Hotmail Nightmare

My apologies to anyone who may have been sent spam from my hotmail account. This morning, when I tried to sign in, I was told that my account had been blocked and I needed to give my mobile phone number to receive a text message to reactivate it.

Now I'm not completely daft, so I smelt a scam. However after a bit of checking, it does appear to be a genuine request from Microsoft. Unfortunately several hours have now passed and no magic text message has arrived. I have repeated the process a couple of times but to no avail.

There is no email or phone number for Hotmail support. I selected the option to send a question to customer support, but when I tried to do this I was informed that I needed to login first. Hmm...

I was also invited to reset my password, but because I cannot remember which childhood friend I selected as 'best' or how I spelled their name, that option is now closed to me.

If anyone can help me, I would be grateful. I've had a good look on the internet for a solution, but there doesn't appear to be one. I seem to be one of about 20 million people locked out of their Hotmail account, so perhaps we should set up a Facebook group.

STOP PRESS I have now successfully changed my password. However it hasn't done me any good at all as my account is still blocked! I am beginning to suspect that 'Microsoft' and 'customer service' are words that are rarely uttered in the same sentence unless accompanied by other, less printable ones.