Hotmail: You Get What You Pay For

If you're a Hotmail user experiencing the free service's latest shortcomings, you're just going to have to tough it out.

That's pretty much Microsoft's advice to the 68 million folks using its free Hotmail e-mail service.

The software behemoth says there's no customer support phone line because of "security reasons" and users that e-mail for help receive a generic message asking them to log on later.

There have been a number of problems, from not being able to get onto the Hotmail homepage to not being able to log in once you're there. And if you are lucky enough to get into your account, it's taken some customers up to a minute to perform even the simplest task.

"I tried e-mailing them, and they sent back an auto response, with a list of e-mail addresses that I should contact," said Geoff Haisty, a frustrated Hotmail user from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

From there, it only became more frustrating.

"I e-mailed two of those, which also sent back auto responses," said Haisty, a special projects team leader for GoTo.com. "They both contained a URL to a support form that supposedly submits to a live human. I tried the URL, but the first time I submitted, the request returned an error, so I had to try again. The second time it got through, but I have no response yet."

Haisty is part of a cluster of users plagued with Hotmail's latest headaches. Since Sunday, an undisclosed number of users have not been able to get to their Hotmail home pages or log onto their accounts. Users who successfully log in must wait 30 seconds to a minute for any task to be completed.

Hotmail representatives didn't have a novel reason for the email meltdown. Once again, the servers hosting the e-mail accounts are being repaired.