# Do I need MSN Narrowband Unlimited Access?



## Worried19 (Aug 8, 2003)

I have received email from Microsoft telling me that MSN Narrowband Unlimited Access will be automatically renewed soon for $190.00. I have an MSN email account. I connect with BellSouth DSL, but use MSN's email (which is actually Hotmail), downloading it into my Outlook Express. I tried searching the Microsoft website to find out whether if I canceled this Narrowband I would experience any adverse consequence, but I could find nothing. Am I right in assuming that all I will lose is dialup, which I don't ever use anyway? Would I still have my email address? And if this is so, should I nevertheless keep the service going, just in case? As backup? Or in case I should one day want to use PCAnywhere or Procomm if I want to control my computer from a friend's house? Or for some other reason?

Thanks.


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## Worried19 (Aug 8, 2003)

I hope someone can help me.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Hotmail is free. Ignore the email unless you want to change ISPs


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## Worried19 (Aug 8, 2003)

Hotmail is free. Ignore the email unless you want to change ISPs 
__________________
Sadly, there are no integers on this scale, so your gangly adolescent attempt to be clever has proved futile
I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off 

Rockn,

Thanks for your reply. I just checked in and found it.

Incidentally, I first read the large font and thought that was your response to me, and started constructing a reply expressing puzzlement that you were regarding me as trying to be clever, etc. I was saying that my post may have been dumb, but it was genuine. Then I finally noticed the small font response.

Problem is, I don't understand it. I don't know what you mean by "ignore the email." See, my understanding is much more limited than you are assuming. I have DSL with BellSouth. I have an MSN email address (@email.msn.com), and I download my email from Hotmail into my Outlook Express, and want to continue doing so. MSN is saying, "Your subscription to MSN Narrowband Unlimited Access is scheduled to be automatically renewed on Sunday, April 02, 2006." It sounds to me like what I am paying MSN for is just dialup (= narrowband?). So I am sort of assuming that if I don't renew, everything will remain the same except that I will not have dialup anymore. I am assuming that I will still have my MSN email address, that I will still get my email through Hotmail, and that there will be no consequence other than that if I ever wanted to use dialup, I wouldn't be able to do so. But am I right? I know I should know the answer to this, but I really don't. At least I don't feel at all confident. And I tried to find information on MSN, but was unsuccessful. In other words, is that $190.00 also for my email address (@email.msn.com)?


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## js73 (Jun 10, 2002)

msn.com emails should also be free. Otherwise, there are many other free services. Are you sure that the e-mail you got from MSN is genuine and not a phishing one? Have you been paying $190 per year in the past? Did they ask you for some credit card information?


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## Worried19 (Aug 8, 2003)

Good questions. The email seems genuine. No links, but instructions to go to MSN site and pull up my account, etc.

But I notice that I apparently paid $190 each year from 1999 to 2004. I don't see where I paid in 2005. But I take it I have been taken. So I guess I'll cancel it rather than pay. Thanks for the help.

Here is the email message (the links are not there in the actual email, as opposed to how they look here):

*********************************************************

Important: Please read this entire notice carefully.

Dear Customer,

Your subscription to MSN Narrowband Unlimited Access is scheduled to be automatically renewed on Sunday, April 02, 2006. Here is a description of the service:

$190.00 (or then-current price) per year until subscription is cancelled. Additional telephone and/or long distance toll charges may apply.

Please confirm that your account and payment information is up to date.

To view or change your billing account, go to https://billing.microsoft.com, and select one of the following options: 
To update payment information, click on the payment method's link under 'Payment type', on the next page click 'Go to payment method information', and on the next page click 'Edit payment method information'.
To view a billing statement for a payment method, click the payment method's link under 'Payment type'.

If you do not want to renew this subscription, you must cancel the subscription before the renewal date shown above. To cancel, go to https://billing.microsoft.com, click on the service name, and then on the next page click 'Cancel my service'.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services!

Microsoft Customer Support

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Please do not respond to this message. 
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address, sign in to your account at https://billing.microsoft.com, select 'Go to personal information', then click 'Edit personal information', change the 'Contact e-mail', and click 'Save'. 
For more information on online safety visit http://www.microsoft.com/phishing.
Form: 12


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## Worried19 (Aug 8, 2003)

Well, I found the answer to my question. I should have thought of this earlier. I simply called MSN and asked. Not that it was easy to get an answer, but I did find out that my $190.00 per year was indeed allowing me to have dial-up if I ever wanted to use it, though I never have. It also allowed me to use the MSN browser, which I can't seem to find (I use Internet Explorer), and the various security features of that browser, which I have never used.

However, by canceling the $190.00 subscription, that would reduce my hotmail storage from 2GB down to 250MB. On the other hand, I could, for 19.95 per year, have hotmail plus, with the 2GB. So I opted to do this. Now, at one tenth the cost, I have exactly what I have been using. I just have to stop myself from thinking about that $190.00 per year that I have been spending for years, and think instead about all that money that I have saved in the future. It's called mental hygiene.


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## js73 (Jun 10, 2002)

Great! Next year, you may want to further reduce this cost to zero by opting for another e-mail service such as gmail, which gives you more than 2 GB free of cost, and is no longer difficult to get. But if you are happy with hotmail and do not want to change, $20 a year is a reasonable price to pay.


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