TERMS & CONDTIONS | REFUND POLICY | PRIVACY POLICY

 TERMS & CONDTIONS
REFUND POLICY
PRIVACY POLICY

Updated: 12th November 2024

Festival Terms and Conditions

Festival Terms and Conditions

Tickets are sold by Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival (BRWF) (ABN 11454642604) who is responsible for the Event. The following conditions apply to sale, entry and attendance at the Event.

  • 1

    BRWF may amend the program of BRWF at any time without notice. Unavoidable program changes will be advised as where possible via Newsletter (for subscribers to BRWF newsletter), on the BRWF website, BRWF Facebook, and/or on-site.

  • 2

    You must present a valid printed or digital ticket for entry to events and abide by any terms of entry into the venue.

  • 3

    You must provide proof of eligibility for a concession to BRWF sites and BRWF may refuse entry if this is not provided upon request.

  • 4

    That the right of admission is reserved and patrons arriving late to BRWF events may not be admitted into the venue until a suitable break in the event.

  • 5

    To turn off any mobile telephones, pagers and similar equipment in your possession before entry into any event.

  • 6

    Participation in BRWF and entry to BRWF sites are at your own risk. To the maximum extent at law, you release BRWF, its directors, employees, subcontractors and agents from any liability whatsoever arising, however caused by your attendance at BRWF.

  • 7

    Children under 15 must be supervised at all times by a responsible adult while at BRWF sites.

  • 8

    BRWF reserves the right to examine and search all bags (including handbags), parcels and packages which are brought, or proposed to be brought, into BRWF sites, and to affect such other security measures as are reasonably necessary to protect the BRWF site.

  • 9

    That BRWF is not liable for any claims, damages, compensation, losses or expenses that may be suffered or incurred as a result of an event being cancelled or changed.

  • 10

    BRWF reserves the right to record, take photographs and video, which may include images of BRWF attendees, for the duration of BRWF and across all BRWF sites and reserves the right to use all images and video across BRWF media platforms thereafter. In doing so you release BRWF from any claims you may have for infringement of proprietary rights, invasion of privacy, violation of the right of publicity, defamation or any other cause of action you may have in relation to the BRWF event.

  • 11

    YOU MUST NOT enter any BRWF event with a camera or other recording device, without prior permission of BRWF.

  • 12

    YOU MUST NOT photograph, record, or digitize by any means at the BRWF sites, other than for private non-commercial purposes, without the express permission of BRWF.

  • 13

    YOU MUST NOT Wear or otherwise display offensive signage or logos or engage in ambush marketing. BRWF may refuse admission to BRWF sites, and eject from BRWF sites, any person whose behaviour is inappropriate or a threat to public safety.

Ticket Refund Policy

Ticket Refund Policy

At the Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival, we are committed to delivering excellent customer service and ensuring a positive experience for all our patrons. To achieve this, we have established the following Ticket Refund Policy to address ticket-related matters. Please carefully review the terms outlined below:

  • Tickets are non-refundable except in cases where a festival session is cancelled.
  • In lieu of a cancelled session refund, you may exchange your ticket for another session (if seating is available) by visiting the Ticket Office in the Bellingen Memorial Hall in person up to four hours before the session start time.
  • A cancelled session refund request must be submitted by emailing ticketing@bellingenwritersfestival.com.au and refunds will be less any POS costs associated with the original sale.
  • Refund requests will be processed within three (3) business days after the festival finishes on Sunday 9th June 2025. Refunds will be made to the card or account from which the original purchase was made.

  • No refunds will be issued for lost, stolen, damaged, or destroyed tickets.
  • Refunds will not be provided for dissatisfaction with the event, artist performance, or any other subjective reasons, including change of mind.

  • In the unlikely event of BRWF having to cancel the festival in its entirety more than 48 hours before it commences, festival ticketholders will be notified promptly and will be entitled to a full refund of the price of festival tickets, less any POS costs associated with the sale.
  • Refunds will be made to the card or account from which the original purchase was made.

The BRWF cannot guarantee that sessions will not change for reasons beyond their control. If the guests or topics at a session are changed, your booking will remain valid for the changed session at the same time and venue.

In the case of a session disruption causing a session to end early, ticketholders will be refunded if less than two-thirds of the event has passed. If two-thirds of the event has taken place, no refunds will be provided.

The BRWF reserves the right to amend this policy at any time. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting on our website.

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

At Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival Incorporated (ABN 11454642604) (“BRWF”, “we”, us” or “our”), the privacy of its users and other individuals (“you, “your”) is a top priority.

Your privacy is at the core of the way we design and build the services (the “BRWF Service” or the “Service”) and products we provide to you. “Website” means our website at https://www.bellngenwritersfestival.com.au.

BRWF is committed to protecting your privacy and is bound by the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) as well as other applicable laws protecting privacy.

When you purchase tickets or otherwise interact with us, we collect some personal information, such as your name, phone number, email address, company and home and/or business postal addresses. You may also give us access to your third-party services such as your social networking information if you give us access to your account on social network connection services.

With your permission (which you grant when you sign up for or begin using our Service), BRWF collects and stores the information you provide or that we collect in order to administer our Services and/or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or our Terms and Conditions.

In addition, we collect your personal information and data as follows:

Accessing our Service: When you use the Service, we automatically collect certain information from your Device, its software, and your activity using the Services. This may include, for example (but without limitation), the Device’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, the web page visited before or after you came to our Website, the information you search for on our Website, locale preferences, identification numbers associated with your Devices, your mobile carrier, date and time stamps associated with transactions, system configuration information, metadata, and interactions with the Service, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyse trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

Financial transactions: When you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through BRWF, we collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers email address, and phone number).

Surveys: We may collect information you provide to us through customer surveys and any information relating to you that you provide to us directly through our website, or to our representatives, or indirectly through your use of our website or through other websites from which you permit us to collect information.

Cookies: Cookies are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org. BRWF uses cookies or similar technologies to analyse trends, administer the Website, track users’ movements around the Website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our Website or service.

Third-party collection: BRWF may obtain contact and company information from third-party sources, such as business intelligence platforms. The information obtained by these third-party sources is from publicly available sources such as news articles. This information is used to support BRWF marketing and sales efforts. The BRWF team may contact you based on this information to gauge your interest in BRWF’s Services and offerings. You may opt out of these communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link provided in the email.

We use your personal information to:

To sell tickets to Festival events: Tickets can be purchased in a number of ways, including by purchasing at our box office during an event and through electronic means such as visiting our Website. When you purchase a ticket, your information may be used to facilitate payment, provide you with your ticket, provide you with any applicable discounts, notify you in case of changes in date or time of an event, send out information about upcoming festival events and also for marketing and other research purposes by BRWF.

To operate our website: When you use the Website, you may choose to provide your name, email address or other personal details in order for us to send you ticketing or other information about BRWF or its programs or other related programs or services or to respond to your queries.
As part of our general operations: BRWF also collects personal information about individuals who are, or are employed by, our partners, our suppliers (including service and content providers), contractors, agents, and other partners. Generally, if appropriate, we will state why we are collecting personal information when we collect it and how we plan to use it, or these things will be obvious when we collect the information.
When we collect personal information, we generally use it for the purposes for which it was collected, or as otherwise authorised or required by law. We may sometimes use personal information for marketing or other research or allow information in aggregated form (without identifying individuals) to be shared with other arts companies and agencies to guide and assist future programming and marketing planning.

If you have purchased tickets from us, or if you have asked to make such a purchase, we may use your information to send you material (including by email) about BRWF or its programs or other related programs or services, unless you tell us not to using the contact details set out below.
If at any time you do not want us to use your personal information to send you any further information, you can always let us know by contacting us through the contact details given below.

From time to time we may send you special offers and promotions from third parties. We will not disclose your personal information to those third parties. If you do not wish to receive offers from third parties please contact us through the contact details given below.

The officers of BRWF commit to:
· identify you and update our records and ensure your details are accurate.
· provide our Services to you and to send communications as requested by you.
· liaise with key organisations to deliver our Services, including software providers, state, territory and local governments.
· answer enquiries about our Services.
· provide you with updates and relevant information concerning our Services.
· assess the performance of the Website and to improve the operation of the Website.
· provide information to our suppliers and other service providers to enable them to provide our products and Services to you, including business, marketing, research and related purposes.
· comply with any Australian law, orders of courts or tribunals, any rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in co-operation with any governmental authority of any country (or political sub-division of a country).

We may disclose your personal information to the following:

Third-parties: We may use certain trusted third-party companies and individuals to help us provide and improve the Service (including but not limited to data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, payment processing, and improvement of the Service’s features). These third parties may have access to your information for purposes of performing these tasks on our behalf and under obligations similar to those in this Privacy Policy. For example, as of the date this policy went into effect, we use Mail Chimp to store some email addresses

Sub-processors: BRWF may transfer personal information to companies that help us provide our service. Transfers to subsequent third parties are covered by the provisions in this Policy regarding notice and choice, as well as the service agreements with our members. A list of Sub-Processors can be made available upon request.

Business transfers: If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, but we will notify you (for example, via email, sign in notification, and/or a prominent notice on our Website) if that happens or if your information otherwise becomes subject to a different privacy policy in lieu of this one. We will also notify you of choices you may have regarding the information.

Law Enforcement: We may disclose to third parties data stored in your BRWF account and information about you that we collect only in the ways that are described in this Privacy Policy and when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation, or compulsory legal request, such as to comply with a subpoena; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of BRWF or its users; or (d) to protect BRWF rights.

We do not sell Personal Information to third parties.

Third-Party links: Our Website includes links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from those of BRWF If you submit personal information to any of those websites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage visitors to review each site’s privacy policy before disclosing any personally identifiable information.

BRWF will retain personal data we process on behalf of our customers for as long as needed to provide Services to our customers.

If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you Services, you may delete your account. We may retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements and rights, or if it is not technically reasonably feasible to remove it.

Consistent with these requirements, we will try to delete your information quickly upon request. Please note, that BRWF may retain your personal data for longer where there is a legal obligation, contractual, or legitimate interest, unless these interests are overridden by the individual’s fundamental rights; in those cases data will be removed once it is no longer needed for those purposes. In addition, we do not provide access, transfer, change, or delete information from our servers’ files where that right adversely affects the rights of others.

Security
BRWF stresses its privacy and security standards. Although no one can guarantee absolute security, we regularly re-evaluate our privacy and security policies in order to adapt to new challenges. We follow generally accepted standards to protect the information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. We encrypt the most sensitive data that you store on BRWF using the standard encryption methods.

Choice/Opt-Out
If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter(s), we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. You may choose to stop receiving our newsletter or marketing emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails.

How to access and correct your personal information
Upon request, BRWF will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. If you are a registered user, you may review, update, correct, or delete certain Personal Information provided in your registration or account profile by changing your account settings.  If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our Service, you may update or delete it by making the change in your account settings, although (in some cases) we may retain copies of your information if required by law, to protect our rights, or if it is not technically reasonably feasible to remove it. You may at any time withdraw any consent that you have provided to us to process your information, or exercise your right to access and correct your personal information by contacting us as provided below. Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity before taking further action on your request, for security purposes. We will respond to your inquiry within 30 days.

Children
Our Services are not directed to persons under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with Personal Information without the parent’s consent, he or she should contact us at the email address below. If we become aware that a child under 18 has provided.

Changes
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.

Non-Australian Users
If you are located outside of Australia, please note that the information you provide to us will be used, maintained, retained, transferred and disclosed in Australia, where laws regarding use of personal information may be less stringent than the laws in your country. By using our Platform, you consent to such use, maintenance, retention, transfer and disclosure in accordance with this Privacy Policy, The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

We take customer satisfaction very seriously. If you have a complaint in relation to our handling of Your Personal Information, we will endeavour to handle it promptly and fairly. For your information, an overview of our complaints handling procedure is as follows:

• Any complaints are forwarded to our complaints officer for review. We aim to review all complaints within 7 days of receiving them (although this cannot be guaranteed. If further information is required, we may contact you to request that information. If we accept fault in relation to the complaint then we will propose a resolution (which may or may not be the same as any resolution proposed by you). If We do not accept fault, then we will contact you to advise you of this. We aim to complete this entire process within 21 days, provided that we are provided complete information in the first place (although this cannot be guaranteed). However, if you do not provide complete information then this is likely to delay the handling of your complaint.

• All complaints should be provided in writing either by email or regular mail, using the contact details at the end of this privacy policy. Describe the nature of your complaint including any relevant dates, people involved, any consequences that have occurred, and what you believe should be done to rectify the issue. We will endeavour to respond within 21 days, although we cannot guarantee this.

• If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you may refer your complaint to the relevant external dispute resolution organisation in your area.

We welcome questions and comments about this Privacy Policy. If you wish to access, verify and/or amend your personal information or make a complaint under this Privacy Policy, please contact us at the email address below.

Contact Us

Contact Us

You can contact Us about our Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | Cancellation Policy using the following details:

info@bellingenwritersfestival.com.au