Account hacked, characters deleted, 6 weeks later still no resolution.

[Madoxone]

I am posting this in several different forums to serve as both a warning to everyone and in the hope that someone on SE staff will intervene and help break my out of this Kafkaesque tech support cycle.

Before I go any farther, I would like to put things into perspective by saying what I’ve lost. I had two toons on two different servers, Leviathan & Marlboro. My main toon was on Leviathan, which had been maxed out on each of the disciples of land/hand as well as every job except Monk & Bard. It also had three jobs above ilvl92, a little under 1 million gill and sellable items worth at least 2 million.

I lost both of them while on vacation around April 28. I found out when RL friend texted me to let me know my character had been deleted. I immediately attempted to log into my account through the Mog Station, only to find my security token’s password no longer worked. I then tried the recovery password (the one u use if you lose your phone) which also didn’t work. So I called SE support, they removed the token able to log into the Mog Station. From there I was able to confirm that all of my characters had been deleted and that my account had been canceled too. I immediately called back and was told by the support tech that my toons were still there and that I would see them the next time I logged in on my PS4 when I got back from vacation.
I got back home on May 1st, logged into my PS4 and unsurprisingly my toons weren’t there. I called SE support and explained that my account was (most likely) hacked. They gave me a ticket number, a link to fill out a compromised account recovery form and said they would contact me in a few days. A week went by with no response from SE support, so I called again. It’s now May 5th and this time I was told that while they still had my original ticket on file, he gave me a new number, said I should fill out the form again and that they would contact me in a few days. It’s now May 11th and neither of my tickets has received a response, so I call SE support again. This time I am told by support that there is a huge backlog of support tickets and that they are ignoring older tickets, so I am given a new ticket number and told AGAIN to fill out the form and that they would be in contact with me in a few days. So at this point, I have three ticket numbers and filled out the compromised account form three times and yet I am still no further along in the process than when my account was hacked on April 28th.

On April 12th I received this (almost funny) e-mail
“Regarding your request for account support. Please find your answer below.
Unfortunately the SQUARE ENIX Support Center cannot assist with this issue via email. In order to further assist you, we will need you to contact us via phone or chat, and the SQUARE ENIX Support Center will be happy to assist you.
Chat Support <Toll Free>
To contact our Chat Support Team, please return to the SQUARE ENIX Support Center website and create a new ticket for your issue. Select the "Chat Support" option, and this will connect you directly to an agent that will be able to assist you.”

SO… for me to get to the next step, I need to create a new ticket and contact support, at least I didn't have to fill out the form again. Small victories…..
So I called support and gave them my new ticket number and was told that they would forward it to the character recovery department and that I should have an answer sometime ‘soon’. After two weeks without a response I called on May 26th, the tech told me that the ticket was being investigated by the recovery team but that most likely in the the next couple of days I should have my characters back. I waited another week without a response and called on June 2nd. I was told the same thing again, the recovery department had received the ticket and that no, he could not find out why this recovery was taking so long but he would make a note for the team to look into it. I waited another week without a response and called on June 9th. I got the same response again, there no status update on the recovery, he knew of no reason why it should take this long and he had no way of contacting the recovery team. So I asked to talk to his manager, he said no one was available, I asked for a direct line to the recovery team, he didn’t have that either. So I asked if there was anyone I could, email, call, or write to that could help me resolve this issue, and replied there was no one.

I asked several friends for any suggestions and the answered that they got better help from Game Masters inside the game. So I created a character and contacted them, saying the phone support team had been unable to help me after repeatedly contacting them and could they please help.
Their response was as follows:
“We have reviewed the details you have provide and we have determined that your concern can be best handled by our Support Team Center. In order to open a ticket with our Support Center…..”

So here is how things stand. I lost my characters through no fault of my own; either I was hacked (despite none of my other e-mail/game/social media accounts being compromised) or SE had a glitch that deleted/deactivated my account which seems more likely at this point. SE is unable or unwilling to restore them. I am unable to create a new character on my old server because I was told that might interfere with the restoration process and I have to keep paying my monthly fee for the restoration to be possible. So I am paying for a game I can’t really play. Ingenious and Kafkaesque isn't it?

To the SE forum monitors, please bring this to the attention of the right people so that it can get resolved quickly because time is running out. Very soon my end-game characters will be so far behind the rest of my guild that there will be little reason to come back to the game. (It will be easier to switch to Wildstar or Elder Scrolls Online)

[Lemage]

All I can suggest is if you do have your issue resolved, use a one time password from now on.

[fixitman]

All I can suggest is if you do have your issue resolved, use a one time password from now on.

I realize OP's post was kinda tldr, but it was pretty obvious early into it that a OTP token was already in use.

This is just another example of SE's useless support. I would have cancelled my account at once and moved on. It just isn't worth the hassle