Here's Why I'll Never Use Microsoft Software Again
I've been with Google for quite some time on their G Suite offering but recently, for some silly reason, I thought moving to Microsoft's Office 365 so I could use Outlook would be a good idea. Boy was I wrong. Let me walk you through why.
Many years ago, I, like many people, had a Hotmail account. Sometime around 2008 or 2009 or so (when I launched this site) I managed to add my mike at cmscritic dot com email address to this old personal Microsoft account. Now, this normally wouldn't matter unless I was trying to use that same email for Office365 for Business, which is what I wanted to do. So I decide I'll just remove it from that old account and use it exclusively for my business Office365 account. Should be easy right? Here's where the problems arise.
In my divine wisdom, I decided to switch things over so I now have an Office365 Business account to manage my CMS Critic domain and offer me email services. Now, let me get to why this does not work.
Ok, as mentioned, I now have my email attached to two accounts; a personal Microsoft account and an Office365 account. Following along? It's confusing a bit, I know..
Here's where the problems occur. I haven't used the personal account in years so now any time I try to log in to any Microsoft login link (or use Microsoft to log into any third party website or service) other than office365.com with my CMS Critic email, I get this:
That picture, btw, is a super old one from when my wife and I first got married. Now, you'd think that going through the verification process would allow me to get in and remove my work email from this account and / or delete the account entirely. Well not so fast.
The recovery process asks a huge number of questions both personal and ridiculous ranging from “Tell us the last few emails you sent, to whom they were sent and their subject lines.”
Who on earth is going to remember this information from years ago on an old account? Not this kid. I can barely remember yesterday let alone 5+ years ago. So of course, the verification process fails and I receive an email telling me so. This is all still not the main issue. In fact, I don't care about recovering my old Hotmail account at all. All I want to do is either log in and remove my work email from it or have someone from Microsoft do it. This should be easy since I can, in fact, prove that I own my CMS Critic email address since I'm the only one with access to it.
So I move past the verification process and think to myself, OK, I'll call Microsoft and explain it to them so I start with the obvious, I call Office365 Business support, whom I am now paying a monthly fee to and whom you'd think would want to keep their business customers happy. After explaining the situation numerous times to the representative, I am told they cannot help me, I need to call Office 365 Personal support.
I think to myself “That's odd since I don't have an Office 365 personal account” but I call anyway and go through the whole explanation process again. Guess what? I'm told they can't help me either and that, since they have absolutely no support for Microsoft accounts (being that they are Microsoft, this makes lots of sense), that I need to write a post on their answers.microsoft.com website with my issue.
Frustrated, I head on over and do so. I write in extreme detail since this is a hard thing to describe. I wait two days, I get a reply back from a “support” person telling me how to remove an account from Outlook. <forehead slap>
Way to read the post guys.
I then head to @MicrosoftHelps on Twitter and explain the entire process again. I am referred again, in a loop, back to Office 365 support or to call Microsoft Accounts team.
The entire time, I've repeated that I simply want my work email removed from an old personal account. Not a single person has taken the time to find the right person for me or connect me with them or even stay on the line to make sure I am getting a solution. Not once has anyone actually tried to fix it. It's been one brush off after another.
So here I am, back to square one. Nobody can figure it out, nobody can assist and nobody really wants to. Microsoft has proven to me once again why I should continue to not use any of their products.
So back I go to Google for my email needs and I will continue to run Linux until the day I die because frankly, Microsoft simply can't fix anything.