Friend trying to remove Authenticator and recover account

[Aventis-grobbulus]

Posting from a friend who hasn’t played WoW in nearly a 7 years that heard they re-released TBC and wanted to give it another go. He decided to go ahead and try and login to reactivate his account and pay for a new subscription- only to get hit with an authenticator page. He vaguely remembers that he possibly could have had an authenticator previously, but as that was 7 years ago, he definitely doesn’t have the same phone. Also, being 7 years ago, he doesn’t have the reset code.

He followed the directions in the app, submitted a photo of his ID, and… nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Days later, still not a single peep, response email, nothing. Checked all of his email filters, nothing. Not wanting to set up a whole new account, he gave up and decided it wasn’t worth his time to wait forever.

I myself also haven’t played in over a year, and was going to join him. Fortunately, my account did not have an authenticator, so was able to log right in. However, if he isn’t playing, neither am I.

Is Blizzard that flush with cash that they simply don’t want customers to come back and pay them money? While I have rarely ever contacted support (last time was probably a decade ago), I always remembered a phone number, and at least some sort of an email response.

I’m sure $30 a month (assuming they still charge around $15 a month x 2 people) isn’t a whole lot of moola, but there definitely has to be others with this same issue. And after doing a brief search on this forum, it appears customer service for this game has gone to “Worst Company in America” levels.

Well, I doubt I will log back in to see any responses, as after 10 days waiting for Blizzard to remove the authenticator, we have decided to move on to other things, but we tried one last ditch attempt tonight to get in and failed, therefore, probably won’t try again, and probably won’t see any responses. Blizzard, when you finally get to our spot in queue in about 5 years and decide to remove the authenticator, I doubt we will have any interest in coming back.

[Vrakthris]

@Aventis-grobbulus

He followed the directions in the app, submitted a photo of his ID, and… nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Days later, still not a single peep, response email, nothing.

Response times are rather high right now due to the Burning Crusade Classic launch. Assuming your friend successfully submit a request to have their old Authenticator removed, it may take a few days.

Did they receive a ticket ID? If they did not, it may not have been successfully submitted. If you can provide the ticket ID I may be able to see what is going on with it.

[Aventis-grobbulus]

I was actually surprised to see such a rapid response, as I had not logged off yet after deciding to catch up and read some other forum posts. We actually checked when we had all submitted tickets (all done from his phone after clicking on the link in the authenticator App). I do not have the ticket ID’s any more, but do remember the submission screen verifying that a response would follow. No confirmation emails were ever received. I can give you the dates of ticket submission (as they still appear in his browser history)-

May 11th, 2021 at around 5pm
A second ticket was submitted on May 24th, 2021, at around noon.
A third and final time, just for kicks and giggles, about 1-2 hours ago.

This came from his account with the {email removed} email address. And before anyone gets huffy about email security, this account has been his throwaway account that he literally only uses for junk and is only linked to his Blizzard account and no other accounts on any site, anyware else. He uses that email for things that he might get bombarded with spam, and uses an alternate account for actual normal business transactions.

Also, I can understand high queue times due to a launch, as both he and I are senior software engineers \ architects for billion dollar companies, but to have response times for someone actively trying to pay you month exceeding 22 and 10 days doesn’t make solid business sense.

[Vrakthris]

@Aventis-grobbulus

And before anyone gets huffy about email security, this account has been his throwaway account that he literally only uses for junk and is only linked to his Blizzard account and no other accounts on any site, anyware else.

Still, it is probably best to not have is visible for long.

@Aventis-grobbulus

10 days doesn’t make solid business sense.

We don’t have much control over what the response times are when they suddenly jump from within 24 hours to well over that, Aventis. We do not outsource our staff so any increase in contact takes time to address. If such contact volume isn’t temporary, it takes time to hire and train additional staff.

That said, I reread your post and saw mention of the 10 days and I can say that is well over our current response times, even on lowest of low priority contact.

Looking at the email you provided I don’t see a ticket from 10 days ago, I show one from almost 3 hours ago and that has already been answered. The Authenticator was removed and a response sent. Your friend should be able to log in without an issue, though they may need to reset their password.

[Cirrala-grobbulus]

3 final points-

1. I absolutely can confirm that tickets were submitted 3 times, including one as far back as 22 days ago, one 10 days ago, and 1 today. Unless there was an issue with it not getting the information correctly, I am certain it was submitted. I can, however, be certain that the first and second times that we did block out parts of the ID as requested in the instructions. The third time, today, we submitted it completely unblocked (which was instructed not to).

2. He did just attempt to log in, from a completely separate computer that has never logged into blizzard ever (as we literally just took it out of the box, a brand new Dell laptop), and can absolutely confirm it is still asking for an authenticator code. We may try again in a few hours, again, just for kicks and giggles, but can confirm that he still cannot login.

3. I know you stated a response was sent, but after logging into the email account in question, double checking all rules and filters, and checking every folder, including deleted and recover deleted, no email response was received. Unless Microsoft hates Blizzard and now decided to block all emails from Blizzard (which would be a huge headache for Blizzard), I doubt it is on the email providers end.

I do thank you for looking into this, and absolutely am surprised by the quick response, and apologize if my post appears to be argumentative in any fashion. Just trying to point out the facts as we see them.

[Vrakthris]

@Cirrala-grobbulus

1. I absolutely can confirm that tickets were submitted 3 times, including one as far back as 22 days ago, one 10 days ago, and 1 today. Unless there was an issue with it not getting the information correctly, I am certain it was submitted. I can, however, be certain that the first and second times that we did block out parts of the ID as requested in the instructions. The third time, today, we submitted it completely unblocked (which was instructed not to).

If you can provide me with a ticket ID, I can check into that. The only tickets associated with that account, except for the one I mentioned from 3 hours ago, is from 2019.

@Cirrala-grobbulus

He did just attempt to log in, from a completely separate computer that has never logged into blizzard ever (as we literally just took it out of the box, a brand new Dell laptop), and can absolutely confirm it is still asking for an authenticator code. We may try again in a few hours, again, just for kicks and giggles, but can confirm that he still cannot login.

He is attempting to log into the email account that you listed earlier? There is no Authenticator on that account so I’m not sure what it would be asking for.

@Cirrala-grobbulus

Unless Microsoft hates Blizzard and now decided to block all emails from Blizzard (which would be a huge headache for Blizzard), I doubt it is on the email providers end.

It happens all the time.

[Rufflebottom-bloodhoof (Rufflebottom)]

@Cirrala-grobbulus

Unless Microsoft hates Blizzard and now decided to block all emails from Blizzard (which would be a huge headache for Blizzard), I doubt it is on the email providers end.

It wouldn’t be unusual for email to be filtered by Microsoft if Microsoft’s algorithm decides that Blizzard’s email is spam. It’s what most email providers do now. Your friend may need to add Blizzard’s email address to their contacts list.