The Auswine Forum

Hi Good Peoples,

If you are thinking of ever signing up with BigPong for your internet access my recommendation is don't! Their product sucks!!

Since signing up for a one way satellite almost 2 years ago I have a stack of problems, the software is "not well behaved" and has does not function properly with Nortons Live update or Zone Alarm. But then why would anyone need a fire wall or up to date virus program.

They have had massive email problems for the last week and now I cant send any email at all, let alone get out the Irregular Update.

Twice things have got so bad they have granted me free access for the month but why bother, my recommendation is don't get tied up with them in the first place.

Gavin, if business is slow possibly its because your email (like mine) has been screwd up royally for the last week.

Rant over, back to normal transmission.

TORB wrote:If you are thinking of ever signing up with BigPong for your internet access my recommendation is don't! Their product sucks!!

??? How long does it take you to realise that??? 2 years

Profit before customers...Telstra's moto

Rob,

Until recently I was locked into a contract and as I live in the bush the "choice" is not exactly great. Cable unavailable and a number of local suppliers of satellite are still use Telstra as their backbone.

Cheers
Ric

Torb have you looked at wireless this LINK is a ISP in your general area who may be able to help you.
I am looking at wireless for our Busines and seems to be the goods if ADSL is not available. You may also be able to use some of the satelite gear you already have.

~~~~ sigh ~~~~

Jezza,

I used this mob prior to going to Telstra because their pricing was stupid and service ranged from ordinary to almost acceptable. Their speed (in those days) resembled that of a startled turtle with techology that was consistantly behind the times. They are still under the same ownership - thier office is round the corner from my shop.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Hey, I have a slightly used carrier pigeon for sale if you are interested

if u had bloody TPG!

Continual disconnections and slow dial up speeds and impossible to get on the support phones!

& this is in Sydney!

Davo wrote:Hey, I have a slightly used carrier pigeon for sale if you are interested

Couple that with a decent quill pen, writing tablet and abacus and you can probably do away with your computer all together...

I've been with the aforementioned provider for over 12 months, and quite recently have experienced a number of service outages with dialup. One night I had no email, but did have web - somewhat intermittently. I had a look at the outage info on the site, to find that they were experiencing a "broadband" email problem. I submitted a detailed problem report through the web interface indicating that I had a dialup email problem. I received an email response 2 days later, asking for details of my problem - answers to which were in my email, and of course the problem had by then been fixed. My response to this asking why I should not look elsewhere resulted in (in part) the following response:

Our records indicate that a service disruption was being experienced at the time you were
reporting problems. At the time we were not aware of the service disruption.

Normal service should now have been resumed.

Given that I found the disruption information myself on their website, I am somewhat perplexed at how things work internally in their organisation.

Geoff,

I am of the opinion that Telasta is working on the "Ostridge Theory." Show our heads in the heads, put our arse in the air and prented its not happening!

I have a formal complaint in about the BS on their Service (non) Status page that contains more fiction than an Enid Blighton novel!

Your email is just another example of exactly what I am talking about.

Telstra is rapidly becoming a corporation that believes thier own bovine manure and thats a dangerous position to be in. Sooner or later you get buried in it!

Cheers
Ric

Hey Ric,

Sign on so you can get the PM I sent you.

either that or give me a call when you can

Murray

Ric,

www.tio.com.au

make a complaint - the best thing is, the telco/isp has to pay the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to investigate it!

JWR

I agree - BigPond is a nightmare. They are so full of thier own self importance they tend to neglect their customers.

I have made many complaints to them about service but they go unanswered.

My biggest complaint is that I want to know how the hell my PRIVATE, not released to anybody except BigPond, email address became known to spammers.

They give a free email address to use (blabla@bigpond.com for example) and expect you to check it occassionaly for notifications of official things (ie. Price rises, poor service etc.) and lo and behold I started receiving messages from a company offering to sell me (??cannot remember??) - I complained to BigPond and asked who was selling their email addresses, my complaint got buried..

Mark,

Since the 1st December last year its illegal to sell a mailing list without first asking the permission of the recipient if they object to their name being passed on. This is normally done at the time you sign up for the service.

A very informative (sic) update:

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7561524%255E1702,00.html

"The surge occurred in August..." ... "Telstra had worked over the weekend..." - roughly matches up with my experience in how quickly they get around to looking at problems

That article is a complete load of unadulterated bovine manure!

"The email surge had occurred in August, when the number of computer viruses and worms peaked, and had remained constant since, resulting in a compound increase in emails to around 13 million on some days. The email service has not been down, but we understand that customers are getting mail sometimes hours late, in some cases days late, in some cases several days late."

Horse shit! Who the hell do they think they are kidding! The surge occured in August and the system manged it then so why is screwing up in October?

The email system has been down for a significant number of their customers. Even their own site and the BigPONG CEO on radio admitted that a part of the problem has been caused by an upgrade that has gone wrong.

These ostriches are at it again and at the rate they are going they will disappear up their their own fundamental soon.

I would love to complain... except I havent been able to send (or receive) any emails (complaining or otherwise) since Saturday.

Another mighty miffed customer.

Peter.

I too have been having email problems lately with BigPond Broadband, and I also upgraded my account level last month online, only to discover the change hadn't been made and my old download limit still applies. However, having said that, prior to this month I have had very little in the way of problems. I have recently moved house and Telstra arrived on time to re-install the cable in my new place, and everything worked fine.

In reply to Mark though, if you think your email address is PRIVATE, I am afraid you are dreaming. Every time you send an email via the internet, the contents of your email and email address are instantly public. I too get the occasional spam mail which is highly annoying, but I don't blame Telstra. I doubt very much they are in the business of selling mail lists. Just remember, every time you send an email, every time you post your email address on a site like this, your details are in public view unless you use email encryption such as PGP, or the web site you are entering details onto has a secure link (https). Spammers also use a brute force approach with large IPs like BigPond, such as generating email addresses using xxxxxxxxxx@bigpond.com where the x's are random characters. This may generate millions of bogus email addresses, but could still nail half a million real ones. It is a sad fact of current internet use that spam is not something ISPs can prevent.

Cheers
Paul.

Just to clarify on Paul's point about ways to ensure your information isn't public, email encryption by using tools like PGP will protect the content but will not protect your address.

Well BigPONG is still at it.

They state the problem started a week ago but according to my records it actually started on 29/9 so its been going for over two weeks!

I have just tried to send out my Irregular Update to about 500 people. It has got through to about 25, all who are BigPong users. All the rest of the emails have failed despite having tried numerous time over many hours.

Yesterday on the radio the boss cockie of BigPong blamed spam and a 25% increase in email for the problem. The fact is they started doing an upgrade two weeks ago and they stuffed the system.

What a pack of ....... not impressed!

I have just received an email from them advising me to go get the new software for this update. Has anyone done this as yet and if so, what effect has it had???
MM

Mike - which software are you being advised to update?

Geoff wrote:Mike - which software are you being advised to update?

The Big Pond Broadband software.
MM

If you are simply talking about the new connection manager for broadband, it won't have any effect, at least it didn't for me. I have been using it for over a week and my email problems have remained, although last night it appeared to be working ok.

Paul.

Email to a limited number of people works but if you want to send to more than about 10 forget it, the BigPong server wont manage it and rejects the email.

Also connection to hotmail was completely cactus this morning. Bigpond was not recognising Hotmail at all, even if you by passed its SMTP server and sent it direct.

Slater (andsue'm) Gordon look like they may start a class action againt Telstra.

Well I don't have 10 friends so I haven't come across that problem

I am hoping they are going to give us a discount on this month's bill though, seeing as my next bill includes a connection fee to the new house.

Paul.

Speaking of refunds, could well be on the cards...

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7582066%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

Also of interest...

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7550303%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html

The latest poop from BigPong

What is Telstra doing to fix the problem?

Telstra has been working around the clock to deal with the traffic on the email network. Our firewalls have blocked email traffic carrying spam (junk email) and malicious computer borne viruses and worms. We have deleted old email boxes and added new hardware to increase the capacity on the email network to ensure email is delivered in a timely manner and return to normal service levels as soon as possible.

Services are returning to normal as a result of remedial measures we have taken, but it is possible that some customersÂ’ services will not return to pre-virus levels immediately.

Will I receive a Rebate?

Yes, BigPond will credit all customers with two weeks of BigPond access in recognition of the inconvenience experienced through email delays. We will also provide customers with BigPond virus and spam filters, together with personal firewall software, free of charge for a period of three months to enable them to become familiarised with the benefit of this protection.

Customers will automatically receive this credit so need not contact us to request it.

is that a gimmic?