I noticed on my new computer that it has Skype preinstalled. So I decide to try it out... except it forces me to sign in with a Microsoft account. No problem, I'll just make one. Then I sign in, and it asks me to link my Microsoft and Skype account, which I did, and then it told me to sign in with my Microsoft account instead of my Skype account from now on. So far so good.
Then I noticed, hmm, my birthdate is publicly viewable, so maybe I shouldn't put in my real one, because my Skype username contains my real name. So I went to Microsoft's website and changed my birthdate to a fake one. Next thing I know, I'm locked out of my account, with the message "you need your parent's permission to use this service." Dafuq? After a bit of Googling, I think what happened is that I misclicked and put in a birthdate that makes me under 18. Now the system thinks I'm a child and won't let me use my account anymore without my parent's permission. I can't even go back and undo that change, because like I said, I'm already completely locked out of my account. Okay fine... I guess I'll create a fake parent for myself.
Nope. To verify that the new account that I created is actually an adult, Microsoft asks for my credit card information and will charge me 50 cents. No, screw you Microsoft, I'm not giving you my credit card info and paying you 50 cents. I do a bit more searching on Google, and found that I'm not the only one with this problem. Plenty of people accidentally put in a wrong birthdate and lost access to their account. This is completely retarded. There's nothing stopping a child from putting in a fake birthdate and pretending to be an adult when they make their account. But when an actual adult accidentally puts in a child's birthdate, they're not even given the chance to fix their mistake without first verifying that they're an adult. That's typical Microsoft logic for you.
What's worse, now that my Microsoft and Skype accounts are linked, I can't even log onto Skype anymore. I wasted a couple of hours searching for solutions online and trying to "beat the system", to no avail...
...until I made another "mistake". They told me to sign in with my Microsoft account instead of my Skype account from now on, right? But in one of my attempts, I accidentally signed in with my Skype account on the Skype website... and it let me in! This mistake turned out to be a blessing. I unlinked my Microsoft and Skype accounts, and salvaged my Skype account. I still can't access my Microsoft account, but it's not like I had anything on there anyways.
I also noticed that Skype for Windows 8 is different from the Skype in my old computer... in a bad way. Not only are you forced to sign in with a Microsoft account, it's missing some features. The only statuses you can set are "available" and "offline". There's no way to view your own profile AFAIK. But hey, adding features that are unnecessary or outright annoying, while removing features that are actually useful... isn't that what Microsoft does best? I went to the Skype website and found that there's a different version, Skype for Desktop, which is the better version that I have been using before. Had I known earlier, I could have simply used that, and not have wasted several hours on basically nothing.
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