Thank you Brian, this helps.
Without wanting to sound like a whiner this is somewhere Microsoft could seriously improve customer engagement, just a simple "yes, we've seen the issue and we're investigating" would go a long way. I know it's a free service (one that I really like and
appreciate) but those less enthusiastic folks might not be willing to wait and head to the dark side!
Thanks, Hube
Outlook.com may be a free service, but I am being forced to use it by my expensive Windows Phone, which will not synchronize without a Microsoft Account! (Where are the good old days, when I could use a simple USB cable to sync my Nokia phone...)
Anyway, I've lost my patience with Microsoft's world-famous customer service, which always asks trivial questions and then escalates the issue to God knows who is next in their foodchain. So I decided to do a hard reset of my phone and link it up with a
new Microsoft Account, which I populated with my contacts and calendar database from scratch. I am ditching the previous Microsoft Account (which already was number two) as it is hopelessly clogged with deleted and reappearing contacts.
For now, everything works just fine and I feel alive again. I wonder how long it will last though.