I was talking with my father-in-law, who many of you know, and as those of you who know him would understand, he happens to send a good bit of email to Europe.
But lately he's been experiencing problems with his international email; some messages he has sent have not reached their intended recipient(s), nor have some emails sent to him from Europe arrived in his inbox.
So he called up xtra support to see if they could help. After being placed on hold and passed from one person to another (all part of their <sarcasm>wonderful</sarcasm> customer service), he reached a person who asked him which ISPs his recipients were with. Having disclosed this information, he was then told that those ISPs may in fact be blocking email from xtra, as it is known that some international ISPs have xtra on their spam blacklist!
So, not only do xtra charge exorbidant monopolistic prices for their sub-standard services, not only do they provide the poorest customer service of any ISP I have dealt with, but now it is apparent that they can't keep their network clean and are known internationally as a source of spam.
Delightful!
Good old Andrew has blogged some worthwhile commentary on xtra/Telcom/Teresa.
