So I took the plunge and upgraded my Hotmail account to Hotmail Plus. 2 GB of storage, huge attachment allowances, the works... This was almost two months ago. Boy do I regret that decision. My refund period has expired as well. Just a fiasco all around. $20 I will never see again.
Don't get me wrong, the features are great. 2 GB is more than (albeit free) Gmail and is more than I'll ever need. I like that I can send, receive and store large attachments. I LOVE that i can use it with Outlook or Outlook Express without having to go through POP or IMAP. I like how there are no ads when I access it from a browser. BUT the service simply does not work where it really counts...
Within a week of signing up, I started experiencing delays with delivery of e-mails. Both outgoing and incoming. People were complaining they were getting my emails hours or days after I sent them. And then e-mail started arriving late in my inbox as well. Delays happened to random emails. I'd estimate one out of every six to eight emails experienced delays. This is almost worse than every email being delayed. It's not enough to quit using the service immediately but it's enough to seriously disrupt the flow of a conversation. One missing message can seriously confuse a dialog exchange! Delays ranged from hours to days. The record so far for me is an email I received 11 days after it was sent!!
So after countless dragged-out (of course) exchanges with Microsoft, they assured me they'd fix it. When the problems persisted, I should have filed for a refund but I got lazy and ultimately, I figured the problem would get solved sooner than later. But now here I am, out of my return period, and emails are still experiencing delays. Sometimes even worse than before.
The funny part is that I maintain 2 other free Hotmail accounts and they experience no problems. Though they haven't upgraded me to 250MB storage (that's another rant) yet, there are no delays associated with either of those accounts. But there are with my paid, VIP, upgraded, super duper account!
Ugh! I just can't believe I finally took the big step of PAYING for email and I got screwed over like this. I can't believe a company like Microsoft released an email service where the email part doesn't work properly! Then again, I suppose this is a company that released whole operating systems that didn't work like it should. Unbelievable. Needless to say, I will not be renewing my subscription to Hotmail Plus next year. What a debacle.
Just a word of caution to those out there thinking of making the jump.
Don't get me wrong, the features are great. 2 GB is more than (albeit free) Gmail and is more than I'll ever need. I like that I can send, receive and store large attachments. I LOVE that i can use it with Outlook or Outlook Express without having to go through POP or IMAP. I like how there are no ads when I access it from a browser. BUT the service simply does not work where it really counts...
Within a week of signing up, I started experiencing delays with delivery of e-mails. Both outgoing and incoming. People were complaining they were getting my emails hours or days after I sent them. And then e-mail started arriving late in my inbox as well. Delays happened to random emails. I'd estimate one out of every six to eight emails experienced delays. This is almost worse than every email being delayed. It's not enough to quit using the service immediately but it's enough to seriously disrupt the flow of a conversation. One missing message can seriously confuse a dialog exchange! Delays ranged from hours to days. The record so far for me is an email I received 11 days after it was sent!!
So after countless dragged-out (of course) exchanges with Microsoft, they assured me they'd fix it. When the problems persisted, I should have filed for a refund but I got lazy and ultimately, I figured the problem would get solved sooner than later. But now here I am, out of my return period, and emails are still experiencing delays. Sometimes even worse than before.
The funny part is that I maintain 2 other free Hotmail accounts and they experience no problems. Though they haven't upgraded me to 250MB storage (that's another rant) yet, there are no delays associated with either of those accounts. But there are with my paid, VIP, upgraded, super duper account!
Ugh! I just can't believe I finally took the big step of PAYING for email and I got screwed over like this. I can't believe a company like Microsoft released an email service where the email part doesn't work properly! Then again, I suppose this is a company that released whole operating systems that didn't work like it should. Unbelievable. Needless to say, I will not be renewing my subscription to Hotmail Plus next year. What a debacle.
Just a word of caution to those out there thinking of making the jump.