Question about Outlook Express

My Hotmail account got locked up so it was impossible for me to log-in, so I called Hotmail support for help. The call went to India, they helped me clear up the problem and told me it was due to hackers getting into my account from Los Angles and also New York. Before they would do the final procedure, they told me I would have to pay $ 250.00 for the cost of their engineers to clear  up the problem. I am no dummy 99% of the time, concerning scammers trying to get money from people on the internet, but I was desperate to get my account opened up and cleared up, so I could continue to use Hotmail . So, probably, stupidily, I aggreed to $ 100.00 as an initial payment to un-lock my sign-in and get a new temporary password. I did watch them go thru step-by-step on my computer to clear the issue up, and as they did, they showed me what was wrong and what was needed to fix the problem. I am really disturbed by this charge, and even more so, giving them my debit card info. to get the money out of my checking account, but they insisted they had to have this payment to fix my problem. I later went on Wikepida, and found Hotmail had previous problems in the past with hackers due to a security weakness in Hotmail's server and had to install patches to fix the hacking problems in past years. Has any one else been held hostage by Hotmail engineers in India to fix problems of logging in and being charged a ridiculos fee like this ?  Thanks for your comments