I have found in general, FREE Microsoft support to be very poor. I have needed it in a few occasions (Azure VM broken by an Azure update, XBL email change, and a few others) and each time it was a very painful process. Contrast with paid support - my experience is through the dev channel - it is amazing the access to resources you can get.
Microsoft really need to do something at the free level. I won't hold my breath, but every time I need to do something with them I prey the solution is simple. Sadly, oftentimes it is not.