Violation of Privacy

I signed my car up for Cars.co.za's Match! service to sell my car, and the next day, Sell My Car Quick phoned to arrange an evaluation of the car. I spoke to a woman from their office. When I asked where they got my details from, they said that it was through Cars.co.za. When the person came to evaluate my car, I asked him to explain the link between Cars.co.za and Sell My Car Quick, and he told me that there was no link. I mentioned that their office had told me there was a link. He was totally stumped, and he mentioned something about 'leads from Google'. When I phoned Cars.co.za, they told me that Sell My Car Quick is a separate company that has no affiliation with Cars.co.za -- basically, Sell My Car Quick is a competitor. The information I received from Cars.co.za was to the effect that I would receive offers that I could act on, by email. I was not asked if Cars.co.za could share my personal information with other third parties who would be allowed to contact me directly, right away. My impression is that I could ignore offers I wasn't interested in and only act on those I wanted to. When a senior employee from Cars.co.za phoned me to discuss the matter, they told me that no one has had a problem with them sharing personal information in this way in the three years they've been doing it. The implication is that I am wrong. They did not apologise, and tried to argue that what they do is fine, until only later in the call, when I was able to make them see that they need to be more careful with personal information and ********* business practices. The person explained that Sell My Car Quick has a relationship with Cars.co.za whereby Cars.co.za provides customer information to them when they see that a car is 'not getting many offers'. The way the person explained it was that if a car hasn't received any offers, say 'after a month', they share your information with this third party. But my advert was posted only the day before they shared my information with their third party?! Cars.co.za needs to make it clear in their communication how they are sharing information and that someone from Sell My Car Quick will be given access to this. Their call centre staff need to know the relationship between Cars.co.za and Sell My Car Quick. They also need to alert the representatives of Sell My Car Quick of the relationship between the two companies. Cars.co.za might feel that Sell My Car Quick is a trusted partner, but to me they are strangers. Sell My Car Quick's logo is nowhere on Cars.co.za's site. How are we to know they are a trusted partner? But more importantly, who else is Cars.co.za sharing your information with without asking permission to do so? Dealing with them has felt to be a violation of privacy.