is being heavily advertised on social media. Be warned (quote from its website):
The business of Aus Solar Connect is marketing and involves the collection of Personal Information from individuals who may be interested in a specific type of service, and the sale of this personal information to our clients, who are businesses that provide services in the area for which the personal information was collected. Aus Solar Connect is owned by Journey’s End Marketing.
Using the website means one agrees to:
Aus Solar Connect sells your personal data to our clients who may use your personal data to contact you about products or services they deliver or sell. It allows us to align the products and services of our Clients as closely as possible to your needs and situation. Our clients may then contact you to offer or market their services to you.
(It is worth noting the video advertising looks like it is AI generated)
The advertising suggests that Australia Solar Connect is a solar and home battery related business. It isn’t. It is a marketing company collecting personal information from a website masquerading as providing services for solar installation.
It is extremely deceptive to the purpose of the website and ‘survey’ information. One has to read the T&Cs/privacy policy to determine the intent of the website. The links to T&Cs/privacy policy are linked, in small font, at the very bottom of their webpage - so small so it will be missed by many.
One I would definitely avoid, unless one is comfortable for their personal information being sold to anyone who wants it… and then being contacted by businesses trying to push a sale of their products and services.
There are a lot of shonky operators out there trying to horn in on the federal and state government support programs. Lowest cost is not the best criteria for making decisions here, it’s all about quality and reliability of hardware, workmanlike installation, and follow up support over the years. Buyer beware !
It’s worthwhile to highlight slightly dodgy businesses like this one but …
somehow I can’t see Albo legislating a minimum point size for the Privacy Policy (link and text).
To be honest, I wouldn’t agree that the text, PRIVACY POLICY, is unreasonably small.
But it is worth noting that the actual size (and all other display attributes) can be partly or completely dependent on the client platform. Maybe the link is smaller for you than for me. And it would be fraught to hold the web site responsible for behaviour that is outside its control.
It is at the very bottom of the web page but that puts that web site in common with a million other web sites.
For comparison, you can’t even scroll to the bottom of this web site on the home page (i.e. choice.community) to check for a privacy policy. To find the privacy policy of this web site, you need to use Hamburger / About / Privacy - at least on my web browser.
Since Albo would have zero interest in this … perhaps the correct legal approach is to require that any web site that collects personal information must have a standardized metadata element in the HTML page header of the home page that links to the privacy policy. That way a browser can find the privacy policy and make it available to the user regardless of where the link is hiding on an actual web page (or even if there is no link on an actual web page).
