, company, email address, telephone number, VAT number, billing and delivery addresses and delivery notes.
• Quotes and orders — the products you ask about or buy, prices, delivery choices and any notes you add.
• Payments — your payment reference, payment status and any proof of payment you upload. Card payments are processed by SnapScan: we never see or store your card number.
• Messages — what you send us through the contact form, by email or by telephone, including installation, service and warranty requests.
• Technical information — our servers record the IP address and browser of requests to the website, for security and to diagnose faults.
• Analytics, only if you agree — see Cookies and analytics.

Why we use it

• To create and manage your account, prepare quotes and process orders.
• To take and match payments, and to send order, quote and payment emails.
• To deliver goods, and to arrange installation, servicing and warranty claims.
• To answer your enquiries and provide support.
• To keep the website secure and prevent fraud.
• To meet our legal obligations, including tax and accounting records.
• To tell existing customers about similar products and services — see Marketing.

We process your information because it is needed to carry out our agreement with you, to comply with the law, for our legitimate business interests, or — for analytics — with your consent.

Who we share it with

We share only what each party needs to do its job for us:

• Couriers — your name, telephone number and delivery address, to deliver your order.
• SnapScan — to process SnapScan and card payments.
• Our business and accounting systems — where orders, invoices and customer records are kept.
• Our website hosting provider — which stores the website and its database in South Africa.
• Our email provider — which carries the emails we send you.
• Installers, suppliers and manufacturers — for installation, servicing and warranty claims.
• Google Analytics — only if you accept analytics, and never your name, email address or order details.
• YouTube (Google) — only if you press play on a video in our Knowledge Centre; see Cookies and analytics.
• Authorities — where the law requires us to.

The website and its database are hosted in South Africa. Some service providers, such as Google, may process information outside South Africa; where they do, they are bound by data protection standards comparable to POPIA.

How long we keep it

We keep customer, quote and order records for five years after your last transaction with us, as tax law requires, and then delete or anonymise them. Analytics data is kept by Google under its standard retention settings.

How we protect it

The website is served over an encrypted connection, passwords are stored only in a scrambled (hashed) form, and access to customer records is limited to staff who need it. If a security breach puts your information at risk, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

Marketing

As an existing customer, you may receive occasional emails from us about products and services similar to those you have bought. Every such email has a way to opt out, and you can also ask us to stop at any time at info@hge.co.za. We do not send marketing to people who are not our customers without their consent, and opting out does not affect order, quote or account emails.

Cookies and analytics

This site uses Google Analytics 4 to understand how visitors use it — which pages are viewed, what is searched for, and which products draw interest. We use that to decide what to stock and what to improve.

Analytics does not run until you accept it. When you first visit, you are asked to accept or decline. If you decline, no analytics cookies are set and nothing is sent to Google — the site works exactly the same either way. Nothing is collected in the background while you decide.

Your choice is remembered in a single cookie on this site for 12 months. You can change it at any time using the Cookie preferences link at the bottom of every page, which is as easy to use as the original choice.

Google Analytics does not receive your name, email address or any order details. IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage and are not available to us.

A small number of cookies are strictly necessary and are not covered by that choice: the one that keeps you logged in, the one that holds your shopping cart, and the security token that protects forms from being submitted by another site. The site cannot function without them and they are not used for tracking.

The map on our contact page is supplied by OpenStreetMap rather than Google. It sets no cookies and does not track you. OpenStreetMap does see your IP address when the map images load, as any website you open does.

Some of our videos are shown through YouTube, which is owned by Google. Opening a page in our Knowledge Centre loads nothing from YouTube: a video there is a plain box with a play button, and no picture, frame or cookie is fetched from YouTube until you press play. When you do, we load YouTube's privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com). YouTube then receives your IP address and details of your browser and device, and may store or read information on your device, as it does on any website that carries a YouTube video. That is between you and YouTube, and is covered by Google's privacy policy. If you would rather not, do not press play. The "Watch on YouTube" links in the Knowledge Centre take you to YouTube itself.

Your rights under POPIA

• Ask what personal information we hold about you, and for a copy of it.
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong or out of date — you can update most of it yourself on your customer dashboard.
• Ask us to delete your information, where we are not required by law to keep it. Tax records, for example, must be kept for five years.
• Object to marketing, or withdraw your consent to analytics, at any time.
• Complain to the Information Regulator if you believe we have not handled your information properly.

To use any of these rights, contact our Information Officer at info@hge.co.za. We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting on a request.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time; the date at the top shows when it last changed.

Contact us