🔒 Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Retirement South Africa (retirementsouthafrica.co.za) is an online directory of retirement facilities, retirement villages, frail care centres, and assisted living communities across South Africa. We connect families searching for retirement living options with facilities and agents.

This website is owned and operated by Blue Chair Online (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2019/342738/07, a company registered in South Africa. Blue Chair Online (Pty) Ltd is the billing entity for all subscriptions and advertising on this platform.

We are the Responsible Party as defined under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and are responsible for the personal information we collect and process through this website.

2. Information We Collect

We collect personal information in the following ways:

Contact Form Submissions
When you send us a message via our contact form, we collect your name, email address, and the contents of your message.

Facility Listing & Claim Requests
When you submit a facility listing or claim an existing listing, we collect your name, email address, phone number, job title, and facility details.

User Account Registration
When a WordPress account is created (either by you or automatically when a claim is approved), we collect your name, email address, and username. You may optionally add a phone number.

Classified Ad Submissions
When you post a classified ad, we collect your name, agency name, phone number, email address, and property details.

Payment Processing
When you purchase a listing plan or classified ad, payment details are collected directly by PayFast — we do not store your card or banking information on our servers.

Automatically Collected Data
Like most websites, we may automatically collect your IP address, browser type, pages visited, and time spent on the site for analytics and security purposes.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the personal information we collect to:

• Respond to your enquiries and contact form submissions
• Create and manage your user account and listings
• Process listing claims and verify facility ownership
• Process payments and issue receipts
• Send transactional emails (account creation, payment confirmation, listing expiry reminders)
• Display agent and facility contact details on listings (where you have provided these for public display)
• Improve our website and user experience
• Comply with legal obligations

We will not use your personal information for unsolicited marketing without your explicit consent.

4. Payment Processing

All subscriptions and advertising fees on Retirement South Africa are billed by Blue Chair Online (Pty) Ltd (Reg. 2019/342738/07). You will see Blue Chair Online reflected on your invoice, bank statement, or payment confirmation.

Payments are processed securely by PayFast, a South African payment gateway. When you proceed to checkout, you are redirected to PayFast's secure servers to complete your payment.

We do not store, process, or have access to your credit card, debit card, or banking details. PayFast's own privacy policy governs how they handle your payment information. You can view their privacy policy at payfast.co.za.

We retain a record of your order (amount paid, product purchased, date) for accounting and customer service purposes.

5. Cookies & Analytics

Our website uses cookies — small text files stored on your device — to improve your browsing experience. We use cookies for the following purposes:

• Essential cookies: Required for the website to function correctly, including maintaining your login session and shopping cart.
• Analytics cookies: We may use tools such as Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our site. This data is anonymised and aggregated — it does not identify you personally.
• Preference cookies: To remember your settings and preferences on return visits.

You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings. Please note that disabling essential cookies may affect the functionality of the website.

6. Third Party Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes. We may share your information in the following limited circumstances:

• PayFast: Payment details are shared with PayFast solely for the purpose of processing your transaction.
• Service providers: We may use trusted third-party services (such as email delivery providers and hosting services) that process data on our behalf and are bound by confidentiality obligations.
• Legal requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law, or if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to comply with legal processes or protect our rights.

Contact details submitted for public listing pages (phone, email) are displayed on our website as intended by the facility or agent who provided them.

7. Your Rights Under POPIA

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), you have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Right to access: You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Right to correction: You may request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
• Right to deletion: You may request that we delete your personal information, subject to our legal obligations to retain certain records.
• Right to object: You may object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Right to complain: If you believe we have not handled your personal information lawfully, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at partner@retirementsouthafrica.co.za. We will respond within 30 days.

8. Data Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, loss, or misuse. Our website is served over HTTPS (SSL encryption) and access to personal data is restricted to authorised personnel only.

While we take every precaution, no method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security but will notify you in the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, as required by POPIA.

9. Data Retention

We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, or as required by law:

• Contact form submissions: Retained for 12 months then deleted.
• User accounts: Retained for as long as your account is active. You may request deletion at any time.
• Payment records: Retained for 5 years for accounting and tax compliance purposes.
• Listing data: Retained while the listing is active. Unpublished listings may be deleted after 12 months of inactivity.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

Continued use of our website after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact us:

• Email: partner@retirementsouthafrica.co.za
• Website: retirementsouthafrica.co.za/contact