These conditions are the standard terms and conditions governing any products and services activity between clients and the Newcastle Municipality. A further terms of service agreement may be required, solution dependent.

1. Introduction

• These conditions will govern the relationship between the Municipality and the registered account holder as rendered by the City of Newcastle on the e-Newcastle Customer Service Portal
• The account holder understands that by submitting their registration to subscribe to the Customer Service Portal that they have familiarized themselves with the contents in the Conditions of Use, and that the account holder intends to be bound by the contents.
• This Agreement will commence when the City of Newcastle accepts the account holders request to subscribe to the Customer Service Portal, which acceptance will manifest at that point in time when the City of Newcastle sends the account holders an activation confirmation (the "commencement date").

2. Definitions

• "User" means all persons who access, view, download from, or use the City of Newcastle site whether on the Internet or a copy thereof. "Users" includes "Registered Account Holders"
• "Customer Service Portal" means the electronic statement presentation, enquiry and payment solution as approved by the City of Newcastle.
• "the City of Newcastle site" means the website through which the City of Newcastle provides the Customer Service Portal.
• "Registered Account Holder" means a registered account holder with the City of Newcastle who subscribes to the Customer Service Portal either personally or through an authorized agent
• "City of Newcastle " means a municipality established in terms of section 12 of Local Government Act, 1998 (Act no: 117 of 1998)
• "submit" or "submission" means the action whereby the Account holder indicates to the City of Newcastle that they want utilize service.
• "writing" means documents reduced to writing and shall include e-mails, fax or registered post;

3. Application

• These Conditions of Use shall apply to all Users and becomes binding between the City of Newcastle and a user immediately upon the user accessing, viewing or using the Customer Service Portal or its contents.

4. Electronic Communications

• When a user visits the City of Newcastle website or sends e-mails to the City of Newcastle, that user consents to receiving communications from the City of Newcastle electronically and agrees that all agreements, notices, disclosures and other communications sent by the City of Newcastle satisfies any legal requirements, including but not limited, to the requirement that such communications are considered to be "in writing" with the same legal stature as a written document.

5. City of Newcastle Agent

• Where the User registers on behalf of a Registered Account Holder and uses the service on behalf of such Registered Account Holder, or acts as an agent of such Registered Account Holder, then the User warrants that they have obtained a written mandate from such Registered Account Holder, which mandate will contain at least the following conditions:
  • The User acts as a duly authorised agent on behalf of the Registered Account Holder;
  • The Registered Account Holder and the User are jointly and severally liable towards the City of Newcastle for all claims that the City of Newcastle might have in terms of this agreement against the Registered Account Holder and/or the User, and;
  • The User has disclosed the contents of this agreement to the Registered Account Holder.
• Where a User registers, invites or authorises access to another person or third party, then such User warrants that they are jointly and severally liable towards the City of Newcastle for all claims; that the City of Newcastle might have in terms of this agreement against the Registered Account Holder and/or the User for all actions performed by such other person or third-party.

6. User Name and Password

• On acceptance by the City of Newcastle of the Application, the account holder will be supplied with a user name by such means in such format as the City of Newcastle may determine from time to time.
• Unless otherwise specified, the account holder must change the initial password to a unique password of choice when the e-Newcastle Customer Service Portal is accessed for the first time.
• The account holder undertakes to ensure that the user name and password are neither easily accessible nor disclosed to any unauthorized person. Storing the username and/or password on a computer or network will be regarded as prima facie negligence.
• The account holder undertakes to report any actual or attempted unauthorised access to the City of Newcastle, without delay, via the support desk of the City of Newcastle and provide the City of Newcastle with written confirmation thereof within 24 (twenty-four) hours of such notification. On receipt of notification, the City of Newcastle reserves the right to deactivate the user name and/or password without further notice.
• The City of Newcastle may at its sole discretion and for whatever reason, require an account holder to change their user name and / or password from time to time and the account holder undertakes to unconditionally comply with such a requirement.

7. Payment and Relation to the City of Newcastle

• As part of its service offering, the City of Newcastle will co-operate with various banks (the "bank") to enable the account holder to make payments due to the City of Newcastle and to reconcile such payments with the account holder's records.
• The account holder understands that they enter into a direct agreement with the bank and that the City of Newcastle is not a party to this agreement.
• The South African Rand (ZAR) is the transaction currency used for all transactions performed on the Customer Service Portal.

8. Duties of the City of Newcastle

• The Customer Service Portal will provide access to monthly account statements and inform Account Holder immediately when new account is rendered.
• The Customer Service Portal will provide facilities to register linked account enquiry submissions and provide an on-line enquiry facility to view such submissions.
• If the Account Holder elects to make payment to the City of Newcastle through one of the payment services, the Customer Service Portal will keep record of all payments, provided that the Account Holder complies with the prescribed procedures for such payments.

9. Disputes

• The Account Holder will refer any dispute that may arise out of this Agreement to the Chief Financial Officer of the City of Newcastle, who will attempt to resolve the dispute through settlement, negotiation or mediation.
• If the dispute has not been resolved within 10 (ten) business days after it was referred to the Chief Financial Officer, the Account Holder may institute legal action to pursue its claim.

10. Cancellation Policy

• Newcastle municipality reserves the right to refuse/cancel a service for its municipal customers including both household and business consumers.
• Applications for the cancellation of municipal services must be filed for all municipal services rendered to a property, by the customer when vacating the property.
• All applications for the cancellation of municipal services must be made in writing and handed in for agreement at the physical Office of Newcastle Municipality.

11. Refund Policy

• Newcastle municipality reserves the right to refund a payment received, and will only process a refund claim when the consumer account is paid in full and is up to date.
• Newcastle municipality finance applies over allocated funds received as a credit towards your next municipal account bill, unless you request a refund.
• Refund claims can only be made at the physical Office of Newcastle Municipality, by filing a refund request application.
• Please allow 8 weeks to process your refund claim.

12. Information and Privacy

• The City of Newcastle understands that the information provided by the Account Holder to the City of Newcastle (the "information"), includes private and sensitive information. The City of Newcastle will, save for the circumstances as set out in clause 10 bullet 2 below, not share any such information with any third party without the prior written consent of the Account Holder.
• The City of Newcastle will only disclose the information to a third party:
• to perform the service required for the Customer Service Portal;
• if the City of Newcastle is required by law or court order to disclose the information; and/or
• The City of Newcastle will store information on its system for a period of 12 (twelve) months after the termination of this agreement, or for a period of 5 (five) years after submission of information if this agreement remains in force for longer than 5 (years), whichever might be the case.
• Although the City of Newcastle will take all reasonable measures to ensure that the information will not be compromised, the Account Holder acknowledges that they need to keep copies of the information under their own control in order to mitigate potential damages that might result from a loss or corruption of information.

13. Use of User Information by the City of Newcastle

• The City of Newcastle may in the widest sense possible distribute, loan, sell or otherwise share with other persons or entities information constituting or descriptive of demographic information, habits, usage patterns, preferences, survey data or other descriptive or related data which does not permit recipients to individually identify any particular user of the information service.
• The City of Newcastle will be entitled in its sole discretion and without notice to provide user information and records to the courts, law enforcement agencies, others involved in prosecuting claims or investigations for conduct or conditions alleged or believed to be illegal or the violation or threatening of rights of any person or entity, and to maintain and use such information and records internally.
• The City of Newcastle may provide online and e-mail communications to the user on matters pertaining to the information service, its features, its sponsors, or its use without compensation to the user, but shall do so reasonably and in good faith.
• The user acknowledges:
• that communications within the information service may be monitored or reviewed for quality control and other reasonable business and/or legal purposes;
• The use of user information and the disposal or dissemination thereof shall not constitute invasion of privacy by the City of Newcastle.

14. Use of Software

• Users are required to use and maintain only hardware and software of sufficient minimum quality and performance capabilities as indicated on the City of Newcastle home page and to use only the specified makes and versions of Internet browser software. Users acknowledge that their failure to use a specified browser may result in a higher security risk and/or cause or all of the functionality of the website not to operate properly or at all
• Software, if any, made available for download on or via the website is governed by the license conditions establishing a legal relationship between the User and the licensor of such software. The user indemnifies the City of Newcastle against any breach of such license conditions.
• The City of Newcastle gives no warranty and makes no representation, whether express or implied, as to the quality or compatibility of such software.

15. Unavailability of the City of Newcastle Customer Service Portal

• The City of Newcastle shall at all times and for whatever reason, have the sole and exclusive right to suspend or terminate the Customer Service Portal with prior written notification and provide reason for such termination or suspension. However, without prejudice to the foregoing, the City of Newcastle will not exercise its rights in terms of this clause without just cause.
• The user acknowledges and accepts that the City of Newcastle service may become unavailable from time-to-time due to various circumstances, including:
• technical failure or problems with the City of Newcastle ;
• infrastructure or technical problems with third party information technology systems;
• unavailability of telecommunication or electricity services;
• or other circumstances beyond the control of the City of Newcastle.
• Without derogating from the provisions of this clause, the user undertakes to limit their potential debt caused by any unavailability of the Municipal Customer Service Portal by making use of alternative account statement enquiry and payment methods available to consumers.

16. No Warranties or Representations

• The Conditions of Use evidences the sole terms and conditions governing the services of the Customer Service Portal.
• Users acknowledge and agree that any warranties, statements or representations of whatever nature and in whatever form, including promotional materials, granted or made by the City of Newcastle, its employees, agents or advisors which are not stated in the Conditions of Use shall not be valid and enforceable and Users shall not hold the City of Newcastle liable to any such warranty or representation, whether made prior to, during or after concluding the Conditions of Use.
• The City of Newcastle site and Customer Service Portal are provided "as is" and the City of Newcastle makes no express or implied representations or warranties with regard thereto. Without limiting the generality of the aforegoing:-
• the City of Newcastle does not warrant that the website; its contents; the third party content and services; payment or the Municipal Customer Service Portal will be error free or will meet any particular criteria of accuracy, completeness or reliability of information, performance or quality. The City of Newcastle expressly disclaims all implied warranties, including, without limitation, warranties of merchantability, title, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy; and
• whilst the City of Newcastle has taken reasonable measures to ensure the integrity of the Customer Service Portal services, no warranty, whether express or implied is given that any files, downloads or applications available via the website are free of viruses or any other data or code which has the ability to corrupt or affect the operation of a user's system.

17. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

• These conditions are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Information We Collect and How We Use It

We may collect the following types of information:

• Information you provide - When you register for a Newcastle Municipality Account, we ask you for personal information. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other the Newcastle Municipality services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information. You can use the Newcastle Municipality Dashboard to learn more about the information associated with your Account. If you are using the Newcastle Municipality services in conjunction with your our applications, the Newcastle Municipality provides such services in conjunction with or on behalf of your application administrator. Your administrator will have access to your account information including your email.
• Cookies - When you visit the Newcastle Municipality, we send one or more cookies to your computer or other device. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search. The Newcastle Municipality also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web and on the Newcastle Municipality services.
• Log information - When you access the Newcastle Municipality services via a browser, application or other client our servers automatically record certain information. These server logs may include information such as your web request, your interaction with a service, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your account.
• User communications - When you send email or other communications to the Newcastle Municipality, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. When you send and receive SMS messages to or from one of our services that provides SMS functionality, we may collect and maintain information associated with those messages, such as the phone number, the wireless carrier associated with the phone number, the content of the message, and the date and time of the transaction. We may use your email address to communicate with you about our services.
• Affiliated Newcastle Municipal Services on other sites - We offer some of our services on or through other web sites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to the Newcastle Municipality in order to deliver the service. We process such information under this Privacy Policy.
• Third Party Applications - The Newcastle Municipality may make available third party applications, such as gadgets or extensions, through its services. The information collected by the Newcastle Municipality when you enable a third party application is processed under this Privacy Policy. Information collected by the third party application provider is governed by their privacy policies.
• Location data - The Newcastle Municipality offers location-enabled services, such as the Newcastle Municipality Maps and Latitude. If you use those services, the Newcastle Municipality may receive information about your actual location (such as GPS signals sent by a mobile device) or information that can be used to approximate a location (such as a cell ID).
• Unique application number - Certain services, such as the Newcastle Municipality Toolbar, include a unique application number that is not associated with your account or you. This number and information about your installation (e.g., operating system type, version number) may be sent to the Newcastle Municipality when you install or uninstall that service or when that service periodically contacts our servers (for example, to request automatic updates to the software).
• Other sites - This Privacy Policy applies to the Newcastle Municipality services only. We do not exercise control over the sites displayed as search results, sites that include the Newcastle Municipality applications, products or services, or links from within our various services. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you.

In addition to the above, we may use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services; and
• Protect the rights or property of the Newcastle Municipality or our users.

If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use. The Newcastle Municipality processes personal information on our servers in the Republic of South Africa and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information outside your own country.

Information Sharing

The Newcastle Municipality only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of the Newcastle Municipality in the following limited circumstances:

• We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
• We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
• We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of the Newcastle Municipality, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If the Newcastle Municipality becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Information Security

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorised alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, including appropriate encryption and physical security measures to guard against unauthorised access to systems where we store personal data. We restrict access to personal information to the Newcastle Municipality employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it on our behalf. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

Enforment

The Newcastle Municipality complies with the law of the Republic of South Africa. The Newcastle Municipality regularly reviews its compliance with this Privacy Policy. When we receive formal written complaints, it is the Newcastle Municipality's policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be resolved between the Newcastle Municipality and an individual.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes).