Skype Turned Sour After Microsoft Transition... Or is it just me?

Ok, so I've been using Skype for some time and now, as I went to set my colleagues up to have their individual "business" accounts on Skype, I noticed something interesting about their instructions and how the sign-up process works.

Take a look at the screenshot, and have a read of the words circled in red. You'll notice that it says "ANY" email address, yet when I go to type in my colleagues work email address, it gives the red warning saying "You can't sign up here with a work or school email address."



So basically I "have to" set up a business account with Skype if I want to now use my business email address... and of course, Skype's business accounts aren't free. I find it interesting that as soon as Microsoft take over Skype, signing up becomes more difficult, our options as users become more limited and the system doesn't even work properly anymore...

After trying to set my colleague up with her mobile phone, I tried to add her business email as a primary address on her profile... it then asked for a password, so I typed it in and it said it was wrong. It wasn't, but it said it was. I then signed out of everything and reset the password. I followed the same steps again to add the primary email and nope, wrong password.

Lol is all I can really say.

I wish these big corporations were a little less greedy and a little more customer focused. Really. I say that with the utmost respect, but they just seem to lose their grip on reality sometimes.

For example, a small issue on the grand scheme of things, but now with Skype we don't even have Skype IDs anymore. We used to be able to put on our business cards "Skype: username" but now all new Skype users are designated a really ugly "live id," which is just a long string of numbers. Worse still, we can't even choose our usernames anymore! Why the hell not? I want my name to be the name of my choosing, not the name I'm assigned by a random name generator.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience, either with Skype or other online service provider?

*For the record, I have a business Skype account, but my colleagues don't need their own business accounts for the moment... so I figured the free version would suffice... until I noticed how limited everything's become as a result of Microsoft trying to be clever in amalgamating all of their services.