In the alleged spoof email, when you hold your mouse over "login to my account" it redirects to some obscure non-ihug direct marketing firm called Segar Associates.  I thought this was a clue for the gendarmes to trace.

I have now been advised by the Disputes Tribunal that, if Ihug attempt to bill me next month for $114.95, I can pay $30 to lodge a Denial Of Liability for that amount.



You are correct in thinking that Ihug failed to supply any terms and conditions for the Lifetime Premier Account, as advertised. However, I have always assumed I could select a type of connection that would suit my circumstances up to what ever type of "terrestrial" account was being offered to individuals but not to businesses. The terms of my current Ihug Wired Country account meets these conditions as the antenna is not space-based. Further, there was no sense of restriction related to dial-up as this was all that was being offered to individuals in 1996. Unbeknown to me, Ihug did in fact terminate my account for a few hours on March 1, 2006, as threatened. The last activity on my account then showed that the account is closed. I am still fully operational with the only anomaly being that there are no daily statistics being shown for my data usage and I don't know if this relates only to me. They have said I am only entitled to a dial-up account and have not exactly threatened termination only that they will be billing me for my current service, though for March they did not do this. All the equipment that I have purchased to go with the current Ihug connection will not work with any other type.

Unfortunately, the Disputes Tribunal can only provide a verdict to a high court for the :

Monday, March 6th 2006.

Dear Ihug Staff, & srdjan.m

At least there is no mystery why my account was closed. You have been misled. My account is not complimentary nor could ever have been expressed as having a limitation in down-market "dial-up" terms.

Furthermore I did not instruct anyone to reopen any account and no explanation was given for the password hack, as is now suggested. Ihug were covering up the true situation and I was under the assumption that the password had been hacked as threatened by what I was told by Ihug was a bogus email not originating from Ihug but an outsourced direct marketing company.

Prior to the iiNet purchase of Ihug this "Lifetime Premier Internet" definition of my account was previously enforced by the then General Manager of Ihug, the one who was previously employed at Air New Zealand, whose name escapes me. I'll be most pissed if I have to install Google Desktop just to sieve out the huge mountain of Ihug correspondence. Ah Presto! He's Duncan Shand. One of the few that got my analogy of how fledgling Teal (pre AirNZ) trying to sell a lifetime account restricted to flying boats was as inane as Ihug selling a lifetime account restricted to dial-up. At no time have I considered my account as "lifetime basic" instead of "lifetime premier" for the obvious reason of being able to handle the technical limitations of changing circumstances.

So I tell you to use your common sense and look at the evidence of my upgrade to broadband from dial up around 2003. Ihug then again went through the same process of verification that you are going to and it doesn't worry me in the least to come in for a morning coffee so you can verify who I am in the flesh. I would hope that you will continue to verify my lifetime from time to time. I would not like to see someone else take over my identity.

It was around September of 1996 that a banner ad in Ihug's colors first appeared on Ihug's homepage offering a Lifetime Premier Internet account for $1996+GST one of which I accepted. I am on record with the tax department as having successfully exempted this transaction from GST as it went to make up my old age lifestyle.  I'm also reminded by my witness, Nigel W., that there where extended credit card payment terms advertised, but I paid in cash over four months. I think there was some money back if you wanted out within a year or so.

It was envisaged that the internet over my lifetime would obsolete my then existing dial up technology and it was considered that "premier" meant up to the best individual "all-you-can-eat" account being offered at any one time. The best Ihug offered at that time was "all-you-can-eat" and no one in their right mind would buy a perpetually entry level lifetime account. What you are thinking is that no one in their right mind would sell a lifetime premier account now. But tacitly, it did happen and the application of the "premier" terms have held good for ten years. That's all I was concerned with. I just wanted to go through life without an invoicing problem. I later found that I made good use of my lifetime account to foster the aims of alter ego, Jimekus of Ekus UN-incorporated as the neuroeconomy of the left prepares for my eventual mind-uploading. My efforts in this area have been rewarding thanks to Ihug.

What you are proposing I accept amounts to a termination of services and a devaluation of my life. That's not in anyone's interest to even contemplate. I'm sure a judge could explain that to anyone interested. Let me suggest an alternative. Get those in your marketing department, the ones who are directing this witch hunt, to prepare an amortized price for what a "lifetime premier internet" account is worth today and present it to a judge as recognition of what I think I already own. I'm sure he will agree.

Nick Wood, (not the Nick Wood of my client Griffith Labs), but of Ihug was given four $500 cash payments, as shown in an Ihug cash receipt book, described as for, "Lifetime Premier Internet Connection". He was in a hurry to sell part of the company in Australia and needed the walking and talking money. He said he would, on his return from Sydney, to have prepared the contract outlining what would happen to lifetime accounts on the sale of Ihug., etc. etc. Nick Wood wanted to cancel the account when he came back. He failed to send the contract and I then started to investigate placing a caveat over the name Ihug. I could not prove that there were any others in my position. I was told there were four like me but saw no names.

Early on, for asking for the contract, I was humiliated by Tim Wood arguing by email with Nick Wood, because they wanted out. Their relationship with me was tense until broadband arrived and iiNet bought Ihug. Your service is how I expect to be treated.

The name Ihug was built into URLs in my Ingrid software as it was guaranteed safe for my lifetime. As such, I entered into correspondence with DomainNZ on this subject and had several conversations with the General Manager of Telstra over the implications of my lifetime account.

On more than one occasion this matter has been brought to the attention of Ihug's corporate solicitors both internally and externally, none of whom are available to comment. Ihug's correspondence already confirms the definition of "lifetime premier internet account" and I hope it won't take a high court discovery order for you to confirm your compliance with said binding communication. It seems remarkable that everyone who has ever made a decision on my account has mysteriously ceased their employment with Ihug just around the time that I start to be taken seriously. That's not fair.

This pattern of continued arguments with Ihug over the last ten years, and there have been many like this, though all settled to my satisfaction, held by some to be harassment, should not be used to shorten my lifespan.

"We can spend the next five years in court to get back to the very place we're at right now. They will fight tough. They will fight dirty. They'll pressure your boss. They'll pressure the people who appointed your boss. They'll pressure the wives of the people who appointed your boss and you will never hit them any harder than this. And you know it." - Syriana

"He didn't know they'd kill her. But that's the way it works with corporate / political murder. Boss gets wind of something. Calls in his head of security, who talks to someone, who talks to a friend of someone. Finishes up with an answering machine in a rented office. A couple of sensitive gentlemen in a blue pickup truck. You'll never know who ordered the hit." - The Constant Gardener

"Let me tell you what I'm facing. They dragged him in the desert. Cut out his tongue. Chopped off his manly apparatus and stuffed them where his tongue had been. Then they crucified the poor bugger. Pathologist opinion: he was still alive when they nailed him up. Of course I might be lucky." - The Constant Gardener

Dreams of movie quotes notwithstanding, I awoke Sunday to a phone invoice from Ihug charging me $10 for extra email addresses. Funny, I thought. No notification that the 5 free boxes were withdrawn. On Monday morning I was presented with a list of 6 or 7 emailboxes opened and closed over the last 10 years. At most only 3 were active.

On going to "My Account" at Ihug, to delete the 2 unused email accounts, I noticed the monthly charge for my lifetime premier account has gone from $0.00 to $114.95 per month.

A clip from an old invoice showing internet charges of $0.00 each and every month is juxtaposed against the current account summary now showing this billed at $114.95 per month when previously the same form showed $0.00 (Special Deal) which is what someone had put to avoid billing for my lifetime premier internet connection. I am seeking an Disputes Tribunal order reinstating the ever changing and ever obuscating announcement on my Ihug Accounts Overview page to the static one shown previously. I am fearful that unless the discrepency and these fumbling errors , shown in attachment pages AccountOverview.gif and AccountOverview5-3-6.gif respectively, are fixed then the next invoicing computer run on April 5th, 2006, will choose the wrong value to invoice. An order can be made now for costs to investigate an old computer cache for an exact copy of the original $0.00 (Special Deal) page.

If nobody moves and the account is credited back to $0.00 then I will take no further action. Otherwise I will consider picketing the offices of Ihug, with the opening double edged sign, as shown above.

Yours sincerely,
Jim Legg
PS. Until I hear from you, a copy of this email has reached the top of my Ihug homepage and is now refreshing itself in the court of public opinion.