So yeah, nearly after one month of being without it, I finally got my account returned to me by the compromised account department at SE. While the entire process has left me completely disappointed, I guess the bottomline is don’t get compromised and none of this would bother you.
<rant mode=”on”>
The Process
The process in itself was pretty stupid, but somewhat understandable from the POV of the game developer. First you go through the normal online process through SE’s online support page…(varies depending on your home country that SE puts you in). Then you get a ticket number that you have to reference so that they know what you’re talking about… or so they say they’ll know what you’re talking about.
Contacting Support – Round 1
The first time I called, without a ticket, since I figured it would be easier just to explain things on the phone, they asked for a ticket number…which meant I had to go online and get one, then call them back. So of course, I do that.. get my ticket number and call them again.
Contacting Support – Round 2
I give them my ticket number and they say, sorry, the ticketing system is down so I can’t pull up your record, can you call back later… “how much later?… how long do you expect the system to be down?” – “try calling back in an hour or two”. Kinda, perfect timing since that’s just about when they would close. Coincidence? Maybe, but by then I was pretty pissed off.
Contacting Support – Round 3
I call back in about 1.5 hours, cause you know that’s in between the two times given… and they can bring up my ticket, but I get asked “so what are you calling us for?” IT’S IN THE FUCKIN TICKET INFORMATION… >< Seriously… I had to explain EVERYTHING again, pretty much verbatim from the ticket text. At least, the guy I talked to had a sense of humor, but still. Made me wonder why I had to wait an hour anyway since apparently the ticket was useless.
So after talking to him and explaining my situation of having all my three POL IDs that were ticked to a SE account being compromised, I get told I need to submit a notarized form back to them proving that I am who I say I am.
Really? A notarized form? AND a copy of my ID. Provided on the form I already have a lot of information that would prove it’s me and they could ask me about other things on the account that only I would know… I need a notarized form.
The Form
So off to The UPS Store I go to get my account form notarized. Simple enough… BTW, UPS Store, great place and great service. The notary kinda wondered what the hell I was making her stamp, but meh.
As instructed by the person on the phone, I was to email the form back to them in a PDF or some other image format smaller than 800k. Easy enough. So I do that, and wait for a response. At this point, something in my head should have gone, now why did I have to notarize something that could just be emailed, but I rationalized it by figuring that the notary ID number was good enough and they could easily check with the state attorney general’s office to figure out it was valid (in retrospect, that was a stupid assumption…because…)
A week passes by and I get no response, which makes me email, chat and call (in that order) SE to figure out what is going on. They inform me there’s another form they’re waiting for me to send in… so I ask, what form is it, and they say it’s an authorization to restore my account form. And I tell them, I hadn’t gotten such a form, and they tell me, well it’s going to take a few days for it to get released, and they would email me once it gets approved from the tech people.
So, I wait again… 2 days later, sure enough I get an email, asking me to call them. So I do, and they tell me I need to send in my form by mail. The same notarized form that I had emailed to them. I calmly told them, the person I talked to the first (well actually, third) time, told my I just had to email it… and they said no, you have to mail it in, then the account restore process could begin. By then this was like 1.5 weeks after the initial form was sent in…
So I mail the fricken form, and I wait… about a week later I get an email saying, they got the form and are starting the review process and they would get back to me…
Well, it took about 2 weeks after that, and I finally get an email this morning (on a Sunday), saying that your accounts have been restored!
The Restore
So you would think that I would be happy that my accounts are now back in my possession.
Well, you guessed wrong.
Now I’m kicking myself in the ass for even doing this in the first place.
Why?
Because, they reverted Eck’s account to a date way in the past. I asked for a restore around the time of Sept 27. It looks like they restored it to a time around Sept 7th. While I did get back the few things I noticed were missing that resulted in me asking for the store (like 2.5 mil gil, hocho, novio earring, and anything else worth money)…I lost quite a bit of things in the restore…
- 19 merits
- 11 stones of vision
- 6 jewels of vision
- 6 coins of weildance
- 4 jewels of ardor
- 4 stones of ardor
- 3 level 95 jobs
- and a partridge in a pear tree… >.>
Not to mention, Digi and Joreck both were left as is. So in all I lost about 7 million gil on those two accounts. <sigh> So the stupid thing there is Digi and Joreck are level 95 while Eck is back at 90 without the limit break even done… <facepalm>
And I have used up my one time restore option with SE. So the next time this happens (well should it happen), I’m fucked. Not screwed, fucked.
And I know.. you’re thinking:
Yeah, fine… it’s my fault all of this happened but meh…
</rant>
The Outcome
So in the end, yeah I have my accounts back, sans a lot of things and the valuable things are back on ONE account… but do I feel like playing? No not really. Mostly out of frustration that after 1 month of waiting, thinking I would get my account back to around 9/27/11. It was stupid of me to think that was going to happen and should just accept the fact that at least I has my account. But for now, I rather just leave it as is until I get enough nerve to play it again (especially to get 10 merits to do the stupid limit break again), and try to get my friends to do the stuff I lost again.
Until then, I’ll do what I have been doing for the last month… Digitizing my video and audio collection to hard drives for instant access (well near instant… rather than having to find it on a shelf and loading it.. it’s a matter of knowing which hard drive it’s on)… And playing FF14. The updates have made it somewhat playable for me… and even tho it’s me playing pretty much by myself, it’s not where it’s impossible… it’s just boring.
