I have written MSN-TV numerous times about this and the reply was always the same..... A copied and pasted page text from the help center saying that the message light will not come on when I am not connected to the service. Of course as usual, this did not address the problem I was reporting and was no help at all.
I have finally received an answer from "Ombudsman" Tim Vasquez at MSN with an explaination and responce to my inquire. This is what he sent:
We are aware that the light used to come on when new emails were recieved sometimes. However, this is not the way WebTV or MSN TV intended the feature to work. The feature is supposed to check for new email once a day whenever you set the time for it to check, and if there was new emails at that time, the light would appear.
You may have experienced your email message light failing to come on when you are connected to the service and new email is received. I have been experiencing this problem since taking the 2.7 upgrade. I also notice the light coming on when I reconnect and there is NO NEW MAIL.
Dear Techniguy,
Until, and if, we can persuade MSN to return our message light to it's previous useful operation, we will have to continually reload our mail list to see when we have new email. I realize this is a major inconvienence, but neccessary if you want to know when new mail comes in. This is just another cheap shot at MSN-TV users by MSN and demonstrates that either they don't know what they are talking about, or are just plain lying to us.
If you wish to voice your opinion regarding this, you can write to:
I find this answer very hard to believe but have no choice but to accept it and pass it along. My personal belief is that the service was changed for the purpose of saving MSN bandwidth by not having this email message link active and on standby while we are connected to the MSN-TV service.