Manoj has a very important piece of advice for Consumerist readers: don’t carry a large balance in your Skype account. We actually published a post last year entitled, “Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Carry A Large Balance In Your Skype Account,” but it’s an important lesson that bears repeating, like “keep your receipts for major purchases” or “don’t shop at Sears.”

He writes:

I had a bad experience with Skype this week, If you can publish my story it will help your other readers to understand why they shouldn’t carry excessive balances in their Skype accounts.

I had about $70 credit in my Skype account on Sept 12th, On Sept 13th I saw it was drained to $0.02…when I contacted Skype, I was told that there was some suspicious activity in my account and 434 text messages were sent to different numbers in 5 different countries during the span of 8 minutes. I told Skype that [I] did not do that, Skype rep told me that they will investigate and get back.

By that evening my credit was showing $1.12, and next day morning it was showing $6.21, all without any activity from my end.

Next day I received an email from Skype telling that they cannot do anything since text messages were sent using my account. I asked them the reason for the credit changes in my account after the incident, rep told me that they cannot explain.

Now, I am out of $65 Skype credit with no explanation from Skype. I never shared my Skype password with anyone, never logged in with Skype on a public computer, and have up-to-date antimalware software on my personal computer.

I am really surprised at the arrogance of Skype, in spite of me being a paying customer from last 10 years they are not willing to help or investigate.

Skype isn’t known for its stellar customer service. We had hoped that might have changed since Microsoft took over, but Manoj’s experience shows that apparently it hasn’t.

Update, 9/18/12: Manoj let us know that Skype tracked him down after our post was published and has granted him a refund. So that’s nice.

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