Ongoing Bigpond Email Delivery Challenges

Summary

Forms Express is continuing to investigate and respond to intermittent delivery issues impacting Bigpond email addresses. This affects the reliability of eNotices distribution to a small subset of ratepayers using @bigpond.com or @bigpond.net.au.

This issue has been intermittent, and only impacting notices at sporadic times. but still remains a priority for resolution, particularly in advance of the 2025/26 annual notice cycle. This advisory outlines the issue, its causes, recent platform improvements, and recommended council actions.

What’s Happening?

Across multiple billing cycles, some councils have reported:

• Ratepayers with Bigpond emails not receiving original rate notices
• However, reminder notices are often delivered
• Forms Express delivery logs show notices were successfully accepted by Bigpond
• No bounce notifications are received, leaving no technical trigger to flag delivery failure

While it is often a reminder notice that prompts the customer to enquire about the original, we believe it is luck of the draw as to which are not getting through. 

Root Cause: Bigpond Mail Handling

Despite confirmation that our notices are being sent and accepted:

• Bigpond’s internal mail filtering may be delaying, redirecting, or suppressing emails
• Lack of bounce messages means Forms Express cannot automatically detect failed delivery
• Intermittency complicates troubleshooting — delivery works for most, fails silently for some
• Other service providers have also reported similar issues with Bigpond delivery

Previously, Bigpond was expected to be decommissioned. Telstra has since reversed that plan, but support and technical transparency remain limited.

What Forms Express Has Done

To address this, we have:

• Appointed a dedicated Product Owner to escalate internally and liaise with Telstra
• Confirmed that other email senders are experiencing similar Bigpond issues
  
• Started to collect feedback on email changes that may improve this matter
  
• Provided councils with access to dashboards for delivery status and open rates
• Begun exploring fallback delivery solutions for councils (e.g., automated reprint triggers)

Forms Express Commitment

We acknowledge the impact this issue has on council operations and ratepayer trust. While the delivery environment (especially with Telstra/Bigpond) is partially outside of our control, we are committed to:

• Transparent reporting
• Continuous platform improvement
• Proactive communication
• Mitigation strategies to avoid recurrence