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Comment by PolemicThoughts | Hacker News Reader

I have a 13 year old minecraft account. I've been unable to migrate it because I don't have the transaction ID. I don't have the email (I wasn't very good at managing an inbox when I was 14), and the bank that it was bought with no longer exists, even if they had more than 7 years of records retention. I told support I can provide government IDs for myself and my father (the name on the card, presumably), but I got told, basically, to get stuffed. TID or bust.

My only guess on what to do next is to try to find someone with an inside at Mojang to workaround the user-hostile process, but I've had no luck. If anyone knows how to workaround this, I'd appreciate it.

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If it makes you feel better, having the transaction ID wouldn't help. I'm in a similar situation except I do have the original PayPal transaction ID, and when I provided it I was told: "Sorry, our system for looking up transaction IDs is currently unavailable. You'll need to provide alternative proof of ownership. No, the original email address associated with the account isn't good enough. No, we won't tell you what is good enough."

Tried again a year later and got exactly the same response.

Mojang's system does not like PayPal transaction IDs and they have issues looking them up. Keep trying over and over, email them from the original email associated. Eventually you'll find an agent who will ignore the Transaction ID entirely and give your account back unless it has a high value in which case you're out of luck.

Well, part of the problem is that they deny that my email address is the correct one, even though I still have the PayPal receipt with that address sitting in my archive.

I've dealt with their support team literal hundreds of times. That sounds about right for them. Could it have been possible that you purchased the game on another email, and used the PayPal email to simply pay for the game? Usually they fail to confirm the trans. ID if it's PayPal, but other than that they should be accurate on the original email, so if they say it's wrong, it's probably wrong. Did you get any emails from Mojang to that email in the past, about password resets, unauthorized migration etc?

I thought government ID would be a silver bullet. We have a relatively unique family name, and my father should be an exact first+last match on the transaction, and my ID first name is an exact match for my account name. Should I just open a support ticket every week until I win the support lottery? Sounds like a recipe for irritating the wrong person and getting it manually locked. lol.

My Pinterest account got locked for no reason. I found a video which said "just bug the shit out of them", so every day I put in an appeal which was rejected every single time for about 3 weeks and then someone said "fuck it" and unlocked it.

On the flip side, I had a bank account with Square (now Block) and their support took me to a dead end, so I called one of their executives on his cellphone and politely explained the problem to him. That got my account fully terminated with no recourse.

> No, we won't tell you what is good enough.

that's like from a surreal comedy. That's how megacorps look down on humans.

If it's any consolation, Microsoft support for their business / enterprise / cloud services are equally as useless.

I've had Azure support point the finger at the sole 3rd party vendor for one of their services only to have it pointed back at them. This didn't get solved until I put everyone and their managers in the same email.

You see, Karens know how to gets results...

You probably don’t want to reward them with extra income, but if it can at least get to the username change screen with your current account you could change your username, wait 30 days, and then buy a new account with your old username.

My user name is a common real-life first name with no numbers or symbols. So, since username transfers to a specific new account are not possible, I would almost certainly lose the name to a sniper with a script. I know there's a whole industry around that practice.

Befriend someone at Mojang or get a job there lol

That seems like the only reasonable option these days.

Got a reasonable problem with a small business, or even a bank? Just go to the nearest branch and talk with a reasonable person.

Got a minor issue with a tech company? Godspeed and good luck, better find someone able to escalate the problem internally, while possibly breaking some rules.

If only dealing with a bank were that easy. Maybe if you give them an easy one.

Smaller businesses definitely are more receptive and seem to take more responsibility, maybe because when you have less customers, each one is more important. That said, they also have less resources to actually rectify certain kinds of problems. So it’s not always that simple, either.

Sleeping with employees seems to work to solve issues with tech companies:

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/kittylixo-onlyfans-instagram-em...

Should make for an interesting cover letter, probably help you get through HR.

Not that i approve/excuse it, but it could also be why you must jump through so many hoops to get access to the account. There's a big black market on "OG" minecraft nicknames.

I get the impression that the process isn't special for me, particularly given everyone else's own personal horrors, as detailed in this thread.

Indeed. Mojang's support is hostile to users with rare usernames. I've seen it first hand and have lots of stories about it. Mojang's support system is honestly one of the worst support teams I've dealt with.

This reminds me of when LoL migrated accounts when I wasn't playing. Somehow it matched me up to a lvl 5 OCE account I made years ago to play a couple of games with the friend that had the same name and the original account with lots of rare skins and which I spent a lot on over the years is just gone. I filed support tickets years ago and never got any response at all. Nothing, just a black hole.

I completely gave up on Riot after that. I'm not playing any of their games now and I don't see myself going back to them, which is kinda sad, because I met my wife in LoL so there were some fond memories.

So for all the people out there who design these account transitions, please remember, you can permanently lose customers from stuff like this. Oh, I probably have a Mojang account somewhere, too, but I lost it ages ago and I won't go back there, either, at this point.

Is small claims court a successful venue for remediation?

Do they not have an arbitration clause?

They cant force you to arbitration while claiming you are not their client.

I was in a similar situation as well. Based on my conversation with the support staff, it seems like they are not allowed to access customer information without the transaction ID. At least unmigrated Minecraft account still works, despite them saying they wouldn't be accessible after March.

Similar story here. Old Minecraft account bought it because Java nice cross platform, could not merge account for some reason (don't remember which but support wasn't able to solve).

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