Is this help genuine?

This is still happening.  I got the same PM reply yesterday and thought that no legit support organizatoin would use free email accounts - futhermore I'm not aware that Adobe supports poor Elements users at all... 

I forwarded the PM email to abuse@adobe.com and phishing@adobe.com.

Hopefully Adobe can reign in this abuse as it seems be continuing over a long period of time.

Also, Adobe employees, and accredited ACP/MVPs are all badged (see avatar image below). Potential fraudsters will often have a fake picture and try to include the word Adobe in their screen name.

As was previously stated, no legitimate corporation is EVER going to be providing customer service or support using a web-based email service. Generally they will have an email address using a custom domain that contains their business name (i.e., adobe.com).

There may be rare exceptions (I have never seen any) however any email address that does not contain their corporate name in the domain name should be EASILY visible on their website. If it is not, DO NOT reply.

Also, do not provide deatails such as passwords, social security numbers, credit card information, etc. to ANYONE who is contacting you. Legitimate corporate agents will never ask for this type of information and any such request should be ignored and reported.

You were wise to be suspicious about this. I wuould finally suggest that if you did contact them in an online chat area you may want to run a virus/malware scan as a preventative measure to make sure they were not able to compromise your computer. This is extremely unlikely, however I tend to err on the side of caution...and even a bit of paranoia!

That sounds like classic phishing. Adobe email will not come from an outlook.com domain. You should not take them up on their offer and report the private message.