As outages and service problems continue to plague Microsoft's free email service Hotmail, users who try to cancel their accounts may be in for a surprise: They can't. Although Hotmail's cancellation policy states either party can discontinue the service at any time, users who try to cancel are told their accounts will only cease to exist when they are not used for more than 120 days.
"At first, this might seem a harmless issue," said Stuart Whitmore, a Hotmail user. "However, if the account is not closed, anybody who sends mail to it will not get a bounced message. And that person's mail will sit there unanswered, because the account owner can't log in to get it because doing so will 'reset the clock' on account expiration.
"If those people received a bounced message, instead of their mail just going unanswered, they would at least know that I wasn't ignoring them," Whitmore said.
When Whitmore tried to push the issue with Hotmail customer service, he received an automated email response "If you need your account to be removed for any reason, do not log into it again, and it will be automatically closed after 120 days. Only after this time period will mail intended for your account bounce instead of being delivered."
What's the big deal, a Microsoft representative asked. Just quit using the address, and send an e-mail to all your friends letting them know you've changed accounts.
It's a matter of principle, insisted Whitmore, who said he spent hours on hold and in argument with Hotmail's customer-service department.
"The policy of not deleting the account upon request is clearly a ploy to keep people subscribed, since account owners will eventually become curious about what valuable mail they may have received, and subscribers are good for advertising revenue," Whitmore said.
Microsoft spokesman Dave Reddy wasn't sure why the policy was in place, but said Hotmail will cancel accounts if users can prove that there is some fraudulent activity taking place.
Microsoft claims it's adding 150,000 Hotmail users per day for a total membership of more than 28 million.
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