Every time I think Microsoft has cornered the market on frustrating technical issues and stupid policies, I find out something new that again puts them over the top. I recently changed my e-mail address a few months ago because, after many blissful years of receiving absolutely no spam whatsoever, I suddenly was being inundated. So I created myself a new address and began changing over my registered e-mail on all the products and services I use. However, I decided about halfway through that I wanted to use a different e-mail address than the one I had created. Easy enough, I created the new e-mail address and then went back and began changing over those accounts that I had already previously updated. Everything was going swimmingly… until I tried to change the e-mail address I use as my Windows Live ID.

No matter how many times I tried, I simply could not change my Windows Live ID e-mail address again. The previous change had gone through without a problem. Now, every time I tried to submit the new address I received the message “You’ve already renamed this account. Please try again later.” So what’s the problem? Microsoft and their totally asinine e-mail policies are what’s the problem. I stumbled across this thread on the Windows Live Help forums and came to discover that Microsoft prevents any further changes to the registered account e-mail address for a full six months from the date you change it. That means if you mistype the address or decide you want to change it to something else, you have to wait a full six months before you’re allowed to change it again. I don’t know about anybody else out there, but I think this is one of the dumbest policies I’ve ever seen in use by any company on the Web. I can understand a 24 or 48-hour lockout period just so people aren’t constantly changing it — but SIX MONTHS? This is pretty pathetic, even by your standards, Microsoft.