I have absolutely no hope for this post whatsoever, but for some inane reason Microsoft does not provide support for Microsoft accounts. Great job.

I had an email account for outlook.com - let's call it *** Email address is removed for privacy *** - I used this email address to sign up to many different websites and services.

I then bought Office 365 (student edition) - which for the record was an absolute nightmare and support for that was, unexpectedly, terrible as well. However, this could only be achieved through my student account. I renamed that particular account (as I was told I could not merge that and *** Email address is removed for privacy ***) to something else, which is my current primary account. This account I would like to use for all future purposes, as it has my 365 subscription. However, I've signed up for everything with my old *** Email address is removed for privacy *** account.

So I see email aliases, and decide I could make a new alias on *** Email address is removed for privacy *** (let's say John.Smith.Old) and then remove the original *** Email address is removed for privacy *** account - After 30 days, according to every Microsoft piece of information on the internet, this account should be available to be registered again, so I could use *** Email address is removed for privacy *** as an alias on my new email account.

This however is not the case. For some reason I can neither add it as an alias ("This e-mail already exists") or even log into it ("The Microsoft account is incorrect. Please try again"). Therefore the address seems both registered, and unregistered.

As originally posted, I don't expect much from this account, but it's absolutely ridiculous that all of the products that I'm registered with I now do not have access to thanks to Microsoft's inadequacy to develop obvious usability features into their products.

Prove me wrong.

Jamie