I haven't violated any Terms of Use so not applicable.
No, and I assume that the same applies to the great majority of users affected by this fault. Nevertheless,
- It's a more forceful way of drawing attention to the problem than simply tacking a Me too post on to a forum thread;
- It is possible that if an account reset at the server would remove the fault, the agent seeing a support ticket can carry out such a reset and get us back on the road sooner;
- The support staff are paranoid about users revealing personally identifiable information in the public forums. They are much happier dealing with account-related issues in the secure private sphere that the support ticket system operates in.
I don't expect any reaction from MSFT until they've woken up in Redmond sometime this afternoon GMT - if then.