I am having the same problem for the last week. It's a nightmare... no email. I have used Bigfoot's website and sent via their Contact page and their Feedback several times ...no reply or recovery. I also hit their priority help email and a personal staff's gmail account same problem ...and their mail is bouncing. I seem to get this problem at least once a year but usually gets sorted out within a few days without an explanation.
If anybody knows how to contact Bigfoot directly and shake them up on this I would be very pleased.
All my affairs go through my Bigfoot forwarding address called 'email for life'. Right now I'm dying. Help, Bigfoot. Please help.

 

Hi

I've had Bigfoot email forwarding for the best part of 20 years. I've stopped getting email for over a week now. I submitted an enquiry to the helpdesk (using my Sky email) but no response.

I can't see any other reports of issues out there - is anyone else aware of this issue?

Yes, exactly the same and 3 relatives all with Bigfoot addresses not had mail since last Thursday. After reading the above two posts I did make more of an effort to find some contact details and found he following page:-

http://www.bigfoot.com/contact-us.php

However, ringing the US Headquarters number just goes to voicemail asking you to leave the sort of details you would by e-mail - I don't hold-out much hope but left details anyway just asking for some information as to what is happening. I have also had this e-mail 'forever' and also got occassional problems that were resolved within a couple of days. It's worrying that help@bigfoot.com is bouncing and changing your Forwarding E-mail Address is not working properly. There are Philippines and Hong Kong numbers but I'm a bit loathed to try them.

 

Same here.
I have used Bigfoot forwarding for about 20 years for 2 email accounts (one basic and one a Premium subscription account) and neither have been working since the start of Feb16. I have sent several 'test' emails to my Bigfoot addresses and they are being rejected after every automatic delivery attempt every 24 hrs.
I have contacted their '24/7 Customer Support' facility almost daily and they have ignored every single request for help or even acknowledgement of the requests.
I cannot understand how a so called Communications Powerhouse can fail so miserably at even communicating with their customers! Their 24/7 Customer Service suggests that there will respond in 24 hours - this is a total misrepresentation of fact.
There have been several similar instances of intermittent total failure and zero support or acknowledgement over the last 5-10 years or so and I think now maybe the time to move away from Bigfoot as they obviously are no longer competent at email-forwarding technology on a reliable basis let alone even manage to send an acknowledgement email to their customers. Big shame, Bigfoot!

 

Just tried the Philippine's number but of course it's 22:41 there! Must admit, I suspected this day might come, it's not like they're well known. Any searches on the internet for them just brings up hairy animals with big feet :-( What concerned me about the voicemail was that the guy said 'I'll' get back to you. Hmmmmm, would have prefered to hear 'We'. Would just like to know whether it is time to start changing 20 years of e-mail address usage :-( Will try the New York number later and maybe the others tomorrow morning before taking the plunge.

 

Like others I've used Bigfoot (as premium) for a long while, but now I'm not getting any mail through. There doesn't appear to be anything in the news that I can see on the internet generally.
Test emails sent from my live account just bounce with server not accepting connections. I've tried sending an email to their help@bigfoot.com address but these again just bounce the same. I've also tried sending several messages through their 'Contact Us' page but no response. I notice that when the message is 'submitted' there is a message on screen saying 'your email has been sent' (or something like that), but I suppose if their email is not working then submitting messages this way is likely to be a futile exercise too!
Interestingly, their webmail site is up and running, and I did succeed in sending out a small message from it to my live email account as a test - which I was pleased about and thought maybe it had at last been corrected - so with this success I then tried sending another message to help@bigfoot.com but only got an error back saying they couldn't process the request. But now I can't get anything to work again.
For there to be no communication on their website about potential issues is just plain ridiculous! But I notice that their Press Release page hasn't been updated for years, and their copyright in the foot of each page is dated '1996 to 2010', so am I really surprised that there is no communication? Especially considering their track record in previous years.
I think the only thing we can do now is to wait and hope, to see what occurs. Personally, I'm looking for an alternative service with a reputable provider and will be swapping over as soon as. If Bigfoot does come alive then I will set up an auto-responder to tell the senders to redirect my mail to my new account. Goodbye Bigfoot!!

 

Still the same form the New York number. It doesn't even ring. I noted all what you saw on the web page as well Baldur. Doesn't bode well. Just going to be a right pain and where the missing e-mails normally come flooding in when previous issues have been resolved, they won't if it doesn't come back up again. Going to see what tomorrow brings.

 

What is interesting though is that I did manage to create a new bigfoot account and got an email to my live account to confirm my email address! So something is working!

 

I bet the one guy that manages it has gone on holiday! Sods law it goes down now!

 

Same problem here, nothing from bigfoot since 5/2/16. Very frustrating. No reply from bigfoot like everybody else

 

Hi

I've had Bigfoot email forwarding for the best part of 20 years. I've stopped getting email for over a week now. I submitted an enquiry to the helpdesk (using my Sky email) but no response.

I can't see any other reports of issues out there - is anyone else aware of this issue?

I too have had a 'for life' bigfoot forwarding address for 20 years or so. There have been two occasions when the server connection has failed for several days each time but eventually got the emails back in batches over a few more days. This time, like others on this thread, no emails forwarded since 9th February.

Any suggestions for an alternative email forwarding outfit, even if it is not free?

 

I'm not sure forwarding is relevant now. Possibly like you I chose Bigfoot at a time when the internet was relatively new and internet providers where starting-up all over the place and providing you with their e-mail addresses. Because I expected to me moving around I chose the Bigfoot route to avoid having to keep informing everyone of any changes in my e-mail address, and for 20 years that has proved beneficial. Given there are now more established, mainstream e-mail providers, I think I'm just going to stick with Gmail who I'm with and just distribute that address. I believe you can add subtle extensions to Gmail address which will allow you to sort them as they come in i.e. where my e-mail is myname@gmail.com I can provide someone with myname.1@gmail.com and that will still come to me but is obviously identifiable. Don't quote me on the accuracy of this as I still need to check it out. Gmail does also allow forwarding but again I don't know the details yet. Still hoping Bigfoot will kick back in at some point and all my missing e-mails will come flooding in.

 

Hi

I've had Bigfoot email forwarding for the best part of 20 years. I've stopped getting email for over a week now. I submitted an enquiry to the helpdesk (using my Sky email) but no response.

I can't see any other reports of issues out there - is anyone else aware of this issue?

Again the same with me, a long time user.
This used to happen lately from time to time. When it reconnected I had not received emails from the blackout time.
However this time it is taking longer and this means losing business opportunities.

I've read bigfoot website and it seems they have widened their business and this service is probably not very interesting now for them.
Anyway I'll wait a few days more before sadly saying goodbye to bigfoot. And start doing what I expected to avoid with this service, namely redistribute new email business addresses to many people.

 

Same as OP, my wife and I have been using them for close on 20 years. Last 3 or 4 years they have been having issues and we have experienced a week or so with zero emails from time-to-time. When you check settings there is often !UND! prefixing your forwarding address. Correcting this in the past usually resulted in emails coming through after a few days (but with the emails in the intervening period being lost!). This time the correction to one of our accounts and emails to Bigfoot have had no response. After over a week with no service I'm guessing that Bigfoot may well be a lost cause. Going to start the migration process to something more reliable without delay.

 

Same here. After 20 years or so I once again loose faith on Bigfoot forwarding service. I also noticed that since Dec15 some emails got in my inbox just weeks after being originally sent, what seemed to be a premonition of what was coming on Feb16. The problem of not having bigfoot address is not about telling people of your new server, it is about a lot of subscriptions you made to other servers, e.g. career search engines, that doesn't allow you to change the email address as they use it as your primary user name. That's what is making me loose sleep... So sad to see that a company goes down like this and not even write a communication letter prior to closing off a service. Not reliable anymore, unfortunately.

 

I'm amazed though that there doesn't appear to be any media coverage of this. I've searched Google and Bing and very little is returned relating to this Bigfoot for Life service. It's like nothing is happening! For most other issues of this sort there would be hell in the media with them making the most of the story.

 

This is the only thread I have found for the Bigfoot outage, it has now been over a week and nothing heard

 

1 or 2 e-mails coming through yesterday and today, but not consistently.

 

I'm also in the 20 year club and this is 3rd/4th time this has happened. Previously I got support replies but backlog emails were lost. This time, no reply (promised from website within 24hrs). No mail received since Feb 5th 2016, 9 days ago. I'm signed up through many sites and with many colleagues using the Bigfoot address but it might be time to move away and seek a more reliable solution. No response from a communications company is inexcusable. Especially bad for those having problems with a paid account! I took a look at the terms and conditions. It mentions the right to terminate the service at their discretion. Maybe they just did. Nobody knows.

 

Looks like we're all in the same boat!
I'm also in the 20 year club (maybe we should get t-shirts made)
Have used bigfoot since the days of dial-up connections & was also under the assumption that it was an email address for life.
Again, no reply from Bigfoot support & all test mails are bouncing.
Have been on other support forums & found that Bigfoot mails were being blocked by service providers (isp's) due to Bigfoot being "blacklisted"
Heres my isp's Virgin media UK reply
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5...ia.com/t5/Email-Cloud-and-webspace/Virgin-Media-SPF-Authentication/td-p/2921597

 

I was thinking of throwing a leaving party. I suppose back in the mid-90s they were arrogant enought to say 'for life', like everyone else was back then - we know where that got everybody.

I had the Virgin issue recently with my mother's e-mail as she used Virgin (with a Bigfoot Forwarding). That may be just a Virgin thing as I swapped her to Gmail and it was OK - that was a few months ago. I'm sitting down now to start changing all my e-mails. Even if Bigfoot comes back, it's too unreliable now. 2nd e-mail address in 20 years isn't a bad run.

 

For all those folks who have been affected...why not just set-up a Gmail account. There is a feature
in Gmail to pull emails from other POP-enabled accounts?

Moreover, this is meant to be a fairly reliable forwarding service.

 

I've received a personal reply this morning from Bigfoot advising that they are looking into the matter. Things are looking up in the meantime but I still think it's time to move on.

 

Same as everyone else here, no mail for a week & no response from customer support. Bigfoot seem to have moved on into entertainment & have perhaps given up on the mail. Their owner, Michael Gleissner, is a director, actor & musician. He has his own web page http://www.michaelgleissner.com/ & contact details through an e-mail address sally@bigfootstudios.com Maybe, if enough people complain to him directly he might get annoyed enough to kick someones arse into action.

 

Had a second personal response following the voicemail I left. They have said they have sent test e-mails, none of which I have received so I have replied explaining this. Not sure there are enough people to cause them to act, but we'll see.

 

As with SI above I had an email note yesterday to the address that I forward to from a 'Kate' in customer support to say that this was under investigation and that test emails had been sent but alias I have not received anything and my reply to priorityhelp@bigfoot.com bounced with the error:
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;500 Non RFC-compliant response received
This is really frustrating

 

As with SI above I had an email note yesterday to the address that I forward to from a 'Kate' in customer support to say that this was under investigation and that test emails had been sent but alias I have not received anything and my reply to priorityhelp@bigfoot.com bounced with the error:
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;500 Non RFC-compliant response received
This is really frustrating

I've also mailed priorityhelp, no bounce yet.

 

Another "life"-er here from the days of dial-up. My emails seemed to stop around 11 Feb. I've previously experienced the occasional "blockage" with emails delayed for several days. There seemed to be more serious delays in Dec 2014 when I was doing a bit of online shopping and puzzling over why I wasn't getting order confirmations. I started migrating my more important accounts to my paid-for domain address, but stopped when Bigfoot emails started arriving again. I think I had quite a few Christmas-related promotional emails in the first and second week of Jan this year - maybe that's when the latest rot started to set in.

Thinking there was a similar blockage, I did something I may regret - I upgraded to the "premium" service, assuming that I could turn off forwarding and either retrieve the emails from my Gmail account, or access them directly. I received a confirmation email and waited a couple of days for things to be set up. However, trying to get to webmail produces two different errors depending on whether I access directly or via a link buried in the account pages:

Sorry, due to problems with our server, we can not process your information at this time.​

Sorry, user@bigfoot.com access is granted to Bigfoot Anti-SPAM and WebMail subscribers only.​

I've emailed the payment confirmation address (payments@bigfoot), but of course that will probably bounce. I've already migrated a few more accounts away from Bigfoot - only 200-odd to go!

Regarding the "Bigfoot for life" tag line - I'm sure buried in miniscule print in the Ts & Cs would be something about "life" meaning the life of the service, which could end at any time, probably without warning!

 

I've been in the same boat.....long time user.
Just noticed today that older emails are starting to trickle through. Not many but it's a start.
Time to think about migrating to something more permanent I think.

 

I trust you've all had a response by now as they appear to have realised it was a bigger issue than just individual e-mails not working. My e-mails have started to trickle in which is normal for these situations in the past. Old ones appear to be coming in also, although given that some e-mails got bounced, not sure how certain we can be of getting all our e-mails.

Maybe this is it sorted now for this time. Speak to you all again in a couple of years!