Privacy
What we collect, and what we do with it.
We hold what you hand us, plus what the law requires us to record when you sell metal. The site also uses Google's tools to count visits, calls and quote requests, and this page says exactly what that involves.
This policy covers Metal Plus, a trading name of Melt Metals Pty Ltd (ABN 11 646 984 572), at 159 Ashley St, Braybrook VIC 3019, and the website at metalplus.net.au.
What we collect
Four things, and nothing else:
- What you send us on the quote form. Set out in full below.
- What you tell us on the phone or by email. If you ring or write, we have whatever you said and the number or address you said it from.
- What the law makes us record when you sell us metal. Also set out below. This one is not optional for either of us.
- How the site is used, measured by Google. Which pages get read, and whether a visit ends in a call or a quote request. See cookies and tracking.
We do not buy information about you from anyone and we do not build a profile on you.
The quote form
The form at get a quote asks for your name, a phone number, your suburb, and a description of what you have. Those four are required, because without them we cannot give you a number or tell you whether we can collect it.
An email address is optional. Give it if you would rather be written to than rung. The same form on the bins page also asks, optionally, for a business or site name, so we know whose site it is when we ring back.
Photos are optional too, up to four of them. They are genuinely the fastest way to get an accurate price, because a picture of a load answers questions a description cannot. Worth knowing before you send one: a photo taken on a phone can carry the location it was taken at in its file data. If that matters to you, take the photo with location tagging switched off, or describe the load in words instead. We do not look at that data or do anything with it, but it is your photo and you should know what is in it.
The form also records the time you started filling it in and carries a hidden field that real people never see. Both exist to catch automated spam, they contain nothing about you, and neither is stored: they are checked when your enquiry arrives and then thrown away.
What you send is saved, not just emailed to us. That is deliberate, and it is in your interest as much as ours: an email can bounce or be deleted, and if that happens your enquiry is gone and nobody knows it existed. A saved record also means we can actually answer you if you ask what we hold or ask us to delete it, which is hard to do honestly from an inbox. What we save is exactly what you typed and the photos you chose to send. The saved enquiry does not include your IP address, your browser or where you came from.
When you sell metal to us
This is the part most people do not expect, so it is better said here than sprung on you at the yard.
Victorian law requires scrap metal dealers to record identification from every seller, and to keep a record of every transaction.
It is not a house rule and we cannot waive it. Bring photo identification with you.
That means when you sell us metal we record your identification details and the details of the transaction, and we keep them for as long as the regulations require. Those records exist so that stolen metal can be traced, and police may inspect them.
We also hold the payment details you give us in order to be paid. We use them to pay you and for nothing else.
How we use it
- To answer your enquiry and quote on your metal.
- To arrange a collection or a bin drop, if that is what you asked for.
- To pay you.
- To keep the transaction and identification records the law requires.
- To see which pages and which Google ads lead to calls and quote requests, so we stop paying for the ones that do not.
We do not send marketing email. There is no mailing list to be added to and no newsletter to unsubscribe from. If we contact you it is about the metal you asked us about.
Who else sees it
We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. It reaches four kinds of people and no others:
- Our own staff, the ones who need it to quote, collect, weigh or pay.
- The services that run this site and our email. The site, the form handler, the database your enquiry is stored in and the storage your photos go into are all Cloudflare, and the notification to us is sent through them too. Cloudflare operates globally, so information sent through the form may be stored and processed outside Australia.
- Google, through the measurement tools described under cookies and tracking. Google receives information about your visit. It does not receive your name, your number or anything else you type into the quote form.
- Police and regulators, where the law requires it. See the section on selling metal above.
Cookies and tracking
This site uses Google's measurement tools, and they set cookies. It loads Google Tag Manager, which runs two of them:
- Google Analytics counts visits: which pages are read, roughly which city a visitor is in, what kind of device and browser they use, and how they got here, whether from a search, an ad or a link. It tells us about visits in general, not about you by name.
- Google Ads conversion tracking tells us whether someone who clicked one of our Google ads went on to ring us or send a quote request. That is how we know which ads are worth paying for.
Both record three things you might do here: tapping a phone number, tapping a link for directions to the yard, and sending the quote form successfully. They record that it happened and which page it happened on. They do not receive your name, your number or anything else you type into the form.
Google sets its own cookies to do this, and handles what it collects under Google's privacy policy rather than this one. Google processes that information outside Australia, including in the United States. Google explains how it uses information from sites like this one.
You can turn it off. Google's Analytics opt-out add-on stops Analytics, and My Ad Center controls what Google does with ads. Blocking cookies or using a content blocker works too. Nothing on this site depends on these tools: the phone number, the quote form and every page work the same without them.
We do not use advertising pixels from anyone other than Google, session recording or heatmaps.
Two other things are worth naming:
- Your light or dark preference. When you use the theme switch, the choice is saved in your own browser's local storage. It never leaves your device and it never reaches us. Clearing your browser data removes it.
- The map. The map showing the yard is embedded from Google Maps, and loading it means your browser contacts Google, which will see your IP address and may set its own cookies under Google's privacy policy rather than this one. The address itself is plain text on the contact page, so you never need to load the map to find us.
The fonts on this site are served from this site, not from Google Fonts.
Our hosting keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and to keep the site up. They are not used to identify you or build a profile.
How long we keep it
- Quote enquiries: 90 days, then deleted automatically. Not "periodically reviewed", not "when we get around to it" — a scheduled job deletes them every night once they reach 90 days old, whether or not anybody remembers. Ask us to delete one sooner and we will.
- Photos you sent with a quote: deleted at the same time as the enquiry they came with, by the same job. The links we generate to view them stop working after 30 days.
- Transaction and identification records: kept for the period the Victorian second-hand dealer regulations require. These are kept separately from website enquiries and are not part of the 90 day deletion above. We cannot delete them on request during that period, and that is the one exception to everything below.
Security
The site is served over an encrypted connection, and form submissions are encrypted in transit. Access to enquiries and records is limited to staff who need it.
No system is perfectly secure and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. If we ever became aware of a breach that was likely to cause you serious harm, we would tell you and notify the regulator.
Access, correction and deletion
Ask us for a copy of what we hold about you and we will give it to you. Tell us something is wrong and we will correct it. Ask us to delete an enquiry and we will, unless it is part of a transaction record we are legally required to keep.
Ring 0452 220 422 or email info@metalplus.net.au. We may need to check you are who you say you are before handing over records, which is in your interest rather than ours.
Complaints
If you think we have mishandled your information, tell us first. We would rather hear it and fix it. Use the phone number or email address above, and set out what happened.
If you are not satisfied with how we deal with it, you can take the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
Changes to this policy
If what we do changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top is the date it last did. There is no archive of old versions, so if a change matters to you, the date is what to check.
Contact
Melt Metals Pty Ltd, trading as Metal Plus
159 Ashley St, Braybrook VIC 3019
0452 220 422
info@metalplus.net.au
Got metal sitting there doing nothing?
Ring us and we will tell you what it is worth and whether it is worth bringing in. Takes two minutes and it costs you nothing to ask.