How we handle your personal information.

Stowe Holdings (Pty) Ltd ("Stowe", "we", "us") respects your privacy. This notice explains what personal information we collect through this website, why we collect it, and what your rights are under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

1. Who is responsible for your information

Stowe Holdings (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for personal information collected through this website. Our head office is at 1 Fairway Close, N1 City, Goodwood, Cape Town, 7500. You can reach our Information Officer using the details at the end of this notice.

2. What this notice covers

This notice covers this website, its contact form and Zola, the help bot. Information we handle while providing services to our clients is governed by our agreements with those clients.

3. Information we collect

Information you give us. When you send the contact form, we receive:

• your name and email address;
• your contact number and company name, if you choose to give them;
• what your message is about (an enquiry, a compliment, a suggestion or a complaint) and, if you choose, a rating of your experience;
• the message itself.

Please do not include sensitive information, such as identity numbers, banking details or passwords, in your message.

Zola, our help bot. Zola answers most questions inside your browser. When it can't, it sends your question and the last few messages of the chat (including a first name, if you gave one) to Zola AI, an open-source AI model that runs on Stowe's own servers. Zola AI uses them only to write the reply. It does not store them, and they are not used to train the model. To give a better answer, Zola AI may look the question up on Stowe's website or a few trusted supplier websites. Those searches are sent from our server, without your IP address or any details about you. The first name you give Zola is kept only in your own browser. AI answers can be wrong, so please check anything important with our service desk.

Information collected automatically. This website does not use advertising or analytics cookies and does not track you across other websites. Like most websites, the server that hosts this site keeps standard technical logs, such as your IP address, browser type and the time of your visit, for security and troubleshooting.

Content loaded from other services. To display this site, your browser fetches fonts from Google Fonts and country flag images from flagcdn.com. Those services receive your IP address as part of delivering the files. Links to Google Maps, LinkedIn and Facebook take you to those companies' own sites, which have their own privacy policies.

4. Why we use your information

• To reply to your enquiry or request a callback you asked for.
• To follow up on feedback and resolve complaints.
• To improve our services, using feedback and ratings.
• To keep records of our dealings with you and meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information, and we will not add you to a marketing list unless you ask us to.

5. Our lawful basis

We process the information you send us because you have given it to us for that purpose and consented by submitting the form, because it is needed to respond to your request, or because we have a legitimate interest in running and protecting our business.

6. Who we share it with

• Stowe staff who need it to respond to you.
• Formspree, Inc., the service that processes our contact form and delivers your message to us by email. Formspree is based in the United States, so your message is transferred outside South Africa. By submitting the form you consent to this transfer.
• Service providers that host this website and our email, who may only use the information on our instructions.
• Authorities, where the law requires us to disclose it.

7. How long we keep it

We keep your information only for as long as we need it for the purposes above, or for as long as the law requires us to keep records. After that we delete it or remove anything that identifies you.

8. How we protect it

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect personal information against loss, damage and unauthorised access. If your information is ever compromised, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

9. Your rights

Under POPIA you may:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you and request a copy of it;
• ask us to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, out of date or no longer needed;
• object to us processing your information;
• withdraw your consent at any time;
• lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator.

To use any of these rights, contact our Information Officer. We may need to confirm your identity before we act on a request.

10. Children

This website is intended for businesses. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

11. The Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information or a request, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa):

• Website: inforegulator.org.za
• Email: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za

12. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. The date at the top shows when it was last changed.

13. Contact our Information Officer

• Email: info@stowe.co.za (use the subject "Privacy request")
• Telephone: 021 936 9700
• Post: The Information Officer, Stowe Holdings (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 12662, N1 City, Cape Town, 7463