The Hotmail Debacle

I recently ran into the problem of my Hotmail account access being denied. It said I needed parental permission. I, at time of writing, am currently 23 years old. What's worse is that I have had this same problem before, when I was 19 years old.
Needless to say, I was upset. So I tried contacting customer service. No response. I tried 6 times in 8 days, including several different addresses, and even phone numbers. Nothing.
At this point I decided to send a message to every Hotmail, MSN, and all Microsoft affiliated addresses that I could find, in the hopes that someone somewhere would either solve the problem, or contact someone who could. I even wrote messages to the Xbox support lines, including separate addresses for hardware, software, and live play support. I even sent a message to Microsoft Investor Relations. I even considered, though did not go through with, sending a message to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I do hope that whoever actually is in charge of problems like this received at least a dozen forwarded messages regarding this problem. I do hope I caused some inconvenience for someone, at least partially equitable to the inconvenience I experienced in this whole debacle.
I was told I could fax a photo ID and have my account upgraded to adult status. This is the letter I chose to fax to Microsoft.

(Update: faxing this letter elicited no response. After a second attempt, I again contacted every division within the company. This time, however, I discovered a page that listed every single MSN support line, of which there are at least 30; I contacted them all. The next day my email was up and running--22 days later--with responses from every single division I contacted--including one, which, typical enough, had been sent to the inaccessible email address, stating, "your email should now be accessible"...sent 8 days before it actually was.)

Enjoy.



Attention: Kids Passport Age Verification (KPPAV)

My name is Eytan Levy, and I am a Hotmail user, under the name veneran@hotmail.com. I am faxing this letter at the request of a customer service representative to demonstrate that I am legally old enough to use the Hotmail service, so that I can have my account upgraded to adult status.
As you can clearly see from the birthdate, I am well above the requisite 13 years of age required to send and receive email without parental permission. I would like my age reflected in my email account status, so that access to my email account may resume as soon as possible. I appreciate the response I received and the options given for a timely resolution of this problem, albeit after no less than 6 attempts in 8 days to contact customer service.

(Photo ID here)


Be that as it may, I have the following complaints:

1) Access was denied with no prior warning, no information, no explanation, and only one available solution to resume service.
2) Said solution required the presentation of a credit card number for age verification, which, given the first complaint, I, and many others, consider no different from blackmail.
3) This is not the first time I have encountered the problem of denied access on the grounds that I am not an adult. The first time it occurred, I was 19 years old. Given the fact that this is an age-related issue, it should not be possible for it to occur more than once, especially given the fact that time moves inexorably forward, not backward, and thus should be less likely to occur as it moves in that direction.
4) Given the fact that I have been using Hotmail for approximately 8 years, as well as the fact that the legal age required to send and receive email without parental permission is 13 years, this means that I would have had to have opened the account at the age of 4 years old for this problem to have any degree of legitimacy.
5) The only options available required parental permission for use of the service. There was no option available for “I am in fact an adult, thank you.”
6) I sent immediate inquiries to several different customer service addresses; it took 8 days to receive a response.
7) I called a phone number for customer service, at which point I was informed that there is no phone number for Hotmail support. Contact must be conducted through email. The irony is staggering.
8) The email address I received from this representative was not monitored. I received a generic, automated response to my inquiry, informing me that I should contact a different address. I for one find it rather bizarre that customer support would give out non-existent email addresses to customers seeking support.
9) For approximately one hour, I was able to access my account. I have no explanation for this anomaly. But after this time it was once again restricted.
10) When 8 days later I finally received a response from a customer service representative (after making an inquiry to every Hotmail, MSN and Microsoft affiliated support line I could find), I was given two options, neither of which were available on the actual site; one of the two the representative claimed was an available option, but clearly was not.


I do hope this ends the madness. I find it absurd to think that my account was restricted on such ludicrous grounds, especially given that it has happened before, and was somehow resolved. I also find it unacceptable that it was so difficult to contact any sort of support line to resolve the issue, as the options available on the site were so clearly insufficient. My only lamentation is that I am not an expert computer hacker, so that I could have hacked into the Microsoft database, restricted everyone’s email address, and demanded credit card numbers before I would reopen the accounts.
This, hopefully, will no longer be a problem of mine. It is exclusively yours. This is an unacceptable way to run a business, and there is clearly something wrong in the system for this problem to have occurred at all, much less without warning, or immediately available, sensible solution. I do hope I don’t have to describe to you the reasons why your customer support system is intolerably insufficient for helping customers. But I regrettably assume that since such problems exist, the decision makers are the ones who made it that way.
It is in your best interest to solve these problems, as after customers, it is business that will suffer the most. You have competition, and you are not competing effectively. Perhaps this incident will galvanize at least someone into thinking better methods should be set in place.


Best of luck,



Eytan Levy


PS: I would also like reimbursement for the cost of the photocopy requested to complete this transaction, in the amount of $0.10.