Msn contacts offline when online?

Whenever I use msn this week, it says that all of my contacts are offline (when i know they are online. I have double checked by using hotmail and texting them). I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the program, as well as trying to repair it. Nothing is helping. Aside from deleting the contact cache, does anyone have any suggestions? Or is the server doing this to me, which means I should just wait it out?