Ok the short version here is that the problem is solved. Both scripts now work. The solution (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me) was to change authentication values - namely the smtp server to connect to. Not sure what is going on with my provider - all my other devices continued to work with the values I was using in these scripts.

That said, even though the scripts work they both still get the error ".../IO/Socket/SSL.pm:1177: global error: Undefined SSL object" which may be of interest to someone.

So thank you perlfan and nysus for your help it made me question some assumptions that lead to the solution. (By the way perlfan your script now works for me as well.)