Well, it's 48 hours since I filled in MS's helpful form promising a reply within 24 hours.
I've given up and got a new passport and I can download and read today's free books just fine.
The only problem now is that I can't read all of the previous books, and understandably this thread will be locked and/or deleted if I ask anyone to help me out in that respect. Damn.
Oh well, It's uBook for me all the way from now on.