Tips, Tricks and Articles about your Technology

iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android, Office 365, Google services, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Apps, Social Media, Zoom, and more.

Over the past week, I have had multiple calls from people wanting to book appointments to deal with email issues - specifically Bigpond mail issues.

The problem they have been encountering has ranged from a slow, unreliable service, to a non-functional service that means they are cut off from their email - at a time when may people are so reliant on that form of contact. Attempts to access Webmail result in 'timeout' messages.

As a result of these calls, I took a look at the Telstra Outages website and found the following message about the state of their email service - advising of a Network update from 10th August. The calls I received advised that their problems had been occurring from about 17th August. 

Final Update 14/6/18

​After two weeks of investigation, the Telstra agent handling the complaint (see below for further details of this lengthy saga) has reported today that they have ascertained that there was a lack of adequate checking of the identity of the iTandCoffee client.

The Live Chat staff team will receive further training to ensure such a breakdown in security does not occur again. 

This was the assurance that I was seeking in raising the issue initially. So much time and resources wasted to get this far.

We have officially closed the case, but I have the contact details for this complaints agent should any such incident occur again.

Update 22/5/18. 

So, I finally got a call from Telstra at 6:17pm on 21/5/18 (not before 9am that day, as had been promised by the agent on preceding Saturday).

I was told that the previous agent who had been assigned my complaint had 'met with an accident'. Oh dear! 

This new agent had not yet reviewed the complaint and obviously had no idea what it was about. Not a great way to start our conversation! I suggested that he read the case notes then call me back, rather than waste my time on the phone while he reviewed these notes.

When he called back 45 minutes later, he expressed his confusion about why I had complained. When I explained again that Telstra had given away account information without doing sufficient identity checking, he told me that he felt they had - that only the account holder would know their first name, last name and email address.

Really? I think I might have said "Are You Kidding?". Was someone who was supposed to be from the 'Privacy Complaints' team really suggesting that it would be ok for Telstra to provide account access to a person who only provided a name and email address, and no other identifying information?

The conversation got nowhere - this agent failed to see the point of the complaint and was the opposite of helpful, more concerned with why I was raising the complaint when it wasn't my account on which the incident occurred.

I gave up, telling him that I would be contacting the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) about the security breach and Telstra's lack of responsiveness on this matter. He suggested I do whatever I need to do. I got off the phone fuming, further appalled at the way Telstra handles complaints.

Update 28/5/18:  

So, on 28/5, I lodged the complaint with the TIO (took me a few days to work up the energy!), in the hope that their involvement will put me in touch with someone in Telstra who cares to investigate this matter further, and provide assurance that they take the matter seriously.  At the very least, the person involved surely needs further training.

If other agents (like the person I spoke to on Monday) think it's OK to give away password resets for Telstra accounts when all they are given is a name and email address, then there is a wider training issue that requires urgent attention.

​As a Telstra customer, I remain very concerned about the security of my own accounts.

Update 29/5/18: 

Contacting the TIO certainly helped. Within 24 hours, I received call from Telstra in response to my TIO complaint.

I was asked to send through the 'live chat' transcript and other 'authority to act' confirmation emails from the client involved, and received a commitment that I will receive another call on Monday 4/6.

Stay tuned for the next update on 4/6.

Here's what happened earlier ...  (Written 20/5/18).

Sometimes, finding things on the Telstra website is near on impossible.  Just this last week, I wanted to look up the details of a mobile call that I made in in March.  When I looked at the PDF of my Telstra bill, it only showed detailed data usage and not my list of mobile phone calls.

So I logged into my online Telstra account, thinking that I would be able to quickly download my call list for March.  After much looking, clicking and Googling, I gave up and resorted to a LiveChat session with a Telstra representative.

Finally, she led me to the page where I could find the required option.  Phew.

However, when I came to retrace those stops, I got lost again!  Luckily, I kept the LiveChat transcript so that I could refer back to the instructions.  

Here is my step-by-step list for anyone who struggles to find this option!

1. Log into your Telstra account at telstra.com
2. Click on my mobile service under ‘Plans and Usage’
3. On the right hand side, click on ‘Recent Charges’
4. On the page that appears, there is a heading called Recent Charges at the top, followed by Recent Charges Breakdown under that. 
5. Click View Details next to the Recent Charges Breakdown heading.
6. In the left sidebar, click View Bills
7. In the right sidebar, the second section is headed Bill History
8. A date is shown in the box below this - click on the ‘down-arrow’ here to view a list of billing dates, and select the month that you require.
9. In the section below that, titled Download/Print Bill, choose Full itemised usage - CSV

Finally, this will download a CSV file detailing your usage!  

Easy, isn’t it!  (Not!)

So many people are struggling to deal with the changes that Telstra is making to all of our Bigpond mail accounts over the next few month.  I have experienced this bewilderment about what to do amongst members of my own family!  

The article on this topic that iTandCoffee published a couple of months ago has had thousands of hits from Telstra customers seeking further information.

• Telstra Mail changes and how they affect Bigpond email accounts

iTandCoffee has now recorded a couple of videos to provide further assistance to those who are trying to work out what needs to be done to update their iPad, iPhone and/or Mac.

If you would like to receive access to one or both of these videos, please provide your details below for the relevant videos.  You will need to separately request the iPad/iPhone and Mac versions of the video.

For those wanting to know how to set up Telstra Mail on other devices (eg Outlook on Windows), here is Telstra's web page that includes instructions.

One of my Bigpond email accounts, one that I originally used when I set up iTandCoffee, was migrated to the new Telstra mail service in mid-July 2016.

Because I don't really use it, I had not actually checked the mail coming in to it until today.  

I was very concerned to see that I had an email that advised me that there were supposedly 13 email that were unable to be delivered, and that I needed to click a link to 'reconfigure port 465 automatically'.  (See image here for the content of this email.)

To find out how you can check a link to see the corresponding web address (so that you can work out if it is a legitimate link or not), check out this past tip from iTandCoffee: How to work out where an email link is really going to take you.

Be alert AND alarmed, and NEVER click on links in email like this.

For anyone having problems accessing their Bigpond emails after the move to the new Telstra Mail service, iTandCoffee can assist - just make an appointment by calling 1300 885 420 or at itandcoffee.com.au/appointments.

This got me thinking ...

Imagine if Telstra resolved our queries and problems on the first contact.  I speak to so many people who suffer the same sort of problems that I have suffered nearly every time I have dealt with Telstra.

​How much money would they save in staff costs!  And how much stress would they save for all of us!  

Here is the list of our own Telstra recent issues (ie other than the Usage Meter issue), for anyone brave enough to read on!  For anyone on a Pinnacle Bundle, you may be interested in the first one.  I would be interested to know if anyone else has had this extra charge appear on their bill.
​

An iTandCoffee client last weekend received an email from Telstra about forthcoming changes to its email service.

​It is called Telstra Mail and will replace both the Bigpond and Telstra Mail (using Outlook) services.

This client was offered the opportunity to switch to this new service early, and participate in research about their experience with the new product.  She asked me if I thought she should agree to participate.

The move to a new service is good news for those of us who have the old POP email addresses with Bigpond.

With this style of email account, users must deal with separate copies of emails on different devices, and are unable to see all Sent mail in one place.  There are also those frequently-encountered issues with sending emails from overseas (or whenever the device is not on a Telstra connection).

(Newer Telstra email accounts, created since 2012, are already using the Microsoft Outlook mail service, so do not suffer these problems and limitations.)

For holders of the old Bigpond accounts, the move to the new Telstra Mail service will mean that emails will be properly synchronised across devices - in the same way as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud and other IMAP-enabled email addresses are currently able to synchronise.  And there will be the capability to set up mail folders for storing mail, and seeing the content of these folders on all devices.

It is not clear at this stage just when this big change will occur.  It looks that the move to the new service is only being offered to selected customers.  I wonder how many customers have been asked to switch early.

In the case of the client mentioned above, I suggested that it might not be a great idea to take up the offer of early migration.  We all know the stress that can come from things not going quite right with Telstra.  

My thinking is that being a guinea pig for one of Telstra's new products would probably be best left to those who are a bit more confident with their technology.

Here is an article published about this Telstra change.  It appeared on the Telstra CrowdSupport website in February 2016.