Unable to add mobile number from South Africa to account

[Elroc-2708]

I’ve been trying for almost a month to add a mobile number to my youngest sons battle net account. (see Pre paid sims to play ow - #3 by Elroc-2708, also tickets #95582239 and #95531944).

Just a week before that I was able to add another number to my older sons account without issue.

Before the canned responses, I have tried number from different phone providers, prepaid and postpaid, and none of the numbers were ‘recently absorbed’ by their respective networks (all have been with the specific networks for years).

I suspect there is a problem with the number verification service Blizzard uses, or in how Blizzard interfaces to them and the ‘enter a postpaid number’ error is simply a badly associated error message. As listed in the linked post above:

@Elroc-2708

The company I mention, telesign (google telesign) is in fact a third party service provider that handles phone number validation and OTP services to Blizzard. i.e. The company that actually checks the number you enter when trying to add it to the account. So in this case, Blizzard is in fact the customer of Telesign. I base this assesment on the json error code received when trying to enter any of the numbers I’ve tried:

{
    "timestamp": 0000000000000,
    "status": 400,
    "error": "None",
    "errors": [
        {
            "defaultMessage": "error.postPaidError"
        }
    ],
    "message": "Operation failed due to reason: TELESIGN_POST_PAID_ERROR"
}

I’ve changed the timestampt to all zeroes, but the rest is verbatim as received by my browser when attempting to add a number.

Now for the speculation bit:

1. An error stating ‘post_paid_error’ could indicate Blizzard is in fact checking for post paid number, contrary to the KB article on the topic (Blizzard Support - Battle.net Phone Notifications) which simply lists VOIP numbers as not being allowed.
   OR
2. post_paid_error could imply some error occurred during the number check, and the term ‘post_paid’ is a misnomer.
   ALSO
3. A 400 error code in HTTP is usually reserved for ‘resource not found’ - like when you try to access a webpage that does not exist, which could indicate the check fails for no reason related to post or pre-paid but rather in inability to either reach the Telesign provider itself, or Telesign not being able to locate the number in their database. For reference, the Telesign API (google telesign sendsmsverifycode api) only references using 400 response codes for “Bad Request” requests - i.e. the actual request they receive to check a number is badly formatted. Though it’s also very likely there is an intermediate Blizzard API inbetween so this could be irrelevant.

The point I’m trying to put across is that every possible avenue on my side - Phone number, mobile provider and pre and post-paid numbers I’ve already exhausted, and I’m requesting Blizzard to at least consider that their might be something wrong on their side, or with Telesign, and to just do the basic check from their side before trying to bat valid request with ‘no, you’ responses.

I’m posting this in the Overwatch bug report forum, because it’s preventing my son from playing overwatch on his Battle net account, and because there is no general Battle net bug report forum. Also I’ve exhausted the capabilities (and my patience) with Blizzards ticketing support system.

[KindredCurse-1152]

honestly you are better off if he finds a different game to play, the devs have lost the plot on this game, zero idea what they are doing, can’t design heroes/modes or maps anymore. can’t balance the game and the matchmaking is actual dogcrap. get him splatoon or something on the switch. better off for his mental health in the end.

[Elroc-2708]

So to close the loop on this, I was eventually able to add a number, one I had tried multiple times before which always failed. I did change a few things (which I’ll elaborate on below), but it could also have been that there was an issue on Blizzard side.

On the attempt that worked the following applied:

1. Contrary to normal number entry rules I entered the full number including the initial leading zero. i.e. the page shows a pre-filled box with country code (+27 in my case) followed by the blank box you can enter your number. Normally my local number would be 0123456789, then the intl number would be +27123456789. Entering the number as 123456789 in the blank window failed, but entering 0123456789 in the blank box worked. Note I did try this on previous failed attempts as well, so this was not the cause of my original difficulties.
2. I have some add blockers running on my home network, so to try and add the number unfiltered, I disconnected my mobile phone from my home wifi and accessed the Battle.net account page via my phone. This also ws attempted before but on previous attempts made no difference.
3. Additionally, my mobile (Samsung Android) has an option to use ‘Private DNS’ when available. Out of desperation I also disabled this while trying to add a mobile number to my account.

I was able to successfully add the number to my sons battle net account when all three the above steps were done together. As mentioned, unclear if this had any bearing on why it worked, or if something changed Blizzard side.

[dborjesson-1914]

I found a solution that worked for me.
What you have to do is under privacy&communications you have to tick every box,
SMS Account Alerts
Battle.net Mobile Push Notifications
Latest News, Special Offers, Betas, and More
And then select all.
That finally worked for me atleast.