(machine translated from German to English), so it might read a bit strange.
Hello,
I switched from Unity to Unreal around 2020 and started learning again. At the moment it’s more of a hobby. I’ve been on the Internet since around 1995, but this week it happened to me for the first time that I lost access to an email account due to a hard drive crash. Although I had a backup, I routinely renewed some passwords after the backup and forgot to back them up.
This email address is round about from around 1999 - 2001 and has been completely unimportant for a long time. Back then, I never provided any personal data with the email provider, such a procedure wasn’t particularly important back then. However, I cannot reset the password for this email due to missing personal data from the email provider. Which wouldn’t be a big deal. There was only spam to be found there anyway.
Unfortunately, I linked my Epic account to this email address. At the time I wasn’t sure whether I could handle Unreal Engine and whether a lot of spam emails came from there, so I used the unimportant email and forgot about it until this week.
I was able to recover almost all passwords and still have access to the Epic account and can log in there. So I wanted to change email there.
Unfortunately, during the process a verification email is sent to the linked address to which I no longer have access.
So I wrote to support and described the problem.
He advised me to log into the lost email account…
I explained it again in more detail, but then the ticket was closed.
In the last 48 hours I have written 6 tickets.
The same with ticket 2, with ticket 3, with ticket 4, with ticket 5, with ticket 6.
In the last 48 hours I have written 6 tickets. Without any success.
Each time I tried to include more information in the query in the hope that it might help. I was never asked, nor was I offered a solution or a different approach.
What I have done in the meantime to help support with verification:
- Two-factor authentication activated via SMS code
- My credit card linked to Epic
- Proved with a screenshot that I have access to my Paypal account, which has been used to process all payments so far
- I can also provide bank statements from which Paypal ultimately debited.
- I offered to send my ID card.
- I offered to make a purchase through the Epic Store to prove that I still had access to everything (except for the lost email account associated with Epic).
- I offered to use the email address linked to Paypal as the new address, because the link to Paypal should make it clear that this is my email address.
- I wrote to support which internet access provider provided all of my logins to Epic.
- I have agreed to do everything possible to ensure verification. (There were no suggestions from support).
- I contacted the email provider, unfortunately without success because I really didn’t store any data there (ancient account).
- Addendum: I made another purchase in the Epic Store on October 13, 2023 (German Time). This time with the credit card in the hope that it will help support.
Do you know what happened: First I couldn’t submit a new ticket, probably blocked. Now I can’t even log into the account for the forum because the 2 factor SMS no longer comes.
So I had to create a new Epic account with a VPN and a new email address in order to post a post here in the forum.
And just to clarify, I never used swear words or anything like that, but I already pointed out in the last ticket (understandably) that this is really the worst support I’ve ever experienced for changing a email address.
It’s also not a particularly valuable account. A few free games, free assets and some purchased assets to learn Unreal. I’ve never had contact with support before.
Now to be honest, that’s not normal, is it?
All I really have left is:
European Commission Online Dispute Resolution ec.europa.eu/odr because Epic is denying me full access to my account and my purchases for really inexplicable reasons?
That’s totally crazy^^
Is there any moderator or whatever who can take a closer look at this?
To be honest, I’m actually a completely chilled person, but I’ve never experienced anything like this.
I know that my 6 tickets in 48 hours are annoying support, but you can’t constantly give one person the only answer that I should log in to an email address that no longer exists?
I mean, for me it means that I can no longer get my receipts, which I often need to join an Asset Support Discord server, for example. Or if for some reason a verification email goes to the lost email address, I can’t retrieve that either.
The help from Epic Online Help Support consisted of exactly 2 things:
- Telling me 6 times to verify myself with my lost email address that I contacted about.
- Block my account in the Help Center (temporarily?).
Now think about something like this happens to you with an account like my old Unity account, which had $3,500 worth of assets.
If a moderator can take care of the matter or users have an idea, I would be grateful.
But honestly, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in terms of support on the Internet…
Have a nice weekend
Andre