Cunard Australia has a a problem with Bigpond addresses

[BuzzBuzzen]

Hello, after enjoying our 35 night Coral Princess trip , we decided to book another cruise. Even further we decided to give Cunard a try. 

Registered a new account with them. Then booked a cruise with them. No confirmation emails received.

Online agent said we are having problems with the Bigpond domain. Please use another email address.

Changed the email address on my account. Registered the change ok. Still no emails a few days later.

Contacted online agent again , same one , surprise, as I now have to log into my account with the bigpond address but it shows the new address in my profile.

The strange thing is I am receiving the agent's email responses to my bigpond email.

Today's agent says they will look further into my account issue.

My expectations must have been way too high. Cheers, Buzz.

[Sparky74]

I was having trouble sending emails to bigpond from work a few months ago. IT reckoned it was a Microsoft issue and it was eventually resolved. 🤷‍♂️

[MicCanberra]

Perhaps the emails are just being stored in a Big pond and not in the cloud.

[icat2000]

Well Telstra did lay off 2000 staff maybe they now just a puddle.

[arxcards]

There are known issues with sending emails to Bigpond addresses. This has been going on to some degree for over 6 months. It is complicated, but in short, Bigpond is rejecting the emails with their SPAM settings.on their servers. Cunard can adjust their settings to overcome this, if they choose to. Otherwise, just use a hotmail or gmail address for your Cunard emails.

[Aus Traveller]

I have problems with my Bigpond address last year on the world cruise. The IT Manager said they always had problems with Bigpond. I had to switch to a gmail address and my son organised my Bigpond account so that all emails were forwarded to my gmail address.

[BuzzBuzzen]

Thank you for your replies. I wish I had known about this issue . I do know now ! Cheers, Buzz.

[resordanis]

Some bigpond emails addresses (including mine) were blocked on our recent 21 days on Royal Princess. My email on my iPhone still not working. This is extremely annoying and the Telstra shop just can’t do anything.

On Royal the IT guys said it always happens with Telstra.

Strange thing is they didn’t stop everyone’s, husbands worked ok. He could receive but not send, mine just a total block.

[ilikeanswers]

This is why I have a Gmail account. It is the one account I find that doesn't accidentally filter out legitimate emails, so for all my travel bookings that is the one I use now. 

Edited May 23 by ilikeanswers

[OzKiwiJJ]

We're having problems sending emails using our Optusnet accounts at the moment. We are still receiving emails, thank goodness, and can send outgoing mail via our Gmail accounts. 

[Mareblu]

It’s a tad complex for all the details here, but during our recent Oceania cruise in the med, our Big Pond (altered here, but you know what I mean) also failed.  Fortunately, I have a team of tech wizards in the family, but as our daughter explained, most of the solution can be googled.  I trued that first, of course.  
 

Basically, you need to change your password.

To do that, you need  the telephone associated with your Telstra a/c to be switched on.  We share an email a/c now my husband is retired, but his phone is the Telstra a/c number.  We had to do that in a port, of course.

 

We had to switch his phone on (we are both on the $10 per use day Telstra plan whilst away) in order for him to receive a code to change our bigpond password.  Once that’s done, you need to go to your settings in each device and enter the new password.  

 

Voila!  Hundreds of emails flooded in, and we could also send.

 

It meant we didn’t have to create another email address, which is a real bother, because all messages and regular accounts come to our Big Pond address.

 

All sorted, but so very frustrating.

[Mareblu]

3 hours ago, Mareblu said:

It’s a tad complex for all the details here, but during our recent Oceania cruise in the med, our Big Pond (altered here, but you know what I mean) also failed.  Fortunately, I have a team of tech wizards in the family, but as our daughter explained, most of the solution can be googled.  I trued that first, of course.  
 

Basically, you need to change your password.

To do that, you need  the telephone associated with your Telstra a/c to be switched on.  We share an email a/c now my husband is retired, but his phone is the Telstra a/c number.  We had to do that in a port, of course.

 

We had to switch his phone on (we are both on the $10 per use day Telstra plan whilst away) in order for him to receive a code to change our bigpond password.  Once that’s done, you need to go to your settings in each device and enter the new password.  

 

Voila!  Hundreds of emails flooded in, and we could also send.

 

It meant we didn’t have to create another email address, which is a real bother, because all messages and regular accounts come to our Big Pond address.

 

All sorted, but so very frustrating.

I should have began by stating that for all the above to happen, you firstly must have a phone associated with the email account.  Then,  in order:

1.  Open Safari

2.  Search Big Pond email

3.  Click on link to login

4.  Enter your credentials and click “forgot 

     password” to get it to send an unlock

     code to the number already associated 

     with the account

You should then be allowed to change password, and enter that new password in “mail” under Settings in each device.

[resordanis]

4 hours ago, Mareblu said:

I should have began by stating that for all the above to happen, you firstly must have a phone associated with the email account.  Then,  in order:

1.  Open Safari

2.  Search Big Pond email

3.  Click on link to login

4.  Enter your credentials and click “forgot 

     password” to get it to send an unlock

     code to the number already associated 

     with the account

You should then be allowed to change password, and enter that new password in “mail” under Settings in each device.

You are correct. This is what I eventually did with my iPad, but didn’t work for iPhone unfortunately. Now that we are home even the Telstra shop can’t help with the iPhone. Funny it works at home, but not on 4G. Next time, Gmail for me. Glad is worked for you though.

[BuzzBuzzen]

Changed to a new email address . Getting emails ok now. Asked another question via social media page. Told to expect a reply within 28 days ! 

Transferred the booking  to our travel agent.

Cheers, Buzz.

[yarramar]

I wish I had read this topic earlier but I have never sailed on Cunard, so I skipped it till now.

My Bigpond account, which I have had for nearly 20 years suddenly stopped working on May 2nd, my last email was at 7.00pm. It said my password was incorrect and to reset it it would send  link to my email account (duh!). I went to a Telstra shop, and after an hour, they said I would have to call technical service 9-5 Mon-Fri. 

I called first thing Monday and after going through the usual procedures they couldn't fix it and it would be sent "back of house". This went on for the next 3 weeks, each week getting a text saying it was fixed and to rate my experience. I finally found a customer service person who studied the case notes last Friday and said that the "back of house" had never been instructed what to do properly and that my phone number was not attached to my account correctly so could not receive links to reset the password. Finally on Tuesday, 2 days ago I got my phone link. I spent Tuesday deleting 1200 spams as well as receiving important mail.

[BuzzBuzzen]

Reminded me that my bigpond emails stopped working about 3 weeks into our 35 night cruise. I wondered at the time it was because of using the ship's public wifi .  I contacted Telstra and they said my account had been corrupted. I used the " recover my account " to change my password and it worked again. I really think Bigpond.com is not much good anymore . Time to change to another email provider.

Cheers, Buzz.

Edited May 29 by BuzzBuzzen
left a bit out

[mr walker]

32 minutes ago, BuzzBuzzen said:

I really think Bigpond.com is not much good anymore . Time to change to another email provider.

Cheers, Buzz.

I'm sure I recall that a long time ago (20+ years) someone suggested to me to have an email account that was not an internet provider account eg bigpond, optus etc. "What happens if you change providers?" was the question.

I chose to have a 'yahoo' one, & still have today. I have a lot of contacts who use gmail.

 

I had a work colleague who had a bipond address & he always seemed to have issues, and at one point had to start again with a different bigpond account, losing all his history.

 

Good luck to all.

[resordanis]

2 hours ago, BuzzBuzzen said:

Reminded me that my bigpond emails stopped working about 3 weeks into our 35 night cruise. I wondered at the time it was because of using the ship's public wifi .  I contacted Telstra and they said my account had been corrupted. I used the " recover my account " to change my password and it worked again. I really think Bigpond.com is not much good anymore . Time to change to another email provider.

Cheers, Buzz.

This is what happened to me recently on Royal Princess. I recovered my password but mobile phone emails will only work on home wifi not 4G. Telstra shop, just keep saying this is strange…..with no solution unfortunately. Definitely just using gmail in future whilst away. So nearly a month home, and they can’t fix my mobile phone!🤔😩

[ilikeanswers]

10 hours ago, mr walker said:

I'm sure I recall that a long time ago (20+ years) someone suggested to me to have an email account that was not an internet provider account eg bigpond, optus etc. "What happens if you change providers?" was the question.

 

I got the same advice but the reason I was given is that for telecommunications companies email servers are like a side hustle so you should expect them to eventually neglect their email services. Better to go with a company that makes email services part of their business because they will be motivated to deliver a good product. 

[resordanis]

On 5/23/2024 at 11:06 AM, BuzzBuzzen said:

Hello, after enjoying our 35 night Coral Princess trip , we decided to book another cruise. Even further we decided to give Cunard a try. 

Registered a new account with them. Then booked a cruise with them. No confirmation emails received.

Online agent said we are having problems with the Bigpond domain. Please use another email address.

Changed the email address on my account. Registered the change ok. Still no emails a few days later.

Contacted online agent again , same one , surprise, as I now have to log into my account with the bigpond address but it shows the new address in my profile.

The strange thing is I am receiving the agent's email responses to my bigpond email.

Today's agent says they will look further into my account issue.

My expectations must have been way too high. Cheers, Buzz.

This just happened to me yesterday! Booked a cruise, agent said he would send all paperwork to email address on file…..ok……then I realised they had Bigpond….now nothing has come thru. Have booked with Cunard direct in the past, no problems at all. It was only when nothing come thru, I remembered your post🤔. Now I have to start again contacting them, which actually wasn’t easy considering the wait time! Lesson learned, use Gmail in future.

[BuzzBuzzen]

47 minutes ago, resordanis said:

This just happened to me yesterday! Booked a cruise, agent said he would send all paperwork to email address on file…..ok……then I realised they had Bigpond….now nothing has come thru. Have booked with Cunard direct in the past, no problems at all. It was only when nothing come thru, I remembered your post🤔. Now I have to start again contacting them, which actually wasn’t easy considering the wait time! Lesson learned, use Gmail in future.

As I said, I wished I had known about this issue. Hopefully, by highlighting the problem, people can be forewarned. As to contacting Cunard, use a travel agent !! Cheers, Buzz.