Another confusing day for customers of Bigpond internet services.

This time, it seems that Bigpond have decided that providing webmail services for customers is just too hard (or too expensive), and they seem to be re-directing new customers to using Microsoft Live Mail for online access to their email accounts.

Obviously I can see whats happened here:

Bigpond are paying Microsoft to transparently hold bigpond webmail, and to use a branded version of the Live Mail front end.

Its probably cheaper for Bigpond to farm out this service, than to continue to provide it in-house… particularly when it comes to software updates.

But this is an area where tech-naive customers (ie many of them) are already finding it difficult to understand whats happening with webmail… so the sudden flip from bigpond to live mail will make them even more confused.

Which is exactly how I discovered it…

I was showing someone (with a new bigpond account) how to check webmail for large attachments, and I found myself on Live Mail.

I thought I had clicked the “wrong” button, so I went back and tried again, and this time I saw that they are actually telling you that you will be redirected to live mail.

Get set for more confused customers!