Battle.net lockout, lost customer

     

I’ve been having a Battle.net account for ages. I have an original copy of Diablo 1, Diablo 2 and its expansion, WarCraft 3 and its expansion and lastly, StartCraft and its expansion. Today I received an email about a discount on StarCraft 2. Heck, I always wanted to try it, so it would’ve been a nice opportunity.

I went to their website to log in and order it. I entered my credentials, and then I was presented with a message saying:

Due to suspicious activity, this account has been locked. A message has been sent to this account’s email address containing details on how to resolve this issue. Visit http://eu.battle.net/account/locked.html for more information.

Well, thank you for wasting my time. I guess it’s just the average “click on this link to reset your password” email. So, I go to my mail account and check the mail. It has a lot of useless info about how to secure my email, my comp and my password. Yeah, very interesting. Also it offers me to use “Battle.net SMS Protect” which I was never offered to use previously so I obviously don’t have it. Then there’s a link to a password reset form. Ok, finally. Let’s try it.

It asks me for my first and last name, which is already bogus coz I hate to use my real name on the internet. And you know, it’s already ironic coz according to the email, Battle.net is soooo concerned about my privacy and security. And I can’t imagine how this would be a problem for a hacker to figure if he already has my email account which is exactly what Battle.net suspects.

Whatever, I enter it. Then it also presents me with a stupid and really easy captcha, which, again, adds no security to the process at all. Or can’t hackers read? Whatever.

Now the form goes on to another form. My account is still locked, I need to answer my security question or enter a few digits of the CD key of the following titles:

World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III

Thank you! I don’t have any of those, but hey, I still have the security question. It asks for the name of my best friend in high school. Okay, I could only have 2 choices, I enter the first, and it presents me with a nice error, saying:

An error has occurred. Invalid secret question. Please try again.

How the hell can the question (provided by them) be invalid?! Whatever, let’s just assume it’s in fact the answer that’s invalid and try again with my other best friend. I enter it, same result. I try it a few more times, and guess what, at this point, it won’t even allow me to try again, coz

You have made too many unsuccessful attempts. In order to continue the password reset process, please contact Customer Support.

As I don’t have the required games to unlock my account the other way, I’m stuck. And it blows my mind anyway, I registered my games exactly because I don’t want to deal with keys and the physical media. Not to mention that for newer games there’s usually no physical media at all. I could read my keys – IF this stupid thing would let me in. So basically, to let me in, it wants info for which I would only have access if it let me in. Makes a whole lot of sense, right? Anyway, my CDs are about 150 km away from me (coz I thought I don’t have to carry them with me all the time, that was the whole purpose of that fucking Battle.net downloader), so thanks again for wasting my time with useless options.

But hey, it says, I can contact customer support. Great. I love to deal with customer support. I love them coz they are fast, responsive, to-the-point and they never waste my time with their ordinary, and totally irrelevant questions like “Have you tried to….?”, “Are you sure you…?”.

But it doesn’t matter, I’m prepared for that. I click on the link, and guess what. It wants me to log in, which I can’t since I’m locked out, that’s the whole point of contacting them!!!

So, at this point, I’m fucked. Totally, completely fucked. And of course, for no fucking reason at all. Thank you, Blizzard, farewell.