Skype, you're lying!

So, now that Microsoft owns Skype, and I'm not that fond of Microsoft, I tested Google Video Chat, and XMPP video chat. Of course, there are many things to be skeptic about when it comes to Google, too, and Microsoft are the ones with the policy to delete all your data if requested. Google does not. But still, I don't want to use Skype now. I found out that other video chats are working, and with XMPP I can video chat from Pidgin, which is my primary IM client. So then, bye bye Skype, and therefore I wanted to delete my Skype account. So far, so good.

In order to do so, I visited their web site (skype.com). While searching through their FAQ-s and support pages, the only answer I got was:

"It is currently not possible to permanently delete your Skype Name. However, deleting your profile information (which includes your real name and other details, plus any pictures of yourself you have uploaded) ensures that anyone else using Skype will no longer be able to find or identify you."

This is not good enough. Not at all. If we don't look at the fact that most services allows you to completely delete your account, this still sounds stupid. The main reason that I want to delete my profile, is not that I don't want people to find it. I don't want it to look like it's non-existing. I want it to be deleted.

So I sent support an e-mail that said that I wanted them to delete my profile. The answers I got back seemed to be copied from something they've got lying around, and pasted together to "fit" my request. At first, they didn't even say that it was impossible, just "follow these steps to delete your account". And the steps were basically to delete my personal info, and that should "solve" the problem. So I replied and said that that's not deleting my account. The answer I got was from another person, who said much of the same stuff (obviously copied from the same place the previous answer was from. And the answer also said "Since you have not made any purchases with Skype, we are unable to delete your account." Ok? I replied asking why me not purchasing anything had to do with anything, and the answer (from yet another costumer supporter) didn't say much at all. So, I looked at the answer my boy friend got when he sent a mail regarding the same:

"We are sorry to tell you that since you never purchased any of our Skype products, we are unable to verify your account information and so we can not delete your account.

We are sorry to tell you that according to the Skype Privacy Statement, we are only able to delete accounts in cases where we are able to verify an account user’s identity – unfortunately, in this occasion lack of payment history prevents us from doing that."

What?! When so many service providers makes no problem about it if you want to delete your account, regardless of whether you have bought anything from them, Skype really should figure it out too. I can't believe that it's that hard...

Well, I can't delete my e-mail address, so I sat it to be the one that shows up for skype.com in the whois database... Have fun.