Hacker News Reader

Comment by drunkpotato | Hacker News Reader

This is pure, unadulterated, user-hostile bullshit. I paid for Minecraft, not to be dicked around with login systems just because Microsoft bought Mojang and doesn't feel like doing their job.

Apparently someone used my email address already (gmail, because they won't accept school alumni email addresses!) so I was shunted into an "account recovery" hell full of questions I can't answer because I wasn't the one who signed up for a Microsoft account using my email address! How did they let that happen? Have they no validation on email addresses, but want blood work to recover an account?

I am livid. This is an atrocious experience and a nice preview of the hellish future of automated society we're hurtling into. Welcome to John Scalzi's "Automated Customer Service."

Screw you, Microsoft. Thanks for reminding me why I don't purchase your shit products.

View on HN

I really hate how Microsoft is leveraging everything they have to push us into Microsoft accounts. I don't want a Microsoft account. I had one to try out Microsoft Family (which is an unmitigated disaster; stay away). I have no desire at all to tie Minecraft to it. But I guess I have no choice.

My youngest son also wants his own Minecraft account; he doesn't have one yet exactly because it's impossible to get a Mojang account anymore, and I refuse to deal with Microsoft accounts because of my earlier experiences. I guess we have no choice now.

They also keep pushing my to link Windows 10 to a Microsoft account, no matter how often I keep refusing. I'd gotten a lot milder about Microsoft over the past decade, but this trying to put their crappy account system down our throats is reigniting all my hate from their worst anti-linux days.

This happened to me, someone somehow got my account and then they asked for the payment id of the Paypal transaction from over a decade ago for me to recover it. I don't even know if I can find that.

I ended up just buying it again. Pretty obnoxious.

Same here, except I did manage to find the original transaction ID, and they still wouldn't give me access to my account. They acknowledged (after several months' wait time) that the ID was correct, but they claim the account is associated with a different email address -- even though the PayPal receipt is still in my inbox! And until I can guess which incorrect address is in their records, they won't reset the password.

(This contradicts their written policy, which says that even if you lose access to the original email address, the transaction ID should be enough to recover the account. When I pointed this out to their support representative, they ignored me and closed the ticket.)

Same happened to someone I know. After providing the transaction id, they came backn with "sorry we lost our records for that time period, good luck regaining access to your lost email account instead lol"

How can this be legal? This time it's just a game, but there are quite some important things online nowadays.

Could this perhaps be a gmail.com vs googlemail.com thing? Perhaps using yourmail@googlemail.com will work, if gmail is your email provider in this case.

That's a good idea. I'll have to try that if I can ever manage to get a hold of a human being again.

> I wasn't the one who signed up for a Microsoft account using my email address! How did they let that happen? Have they no validation on email addresses, but want blood work to recover an account?

Speaking as the owner of a popular-ish domain that people enter as a fake email, Microsoft is better than most. They have a footer link to remove the email address from the account. Most services have nothing of the sort

E.g.: If you don't recognize the Microsoft account ***@outlook.com, you can click here to remove your email address from that account.

A hearty 'hear, hear' from me. Curse Microsoft for putting me through all this bullshit to pay for a game I bought from someone else years and years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com