Date: 16 March 2026
1. Policy Statement
At Powershop we are committed to protecting your personal information and ensuring that we deal with your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 (Act). Protecting your personal information is a fundamental component of the overall risk and compliance management of Powershop’s business, and the requirements of this Policy are embedded within our group-wide risk and compliance management programme and framework.
When we refer to your “personal information” we mean any information that identifies you, such as your name or contact information. In this policy “Powershop”, “we”, “us” or “our” means or refers to Meridian Energy Limited trading as Powershop and our related companies.
2. Purpose of this Policy
This Privacy Policy sets out how and why we collect, store, use and disclose your personal information. By contacting us, accessing our website or mobile application, social media pages and/or using the products or services provided by us, you consent to us dealing with your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Further information about privacy and your rights under the Act can be found at www.privacy.org.nz.
You can choose not to provide us with your personal information, however we may not be able to provide you with access to certain information or our services as a result.
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will tell you about changes by posting an updated policy on our customer website (www.powershop.co.nz). These changes will apply from the date of publication (unless we specifically state otherwise).
If you’re looking to work at Powershop, please have a look at our Meridian Careers Statement to understand how we use and disclose your personal information relating to your job application.
3. INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT
We collect a variety of information about you. It is important that you know that we collect some personal information about you as an individual, even if you sign up on behalf of a business. If you're providing information about anyone else, you must have their consent to give us their information. Information we may collect includes:
- Information about you: including your name, date of birth, customer account login information, health information (where you provide that to us in connection with health needs that we should be aware of), contact details, property details, and plan information.
- Financial information: including details about the purchases you make, your payment history and methods of payment, your bank account details and other types of information that are necessary in order for us to provide our products and services to you, and for us and credit reporting agencies to assess your credit rating.
- Communication information and preferences: including marketing preferences and how you would like us to communicate with you.
- Meter information: including meter identifying information and electricity consumption data. Please note, we cannot see who uses your power or what you use it for. However, if your property has controlled metering, we may be able to identify that some electricity consumption relates to specific services, such as hot water heating.
- Mobile application information: including details of your usage and preferences as well as mobile device information like model, brand, operating system, performance and IP address.
- Our communications with you: including emails, chats and telephone calls, so that we may record any instructions you give us and our verbal commitments to you. Telephone recordings may also be used for training purposes.
- App, website and social media information: including your app, website or social media visits, details of your visit (e.g. the date, time, and duration of your visit, the pages viewed by you, the internet protocol address and domain name used by your computer to connect to the internet, the operating system and the browser your computer uses), our app and website performance details and any issues you have with our apps, websites or social media pages.
- Information about related individuals: we may need to collect information about people connected to you, such as your joint account holders, authorised persons, secondary account holders, alternate contact persons and emergency contacts, for our business purposes and in accordance with the Act and this Policy. Where you have disclosed information about these individuals to us and we have collected it from you, you must have notified them of the following matters and have obtained their consent:
- the fact that the person’s name, contact information, and any other information you have provided, has been provided to us;
- that the information has been provided to us for the following purposes (as applicable to the relevant person):
- in the case of an alternate contact person, so that we can contact them if we are unable to contact you in order to provide our products and services to you, improve or personalise them (including for medically dependent consumers) or to tell you about them, for account verification, management or resolving a complaint you have made, and to comply with our contractual, legal, regulatory or government obligations to you and other third parties;
- in the case of a support person, so that they can support you when you talk to us;
- that the person’s information may be provided to certain other people or organisations. Details of these people and organisations and the purposes for which the information may be provided are set out in our privacy policy, which is available on our website; and
- that the information has been collected and is being held by us, Meridian Energy Limited trading as Powershop, with registered office Level 2, 98 Customhouse Quay, Wellington Central, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand;
- the collection of the information about the alternate contact person and/or support person is authorised by Part 11A of the Electricity Industry Participation Code 2010; and
- that the relevant person may request access to, or correction of, any personal information we hold about them, by contacting us. Our contact details are available at https://www.powershop.co.nz/contact-us/.
We collect your information in different ways including:
- Directly from you: including when you interact with us or use any of our services or offerings, such as via phone calls, emails, live chats, filling out the ‘contact us’ forms on our websites, posts on our social media sites, promotions, surveys, or feedback given via our mobile application.
- From your former electricity retailer: we may collect personal information, such as your consumption data, from your old retailer so we can display this information to you and use it to be more accurate in our estimates and pricing. You authorise us to collect your personal information in this way.
- Via third parties: For example, from our related companies and brands, our agents, contractors and service providers, rural partners (where applicable), government or regulatory bodies, UDL (Utilities Disputes) or the Disputes Tribunal, electricity supply partners (e.g. lines companies, meter equipment providers and/or readers), credit agencies, debt collectors, energy brokers and consultants or third party sales channels, parties we work with in relation to energy hardship and wellbeing, health care providers (which we will only do with your consent) and advertising and marketing partners (e.g. Google Analytics) where those marketing partners are authorised by you to provide that information. A list of the third parties we collect information from is set out in Schedule 1. We may also collect your information from your landlord, property manager or another third party in order to contact you about the use of our services, where we have no other means to contact you. If we do so, we will notify you of this collection.
- Via cookies and other online tracking technologies: If you visit our apps, websites or social media sites, we and third parties may use cookies and other online tracking technologies to collect information about you. For example, we may use services such as Google Analytics and Optimizely to collect and analyse anonymised information about website and mobile application usage including site visit, some interaction information and demographic profiles about our website users. See below for more information on cookies, how we use them and how to opt out of them.
4. USE, DISCLOSURE AND RETENTION OF YOUR INFORMATION
We use and sometimes disclose information we hold about you and your property. We do this for reasons connected to our business. The ways we use or disclose your information are set out below (please note we do not use all of your information for all of these purposes):
- To contact you to discuss our products or services where you have indicated an interest in joining us.
- To provide our products and services to you, improve or personalise them (including for medically dependent consumers) or to tell you about them, for account verification, management or resolving a complaint you have made.
- To contact you if you have been listed as a secondary account holder or an emergency contact on an account.
- For quality assurance purposes, for example using retained recordings of customer support calls to respond to customer queries or complaints.
- To carry out credit checks or otherwise assess your creditworthiness (we will tell you before we do this), or for debt collection or fraud detection purposes.
- To provide credit information about you to credit reporting agencies and their customers (which those agencies will do in accordance with the relevant privacy code), including your payment history (whether that information is positive or negative).
- To comply with our contractual, legal, regulatory or government obligations to you and other third parties. We may also disclose information where we believe it is reasonably necessary to enforce any legal rights we may have, or to protect the rights, property and safety of us, you, our customers, or others.
- To send you communications in relation to our products, services, specials, promotions and giveaways to you (this may include using your email address to communicate about these directly and via advertisements through channels such as Facebook and Google AdWords).
- To help prevent us from sending you irrelevant communications.
- To provide you with information on third party products and services or enabling select third parties to contact you where we think you'll be interested in receiving such information (unless you’ve asked us in writing not to).
- For marketing purposes, including to personalise our websites, promotions or advertising on other sites to make them more relevant to you such as by using Google Remarketing, Facebook Ads or marketing services like Custom Audience.
- For a lines company's needs or if a lines company has requested the information. Some examples of when we may do this are if the information is to help supply energy or to distribute money on the distribution company’s behalf, including the distribution of any lines company publications and surveys.
- To assist us in carrying out our responsibilities under the Consumer Care Obligations published by the Electricity Authority.
- In an emergency situation when it is necessary or desirable to share your personal information with a civil defence organisation or another emergency service.
- For our general business purposes, e.g. improving our products or services, aggregating customer information to track trends, analysing usage and optimising the performance of our website and mobile application, for training or testing purposes, or as part of transferring our business or assets as part of a sale or potential sale.
- For internal and external research purposes, for example, where we undertake internal analytics or commission/respond to a market research or data analysis organisation to produce a report.
- When we are required or permitted to by the Act, other law or industry codes and standards, or when we are requested to provide information by a government or regulatory department, agency or other entity.
- Where you have authorised us to do so.
Parties we may disclose your information to for the above purposes include our related companies and brands, our agents, contractors and service providers, energy brokers, consultants and third party sales channels, parties we work with in relation to energy hardship and wellbeing, other electricity retailers, lines companies, rural partners (where applicable), advertising and marketing partners, credit agencies, debt collectors, civil defence organisations, emergency services, government or regulatory bodies, UDL (Utilities Disputes) and Disputes Tribunal, and persons listed on your account or nominated by you.
You agree that we may use any information you provide to us for the purposes of carrying out our responsibilities under the Consumer Care Obligations published by the Electricity Authority and to assist you, including discussing your account with Work and Income New Zealand, District Health Boards, lines companies, private health practitioners or any other social agency, budget advisor, civil defence organisation or service provider as we consider reasonably necessary.
You agree that we may retain and use your information in accordance with our storage and security obligations (discussed below at 5) for as long as required by law or for our legitimate business purposes.
If you choose to leave us or stop using any of our products and services, then you agree that we can retain your information where we need to, including to meet our legal obligations and for legitimate business purposes. We may also continue to send you information about our products, services, specials and giveaways, unless you’ve asked us in writing not to, provided we meet our legal obligations.
In the event that you are not a Powershop customer but you have provided us with your details, for example, by beginning the customer sign-up process, then you agree that we can retain and use your information to contact you about your sign-up, and where we need to for up to two years.
5. STORAGE AND SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
While we take steps to protect user privacy, no data transmission over the internet can be entirely secure. We therefore do not guarantee the security of personal information that you send to us via the internet, or your use of our website or mobile application. Any personal information you do provide to us is at your own risk, but once we receive it, we use appropriate procedures and generally accepted industry standards to safeguard against unauthorised access, use, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of that information.
Access to your information is only provided to specific staff on a ‘need to know’ basis. Our staff have unique user identifications and passwords and are regularly trained on their responsibilities under the Act. Our physical premises are protected by reasonable security precautions.
We use some services which involve the transfer, processing and storage of some personal information outside of New Zealand - these are likewise protected by unique user identifications and passwords.
Protecting your personal information is of utmost importance to us and any breach of a Powershop policy, standard or procedure that is designed to protect your personal information is viewed as a serious matter that may lead to disciplinary action.
6. CONTACTING YOU BY EMAIL AND OTHER ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION
Sometimes we send our customers information. We may do this by email, text message via our mobile application or by another form of communication. Some information you will always receive by email, such as notifications under our customer terms and conditions. We may also send to you, by email, newsletters or other information we think you may be interested in. Newsletters and other information you receive will have instructions for how you can remove yourself from that mailing list. If you ask to be removed from a mailing list, we will do this.
You can control the level of notifications you receive from us through your online account by going to the “Settings” tabs, and then “Alerts”, or by calling us. You can also select the notifications you receive via your mobile application by going to “Settings” in the mobile application menu, then “Account Settings” and then adjusting your preferences under “Notification events”.
7. COOKIES
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer, smartphone or other device and are used when you access the internet. Cookies allow a website to recognise a user’s device and track, personalise and save information each time you visit a site.
At Powershop we use cookies for a variety of reasons. We use ‘analytics’ cookies to analyse non-identifiable web traffic in order to gain insights about how we can improve the functionality and user-experience of our website. This data is aggregated and cannot personally identify you. We also use marketing and ‘advertising’ cookies to gather information about your online activity and web browsing behaviour in order to deliver advertisements that are more relevant to you and your interests. This means we’re able to tailor our marketing or advertising campaigns more effectively.
The browsers of most computers, smartphones and other web-enabled devices are typically set up to accept cookies. If you wish to amend your cookie preferences for our website, you can do this through your browser settings. Your browser’s ‘help’ function will tell you how to do this. If you choose to disable certain cookies, it is likely to affect your ability to use some of the features on our website. For example, if your browser is set to disable ‘session’ cookies you will still be able to view our website, but you won’t be able to log in as a customer.
Many of the cookies we use are to provide important safety features such as protecting your data and account information. The cookies we use cannot look into your computer, smartphone or other device and obtain any other information about you or read any material kept on your hard drive.
To learn more about cookies and how you can manage them in your web browser, visit: www.allaboutcookies.org and/or www.aboutcookies.org.
8. EXTERNAL LINKS FROM OUR SITE
We may include hypertext links to third party sites. While we endeavour to check that the content of these sites is suitable, we are not responsible for such content, nor the manner in which these sites deal with any personal information you provide. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of those websites so that you can understand how your personal information may be collected, stored, used and disclosed.
9. RIGHT TO ACCESS AND CORRECT
You may request access to, or correction of, any personal information we hold about you (including information collected by the parties in Schedule 1), by contacting us. Our contact details are available at https://www.powershop.co.nz/contact-us/. To ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate and current, you must notify us of any changes to your information as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or any other matter, please contact us using the contact details above.
SCHEDULE 1 – COLLECTION FROM THIRD PARTIES
In some cases, we may collect your information from, or disclose it to, the following third parties. We will use our best endeavours to ensure that this Schedule is accurate and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee it will be error-free. We may change this Schedule from time to time as required by posting a new version on our website, so we recommend that you check this periodically.
Third Party |
Address |
| Industry Participants | |
| Lines Companies | Contact details for all lines companies can be found on the Electricity Authority’s website here. |
| Your previous retailer | Contact details for all electricity retailers can be found on the Electricity Authority’s website here. |
| Intellihub Limited | Website: www.intellihub.com.au |
| Bluecurrent NZ Limited |
Website: bluecurrent.co.nz Phone: 0800 661 212 |
| Service and IT Providers | |
| Wells Instrument and Electrical Services Limited | Website: www.wells.co.nz |
| Total Risk Management Limited |
Website: www.totalrisk.co.nz Address: 60a Victoria Street, Alicetown, Lower Hutt, 5010 |
| Phone Plus 2000 Limited | Address: 341 Dairy Flat Highway, Lucas Heights, Auckland, 0793 |
| Kraken Technologies Limited | Address: UK House, 4th Floor, 164-182 Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom, W1D 1NN |
| Flux Federation Limited | Address: Level 2, 98 Customhouse Quay, Wellington Central, Wellington 601 |
| Rural Partners | |
| Ashburton Trading Society (trading as RuralCo) |
Website: www.ruralco.co.nz Address: 97 Burnett Street, Ashburton, Ashburton 7700 |
| Farmlands Co-operative Society Limited |
Website: www.farmlands.co.nz Address: 535 Wairakei Road, Burnside PO Box 271 |
| PGG Wrightson Limited |
Website: www.pggwrightston.co.nz Address: 1 Robin Mann Place, Christchurch Airport, Christchurch, 8053 |
| RD1 Limited (trading as Farm Source) |
Website: www.nzfarmsource.co.nz Address: 109 Fanshawe Street, Auckland Central, Auckland, 1010 |
| Dispute Resolution Schemes | |
| Utilities Disputes Limited (UDL) |
Website: www.udl.co.nz Phone: 0800 22 33 40 or + 64 (0) 4 914 4630 Email: info@udl.co.nz Mail: Freepost 192682, PO Box 5875, Wellington 6140 Physical address: Plan IT House, L6, 22 The Terrace, Wellington 6011 |
| Disputes Tribunal |
Website: www.disputestribunal.govt.nz Phone: 0800 COURTS (0800 268 787) |
| Third Party Sales Channels | |
| Renti Limited |
Website: www.renti.co.nz Address: 99 Khyber Pass Road, Grafton, Auckland |
| Fast Connect Limited |
Website: www.fastconnect.co.nz Address: Russell McVeagh, Level 24, 157 Lambton Quay, Wellington Central, Wellington, 6011 |
| Moving Hub NZ Limited |
Website: www.movinghub.com Address: 2/20 Beaumont Street, Auckland Central Auckland, 1010 |
| Global Compare Group Limited (NZ Compare) |
Website: www.nzcompare.com Address: Monteck Carter Chartered Accountants, 15 Accent Drive, East Tamaki, Auckland, 2013 |
| Powerswitch (Consumer NZ) |
Website: www.powerswitch.org.nz Address: Level 5, 17 Whitmore Street, Wellington, 6011 |
| Smart Loyalty New Zealand Limited |
Website: www.smartloyaltyhq.com Address: Level 3, 18 London Street, Hamilton 3204 |
| Energy Wellbeing Partners | |
| Community Energy Action |
Website: www.cea.co.nz Address: 62 Riccarton Rd, Riccarton, Christchurch Phone: 0800 438 9276 (0800 GETWARM) |
| New Zealand Redcross Incorporated |
Website: www.redcross.org.nz Address: 69 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington, 6011 |
|
Christchurch City Mission (Social Service Council of the Diocese of Christchurch) |
Website: www.citymission.org.nz Address: 276 Hereford Street, Christchurch, 8011 Phone: 03 365 0635 |
| Electricity Retailers’ Association of New Zealand (Energy Mate) | Website: www.energymate.nz |
| Sustainability Trust |
Website: www.sustainabilitytrust.org.nz Address: 2 Forresters Lane, Wellington 6012 Phone: 0508 78 78 24 |
| CBEC (Community Business and Environment Center) |
Website: www.cbec.co.nz Address: 190 Pukepoto Road, PO Box 503, Kaitai |
| WISE Charitable Trust |
Website: www.wise.org.nz Address: 97 Mould Street, Waitara 4320, Taranaki |
| Awarua Synergy Limited |
Website: www.awaruasynergy.co.nz Address: 117 Eye Street, Invercargill |
| Sustainability Hawkes Bay |
Website: www.sustainablehb.org.nz Address: 108 Stoneycroft Street, Camberley, Hastings 4120 |
| Sustainability Options Limited |
Website: www.sustainabilityoptions.org.nz Address: 59 Seventh Avenue, Tauranga |
| Ecomatters Environment Trust |
Website: www.ecomatters.org.nz Mail: PO Box 80062, Green Bay, Auckland 0643 Address: 1 Olympic Place, New Lynn, Auckland 0600 |
| Habitat for Humanity Northern Region Limited |
Website: www.habitat.org.nz Address: 8 Ormiston Road, Otara, Auckland |
| Aukaha |
Website: www.aukaha.co.nz Address: Level 2, 266 Hanover Street, |
| Te Piki Oranga |
Website: www.tpo.org.nz Phone: 0800 ORANGA (0800 672 642) |
| Go Eco |
Website: www.goeco.org.nz Address: 25A Devon Road, Frankton, Hamilton 3204 |
| Community Energy Whaingaroa |
Website: www.cewh.nz Address: 186 Te Hutewai Rd, Raglan 3296 |
|
Credit Rating and Debt Collection Agencies |
|
| Centrix Group Limited |
Website: www.centrix.co.nz Phone: 0800 236 874 Mail: PO Box 62512, Greenlane, Auckland, 1546 |
| Experian New Zealand Operations Limited and Experian Data Registries (NZ) Limited |
Website: www.experian.co.nz Mail: PO Box 9589, Newmarket, Auckland, 1031 |
| Baycorp (NZ) Limited |
Website: www.baycorp.co.nz Mail: Private Bag 92063, Victoria Street West, Auckland, 1142 |
| Recoveries Corporation New Zealand Limited |
Website: www.recoveriescorp.co.nz Mail: PO Box 9589, Newmarket, Auckland, 1149 |
| Account Collections NZ Limited |
Website: www.accountcollections.co.nz Mail: PO Box 8899, Havelock North, 4157 |
| Credit Consultants Group NZ Limited |
Website: www.creditconsultants.co.nz Mail: PO Box 3359, Auckland, 1140 |
| InDebted New Zealand Limited |
Website: www.indebted.co.nz Address: Level 1, 91 Central Park Drive, Henderson Mail: PO Box 104029, Lincoln North, Auckland, 0654 |
|
Government Agencies |
|
| Government Agencies |
Contact details for all government agencies can be found on the New Zealand Government’s website here. |