UPDATE: I posted this during the morning and I got an email response from someone on the Windows Live Alerts team around 3 PM. That’s not bad! It would be better if they had a way to contact them directly, that was published clearly. I’ll update this post again, after I get more info. I responded to their email a little bit ago, around 7 PM… And, if anyone on that team comes back and reads this post again, I’m not going to rip on you. I’m trying to help, but I also think this should be done in the open. I’m not going to say more of what the responses are, until I’ve given you a fair chance to respond.
UPDATE2: They fixed a couple Alerts, but have to do it all manually by hand, and via an email address that I couldn’t find posted anywhere online. I’m going to try out the latest alerts for a few days and will comment again, after I have had some more time with the updates.
=====
I am a big fan of Microsoft, of their products, of their research and other things. But, sometimes, the 800 pound guerilla is a little stubborn and frustrating.
I’ve submitted feedback and tried to update the Windows Live Alert that is setup for this blog, and also about the same thing for at least one other blog. They responded once, saying that I could email back and by hand, they would update the alert to reflect my changes and they were working on an admin thing so I (or anyone who has an alert setup for one of the feeds they own) can change things (like the title, the feed URL, the frequency of delivery, etc.) That was a few months ago, and nothing has come of it yet.
Both Google and Yahoo offer similar features, but the owner of the feed doesn’t have to do anything. That makes so much more sense. If a feed URL is public, why should the owner have to do anything with it to impact how others are alerted? (Yeah, I know the Windows Live Alerts want to give more control to the owner, but when the owner can’t update or edit any info, then the point becomes moo – yeah, like a cow, remember that Friends episode w/ Joey.) 
So, until Windows Live Alerts either responds directly to me and gives me the scoop, or they fix it, I will not use it or recommend it. I’m going to remove that subscription link from this blog, and I’m also going to unsubscribe to any Windows Live Alerts I was following with this slow to adapt, make it hard to adopt, poorly names services. Further, I’m going to use both Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts even more.
Adding “Windows Live Alerts Suck” and “Windows Live Alerts Sucks” here just in case anyone from that team is listening to that feedback via any search tools, etc. Not trying to offend, but trying to get this service to work better.
[...] A person from the Windows Live Alerts team responded via email around 3 PM today. I’ve updated my earlier post a little bit. Stay tuned. (That’s a teaser.) [...]
[...] I wrote about this, trying to get the situation resolved. They responded directly to me via email. They fixed some of the details for a couple Alerts I had setup, as a publisher. However, the big way that I use the alerts, to send me an email, is not working for my alerts. (I subscribed to my own alerts to see if they work correctly now.) I tested it as much as I could for my own alerts. I emailed back to them, as promptly as I could (usually within hours). [...]