Email aggravation with Comcast and Bigfoot

My email volume suddenly declined a couple weeks ago. I didn't think much about it; I just figured these things run in cycles. I'd probably see a ton of email come through on my Comcast account any day. But I didn't.

Then I got a voicemail from my Mother jokingly chastising me for rejecting her email. Something was wrong with Comcast.

I use Bigfoot as one of my primary public-ish email addresses. Bigfoot is an email forwarding service. I give out my Bigfoot address, then people email me using that address. Bigfoot then forwards my email to whatever address I supply.

The great things about this is if I change email addresses or ISPs, I only have to tell Bigfoot about it. I don't have to get everyone else I know to start using a new address to reach me.

But then the email stopped and I got that call. After a little experimentation, I confirmed that Comcast was bouncing any email sent through my Bigfoot.com address. Comcast kicked back this error:

The original message was received at Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:01:55 -0500 EST from mail.bigfoot.com [66.114.252.252]



----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <[myusername]@comcast.net>

----- Transcript of session follows -----
>>> RCPT TO:
<<< style="font-weight: bold;">[myusername]@comcast.net

I contacted Comcast tech support online chat and explained the problem to them. Previously I had turned off Spam filtering at the Comcast level to prevent bounces like this.

According to the tech, though, Comcast decided that anything from Bigfoot is Spam, so they decided to block the entire domain. He sent me a link to form so I can get the block removed (http://www.comcastsupport.com/Forms/Net/blockedprovider.asp). I should know in 24-48 hours if this works.

I understand the need to block Spam, but I find it hard to believe that everyone using Bigfoot is a spammer. Arbitrary blocks like this are one of the reasons there is so much Comcast hate out there on the web.

In the mean time, I redirected my Bigfoot forwarding elsewhere. So at least I'll know get my mail again.