It is unfortunate that after being a faithful MSN and Hotmail user since I am cancelling ALL of my Accounts with MSN. I used to use Hotmail exclusively for my e-mail, chat, and Instant Messaging. Now that they have done me wrong, I will NEVER, EVER use their products again, EVER.
My church has had a Prayer Line in place for many years now; and recently they decided to begin offering an e-mail version of the Prayer Line, where people would receive an e-mail instead of a phone call when someone from within the church had a prayer request.
I was in charge of setting up the e-mail service, because of my experience with computers, so I decided to go with Hotmail. Not only is it free, it used to be the only e-mail provider that I trusted.
I didn't foresee any issues that could possibly span from this prayer chain. I've never had issues before with Hotmail, and didn't anticipate any future issues. Boy was I wrong.
I set up the account with no trouble, input all 35 of the e-mail addresses of participants who wished to receive e-mails, and figured I was good to go.
About a week went by before we received a prayer request. Notice I said a week. My definition of a week, in this context, would be between 5 and 8 days. Not anything above 10 days. This is important later in this report.
When it came time to send out the prayer request, I showed my mom how to do it, since she would be the one actually sending the e-mails out. I walked her through the process, and when she clicked "send", we received an error message that an e-mail message could only contain 10 recipients.
This was news to me. Like I said, I have used Hotmail since and have NEVER heard of this rule.
I figured rules are rules, though, so I divided up the list of prayer chain e-mail recipients into groups of 10, and began sending out e-mails to the lists of 10 people at a time. It let me send the e-mail out to 20 different people, but I had to pass one of those "capitcha" tests each time. I have poor eyesight, so I always mess up on those tests. I tried to have it give me an audio test, but it wouldn't do it for me.
Needless to say, I failed both capitcha tests, but it still let me send out the first 2 e-mails. When it came time to send out the e-mail to the third group of 10, though, I received an error message saying that our account had been blocked for a Terms of Use violation, and to contact Customer Support if we felt that this account was blocked in error.
You know what Hotmail's customer support consists of? There is no 1-800 number, not even an e-mail address to send an e-mail to. You have to go on this blog and hope that someone sees your plea for help among thousands of other jokers who claim to have issues too.
My first post got me absolutely nowhere. Seeing as Hotmail promised a "rapid response" and it had been between 2 and three hours and I hadn't received a response yet, I posted it again. I had a response to that one after 2 hours, but it didn't even come close to addressing the question.
Their response was obviously computer generated (nobody bothers to read customer's e-mails anymore), and addressed issues that I wasn't even having, and that there was no way were causing the issues.
For example, it suggested that the account was suspended due to inactivity, and explained that accounts that are inactive for 10 days are automatically suspended. Not only is this complete and utter BS, and would have become apparent when I tried to send out the first group of e-mails, it hadn't even been 10 days since the account was created. (I told you that the fact that it had only been inactive for 8 days tops would be important.)
The blogger / So - Called Customer Service Agent went on to say that in order for them to address the issue, I would need to give them my e-mail address. I had given it on the form when I registered, I don't see why I need to put it on a blog for God and everyone to see. Wouldn't they have this information available to them anyway? I mean the DO work for Hotmail, after all.
Nonetheless, I went ahead and posted a THIRD blog entry, and I clearly stated the problem, a THIRD time, seeing as they can't seem to read plain English to address my problem, and gave my e-mail address out to the general public.
I also clearly stated that this issue had been going on for over 24 hours at that point, and that I wanted someone to handle this issue promptly, as was promised over 24 hours ago when I first started bringing this issue to their attention.
I told them on the blog that I was an avid consumer complaints user and that if they did not handle my issue within 2 hours, that I would make a report of this on consumer complaints, as well as cancel ALL of my Hotmail Accounts, and encourage my friends to do the same thing.
It has now been 18 hours since that post was posted, and I have not heard ANYTHING from Hotmail, so I think we all know where this story is going.
I created a different account with Yahoo, a company who actually appreciates my business and me as a customer, a company who actually has customer support that you can e-mail or IM, and a company who actually lets you use YOUR e-mail account however YOU want to use it.
It's unfortunate that Hotmail had to loose out on my business. I may not have had any paid accounts with them, but that shouldn't matter. If you run a business, you should treat everybody equally and fairly, even if they only are signed up for free services with you company.
I encourage anyone reading this post to drop Hotmail like a bad habit. If you currently use Hotmail, you don't want to end up like me. There are MANY good quality companies out there who can be trusted much more than Hotmail to handle your e-mail service.
If they did this to a CHURCH, then they will do it to anyone...
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