This Website is published and maintained by absentFriends Limited, trading as absentFriends.com (“we” or “our” or “us”). By registering as a Member or accessing and browsing this Website you agree to comply with these Terms and Conditions without limitation or qualification.
If you do not agree to comply with these Terms and Conditions you must immediately leave this Website.
Definitions
1. For the purposes of these Terms and Conditions, the following words have the following meanings:
“Business Tools Member” means a Trade Member who has paid a fee to upgrade their membership in order to access additional tools and services;
“Member” means any person or entity who has registered as a member of this Website, including a Public Member, Trade Member, Business Tools Member, and Supplier/Manufacturer Member;
“Public Member” means a person who has registered as a Member of this Website in order to access and use the public pages of our Website and selected Services;
“Services” means any one or more of the services provided on this Website, including, without limitation:
(a) directory listings;
(b) information and resources about funeral services, community support and grief;
(c) creating, publishing, managing, and participating in memorial websites, grief walls, obituaries, public notices, and forums;
(d) shopping online;
(e) webcasts;
(f) advertising; and
(g) notice boards and classifieds;
“Supplier/Manufacturer Member” means a supplier or manufacturer in the funeral industry who has registered as a Member of this Website in order to access and use the public and supplier and manufacturer pages of our Website and selected Services;
“Terms and Conditions” means these terms and conditions;
“Trade Member” means a person or entity in the funeral industry who has registered as a Member of our Website in order to access and use the public and trade pages of our Website and selected Services;
“Website” means the website located at www.absentFriends.com or trade.absentFriends.com; and
“You” and
“your” means the person or entity using this Website and Services.
Eligibility
2. The Services are only available to, and may only be used by:
(a) entities; or
(b) persons who are 18 years of age,
who and can form legally binding contracts under New Zealand law, subject to clause 3.
3. Persons who are under 18 years of age may also use the Services if they have obtained the prior consent of a parent or guardian to the use of the Services and these Terms and Conditions.
4. If you register an entity or association as a Member, you represent that you have authority to bind the relevant entity or association to these Terms and Conditions.
5. We may decline to register you as a Member for any reason and we are not obliged to state a reason.
Categories of Membership
6. There are four categories of membership of absentFriends:
Public Member
(a) If you sign up as a free Public Member you will receive access to the public pages of our Website and to your own personal profile page. You will also be able to use the Services available to Public Members.
Trade Member
(b) If you sign up as a free Trade Member you will receive access to the public and trade pages of our Website, and to your own personal profile page. You will also be able to use the Services only available to Trade Members.
Business Tools Member
(c) If you upgrade your Trade Membership to a Business Tools Membership you will receive access to the public, trade and business tools member pages of our Website, and to your own personal profile page. In addition to access and use of the Services available to Trade Members, you will also be able to use the Services only available to Business Tools Members. For a full description of Services available to Business Tools Members
click here.
Supplier/Manufacturer Member.
(d) If you sign up as a free Supplier/Manufacturer Member you will receive access to the public and supplier and manufacturer pages of our Website, and to your own personal profile page. You will also be able to use the Services only available to Supplier/Manufacturer Members.
Duration of Membership
7.
If you are a Public Member, membership is ongoing until the Website and Services are no longer provided by us.
8. If you are a Business Tools Member, your annual membership commences on the date we enable your account (following payment of the applicable membership fee) and expires exactly 12 months later, unless you renew your Business Tools Membership for further 12 month periods. We may decline to accept renewal for any reason whatsoever, and we are not obliged to state our reasons. If your Business Tools Membership ceases or expires for any reason you will remain a Trade Member until such time as you notify us that you wish to cancel your membership, or in the event that the Services and/or the Website are no longer provided by us.
9. If you cancel any membership we will not be obliged to refund any fees paid by you.
Fees
10. Our Website includes an online shopping function. To shop on our Website you must be the authorised holder of a Visa or Mastercard credit card. Credit card payments are processed by a secure third party provider.
11. You agree to pay all fees and charges incurred for any products or Services you buy from us. You must prepay such fees through our on-line credit card payment facility. All fees are in New Zealand dollars and are inclusive of GST, sales taxes or other value-added taxes, unless otherwise specified. We reserve the right to change our fees at any time. We may correct pricing errors at any time.
12. Once you have placed an order and your payment has been processed you cannot change or cancel your order without our express authorisation. However, in some countries you may have a general right at law to cancel your order.
13. If any payment you submit to us fails to clear:
(a) you agree to pay all costs and expenses incurred by us as a result of your failure to pay, including all accounting costs, court costs, and collection and legal costs incurred by us (including legal costs on a solicitor and own client basis); and
(b) we reserve the right to suspend or cancel your membership.
14. You agree that we may perform credit checks upon you, and you consent to us contacting other people to enable us to conduct such credit checks.
Use of our Website
15. All persons who use or access our Website or the Services (whether or not they are Members) do so subject to these Terms and Conditions.
16. You are responsible for ensuring that all personal information that you provide to us for your account and otherwise through our Website is accurate. You must maintain and update your personal information in your account to ensure it is kept current at all times. You must not register under multiple identities (whether accurate or not).
17. For any information or other content that you submit to us or another Member, or upload on to our Website, you expressly undertake and warrant that:
(a) it does not contain anything that:
(i) is misleading or deceptive, is likely to mislead or deceive, or otherwise breaches the Fair Trading Act 1986 (New Zealand) or any equivalent trade practices or fair trading legislation in any country;
(ii) is or is likely to be defamatory, offensive, obscene, indecent, unlawful, illegal or objectionable;
(iii) infringes any copyright or other intellectual property rights of any person; or
(iv) breaches any provision of any statute, regulation, by-law or other legal obligation; and
(b) our publication or use of any information or other content submitted or uploaded by any person will not give rise to any liability on our part or in a claim being made against us.
18. You also warrant that in accessing and using our Website or the Services, you will not:
(a) publish any material or comment that promotes or encourages illegal activity, or that would violate the property or personal rights of others;
(b) publish any material or comment that falsely expresses or implies that we or any other third party has sponsored or endorsed that material;
(c) abuse, harass, stalk, threaten, or otherwise violate the rights of, other Members and visitors to our Website;
(d) use the personal information of other Members for purposes other than establishing contact that is reasonably expected to be welcomed by such other Members;
(e) create a false or misleading identity, or otherwise misrepresent your connection with a person or entity for the purpose of misleading others as to your identity or the origin of any material on our Website;
(f) upload, post, or disseminate any content that infringes any patent, trade mark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual property right;
(g) remove any copyright, trade mark, or other proprietary rights notices contained on any materials on or obtained from our Website;
(h) publish or distribute any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising, promotional materials, or other forms of solicitation;
(i) transmit, email, or post any material that contains software viruses or computer code designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software, hardware, or telecommunications equipment;
(j) use our Website in any unlawful manner or in any other manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair our Website;
(k) attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Website, other accounts, computer systems, or networks connected to our Website, whether through password mining or any other means;
(l) modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of our Website or the Services, or use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other device or technological process to retrieve or index any portion of our Website, except as expressly authorised by us in writing;
(m) harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of Members, including User IDs, by electronic or other means;
(n) otherwise interfere with another Member’s use of our Website or the Services; or
(o) take any other action that we consider is not reasonable or appropriate.
19. Members and users of our Website who are not based in New Zealand agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.
20. We reserve the right at any time to, at our sole discretion, refuse to publish, or to withdraw, any information or content you submit or upload to our Website for any reason whatsoever. We will not be obliged to state a reason for doing so.
21. Any information or content you submit or upload to our Website will remain on our Website until you remove it, subject always to our right to withdraw or remove any information or content at any time.
Intellectual Property Rights
22. You acknowledge and agree that all intellectual property rights in our Website and the Services (including trade marks, text, graphics, and other content), and all software and other material underlying our Website and the Services, are owned by us or our licensors. You may print copies of any materials we provide to you for your own personal use, or (where materials are provided for business purposes) for your internal business purposes, but you may not otherwise in any form or by any means adapt, reproduce, store, perform, publish or create any derivative works from any part of our Website or Services, or commercialise or on-sell any information obtained from us or our Website without our express authorisation. If we provide templates to Business Tools Members for use with planning and undertaking funeral services, Business Tools Members may use, copy, adapt, reproduce, store and publish those templates for such purposes only.
23. We claim no intellectual property rights ownership over information or content you submit or upload to our Website, provided you have not obtained it from us. Your profile and information and content you submit or upload to our Website remain yours. You may remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. Deletion of your account will remove all data and images from public display.
24. You grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable and sub-licensable licence to:
(a) publish information or content you submit or upload to our Website;
(b) where appropriate, provide your information or content to other persons;
(c) reproduce information or content you submit or upload to our Website in any print, digital or electronic advertising media we offer now or may offer in the future; and
(d) permit Members to use the information or content you submitted or uploaded to our Website for their own personal or internal business purposes,
but subject always to the terms of our Privacy Policy.
Links to other websites
25. We are not responsible for any information or content on any website that is linked to our Website (including any information or content on any website of any advertiser or Member), as we have no control over such websites. We include such links for your convenience and you should not consider such linking as an endorsement by us of any business, product, service or information on that website.
26. You will be responsible for your use of any information on or from any website linked to our Website. You should make your own investigations as to the quality and usefulness of all such information.
Errors and Complaints
27. All Services are provided by us in good faith.
28. Please
click here if you have any concerns or complaints about our Website or the Services. We will use reasonable endeavours to deal with genuine complaints in a timely manner and in good faith.
29. We will only investigate complaints during our normal business hours (New Zealand Standard Time, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm).
Details
30. You are responsible for keeping your login information, including your log-in ID and password, secret and secure. You agree not to permit any other person to use your log-in information or to access your account or the Services, and not to disclose (directly or indirectly) any information that may allow a third person to gain access to your account.
Privacy Policy
31. Personal information collected from you during the registration process, your membership, your use of the Services and visits to our Website will be used, disclosed and held by us in accordance with our
Privacy Policy .
32. You acknowledge that you have read our
Privacy Policy and accept its terms and conditions. You acknowledge that our Privacy Policy may be amended or reviewed from time to time and that your continued use of our Website will constitute acceptance of any amendments or revisions to our Privacy Policy.
Indemnity
33. You agree to at all times indemnify us and our directors, employees, agents and other personnel against any and all liability, claims, losses, damages, costs or other expenses of any nature whatsoever awarded against, incurred or suffered by us or our directors, employees, agents and other personnel arising out of or in connection with any information or content you submit or upload to our Website, or your breach of these Terms and Conditions.
Disclaimers and Liability
34. You expressly understand and agree:
(a) your use of our Website and any Services, including all transactions and all contact between you and other Members and users of our Website, is conducted entirely at your own risk;
(b) you are responsible for all information and content that you submit or upload on our Website;
(c) you will not hold us liable for any failure to provide access to our Website or the Services;
(d) we are not responsible or liable for any misconduct of any Members or users of our Website;
(e) we are not responsible for any information or content posted by Members, advertisers or users of our Website, and the placement of information or content on our Website by any third party does not constitute endorsement of the content by us; and
(f) no information or advice obtained by you from our Website will create any warranty by us that is not expressly stated in these Terms and Conditions.
35. Our Website and the Services are provided by us on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We disclaim and exclude any implied conditions or warranties (including, without limitation, any warranties of merchantability, quality and fitness for a particular purpose).
36. We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that all product descriptions, other information, and commentary about products or Services available through our online shopping function are current, accurate, and reliable. However, we do not warrant that this will always be the case. For example, due to technical or human error, at times information may be recorded incorrectly or may need to be updated.
37. Without limiting the above, we do not warrant that our Website or any Services will be available at all times, secure or error-free, or that any information or content published on our Website is error-free or reliable. For example, from time to time we may need to undertake maintenance or upgrading work on our Website, and our Website and Services may be temporarily unavailable at these times. We take no responsibility for any system unavailability, or for any loss incurred as a result of our Website or Services being unavailable.
38. In no event will we or our employees, agents, directors and other personnel, have any liability to you or any other person or entity (whether in contract, tort including negligence, or otherwise) in relation to your use of our Website or any Services, whether or not such liability is direct, indirect, consequential or of a special nature, including without limitation, any liability for loss of revenue, profit, anticipated savings, goodwill or opportunity, production or loss or corruption of data.
39. We will use reasonable efforts to ensure information and content held on our Website is not corrupted but take no responsibility for the corruption of any information or content. Under no circumstances will we be held liable for any delay or failure in providing the Services resulting directly or indirectly from acts of nature, forces or causes beyond our reasonable control including (without limitation) internet failures, computer equipment failures, telecommunication equipment failures, electrical power failures, civil disturbances, acts of God, war, governmental actions, orders of domestic or foreign courts or tribunals, or non-performance of third parties.
40. If, despite any disclaimers and exclusions listed above, we are found to have any liability under these Terms and Conditions, the maximum amount of our liability arising out of any and all claims under these Terms and Conditions or relating to our Website or the Services, will not in any circumstances exceed the actual fees paid by you in the 12 month period before the date any such liability first arose.
41. None of the exclusions or limitations set out in these Terms and Conditions will have the effect of limiting or excluding any form of liability to the extent such liability cannot be so limited or excluded under applicable law.
Non-compliance
42. If you breach or fail to comply with these Terms and Conditions, or we deem your behaviour to unacceptable, we may, at our sole discretion take any one or more of the following actions:
(a) issue a warning to you;
(b) remove information or content you submitted or uploaded to our Website;
(c) limit, suspend, block or cancel your access to our Website and the Services, including terminating your membership and deactivating your account;
(d) warn other Members of your actions;
(e) disclose details of any breach and your personal information to any relevant authorities, parties, or intellectual property right holders, or their representatives; and
(f) pursue any other legal actions or remedies available to us against you.
Cessation of our Website
43. If we decide to discontinue our Website and any Services, we may terminate access to our Website and any Services and your membership. Where possible, we will use reasonable efforts to give Members fair notice of termination or suspension of access to our Website and any Services, and may (at our sole discretion) refund some or all of any membership fees paid if we discontinue our Website and any Services.
Consequences of Termination
44. If your membership is terminated for any reason, you agree that we may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all related information and files in your account, and bar any further access to such files or to our Website and any Services. You agree that we will not be liable to you or any third party for any termination or suspension of access to our Website or any Services.
Amendments
45. We may amend these Terms and Conditions from time to time. Notice of any such amendments will be announced on our Website and will be effective immediately, unless we state otherwise. You are responsible for reviewing our Website regularly to obtain timely notice of any such amendments.
46. Your continued use of the Services will constitute your acceptance of any changes or revisions to these Terms and Conditions.
Waiver
47. Our failure or delay in the exercise of any right or remedy we may have under these Terms and Conditions will not be construed or operate as a waiver such right of remedy. No single or partial exercise of any right or remedy will preclude the further exercise of such right or remedy.
Governing law
48. These Terms and Conditions will be governed by the laws of New Zealand. You agree to submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand. You may only bring a claim or action against us in the courts of New Zealand.