.forward files should be placed in users homedir (root) ... this mean /home/username
Don't know if it works for on surpasshosting ... but try first to put forwarding to another e-mail.
An other way to do it is with a cronjob that runs php script. PHP can easily access the mail with the following scripts:
http://smilingsouls.net/Mail_IMAP/.
I have my own "public" mail script running that shows all e-mails (on the web) in a specific mailbox.