No luck with Yahoo Support. Friend's dad locked from account.

[Ichinisan]

No longer a problem but this thread keeps getting bumped anyway.

My friend's dad desperately needs to access a Yahoo Mail account that he hasn't used for 1-2 years. He needs certain email attachments as documentation for tax purposes. He remembers the password for the account and gave it to me. I tried to help him log-in on 3/16 and the site displayed a message and wouldn't proceed. It said he had to call (800) 318-0612 to resolve an account issue. I assumed this had something to do with the massive password leak a while back and Yahoo probably wants him to verify his identity somehow.

While I was at his home, I called the Yahoo number and a message warned "Our call volume at the moment is high and has limited our ability to answer your call right away." As it turns out, the system plays that exact message no matter when you call. He suggested that I could try calling it the next day and call him on 3-way when I get through. I had to take his computer with me to work on some other issues.

No matter when I call the Yahoo number, the system makes me wait about 6 minutes. While I'm on hold, it repeats "Your call is important to us. Please hold on..." (a blatant lie because of what always happens next). After 5-6 minutes, the system abruptly says that it can't take my call and disconnects.

At the moment, we are not able to take your call. Please call back at a later time or go to help.yahoo.com. Thank you.

Long silence.

[3 tones] Your call did not go through. Please try your call again. One zero eight P (T?).

It makes me wait 5-6 minutes EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. before dumping me...always telling me "your call is important..."

Now, when I try to log-in to mail.yahoo.com, it says the email address is being recycled!

Your Yahoo account has been de-activated

Your Yahoo account has been inactive for an extended period of time and is being recycled. If you need a new account, please sign up for a new one.​

I'm just hoping one of you "knows a guy" that can get this account restored so my friend's dad can log in and access his old messages with his old password. As I said, we have the original password.

Have you been through anything like this?

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've maintained my 5 character yahoo account since 1995. If he wasn't logging in frequently, it's no wonder he was dropped.

On google, there's little recourse if an account is deleted without opening a case with them for assistance. If you can't call them, email them for support and see what they say.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Contact your local NSA rep for logz.

duh.

 

[Newbian]

If you have not checked a free email account like that for more then a few months it's not going to end well.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

If it has indeed been deactivated, you're sol, the account no longer exists.

 

[JEDIYoda]

I believe the amount of time is 6 months before deactivation........

 

[gorcorps]

Wish you luck, but if the attachments were that important they should have been local... in multiple places.

 

[SunnyD]

marissa.mayer@yahoo-inc.com

 

[lxskllr]

A shame he didn't use a mail client. "But it's all in the cloud!" Fuck the cloud. "Cloud" means someone else controls your data, and you can't even point to the machine it's sitting on. At least he learned a lesson, and perhaps you did too. If you care to notice that is.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Contact your local NSA rep for logz.

duh.

Hah...probably closer to the truth than you think.

I seem to recall Yahoo did a mass cleaning of unused accounts sometime last year when they started doing all the changes.

 

[kranky]

A shame he didn't use a mail client. "But it's all in the cloud!" Fuck the cloud. "Cloud" means someone else controls your data, and you can't even point to the machine it's sitting on. At least he learned a lesson, and perhaps you did too. If you care to notice that is.

I feel bad for the guy's situation. Non-techies probably never imagined an email account would die off for lack of use, figuring as long as they don't lose the password, it's theirs forever. Must be a heck of a shock to find out your stuff is just gone.

I've never been comfortable with cloud-only storage and I still use a mail client myself.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I keep a local copy of documents, but if someone is going to use an email account they ought to have two and email them from one account to the other in case one gets foobared. Relying on "the cloud" as primary storage is about as foolish as one can get. By all means try the link SunnyD provided, but I believe that once it's gone it's gone. Time to look for ways to undelete local files?

 

[SearchMaster]

Yeah, it's probably gone.

Many years ago (probably 15+) I signed up for web hosting with Yahoo. When the free trial expired after a year, I tried to get the domain transferred to different servers. There was absolutely NO support path on that area of the site - no email address, contact forms, phone numbers...nothing. At that point Yahoo was dead to me. So I feel his pain, or did a long time ago

 

[amdhunter]

lol, I hadn't logged into my yahoo mail for 4 years now and was able to recover my password with no issues.

I had no emails and about 60 in spam. Looks pretty nice. Too bad it'll be another 4 years before I log in again. Looks like any mail I've sent is gone also. I guess they cleaned up old emails. Sucks.

 

[Rakehellion]

lol, I hadn't logged into my yahoo mail for 4 years now and was able to recover my password with no issues.

I had no emails and about 60 in spam. Looks pretty nice. Too bad it'll be another 4 years before I log in again. Looks like any mail I've sent is gone also. I guess they cleaned up old emails. Sucks.

I did this a while ago. All my emails were deleted but I could still log in.

 

[MtnMan]

Maybe the NSA could help, they have copies.

 

[cronos]

I did this a while ago. All my emails were deleted but I could still log in.

Me too. What happened with this particular Yahoo account is that the username was claimed by someone else when it was inactive. Last year Yahoo had this registration where you could 'reserve' particular usernames as they're trying to clear up old usernames that aren't being used anymore. This only happened once in a period of time sometime last year.

 

[inthenorth]

I received the "Your Yahoo account has been inactive for an extended period of time and is being recycled", even though I use it daily and have used it daily for more than a decade. WTH? D: Any ideas?

 

[highland145]

I received the "Your Yahoo account has been inactive for an extended period of time and is being recycled", even though I use it daily and have used it daily for more than a decade. WTH? D: Any ideas?

Damned carpetbagger. That's what you get.

 

[Ichinisan]

I received the "Your Yahoo account has been inactive for an extended period of time and is being recycled", even though I use it daily and have used it daily for more than a decade. WTH? D: Any ideas?

Bizarre.

 

[Leros]

So the free service he hadn't used in years got cancelled and you're annoyed that they aren't offering timely customer service with real humans for this free service?

 

[Ichinisan]

So the free service he hadn't used in years got cancelled and you're annoyed that they aren't offering timely customer service with real humans for this free service?

Total misrepresentation. I'm only annoyed that the phone system leads me on by making it sound like Yahoo wants to talk to me...when there's actually no way to get through.

I totally understand how it got to that point. No complaints about that. It's a free email account.

I only came here looking for a possible solution. Got some leads too.

Anyway, we got his documents another way.

 

[inthenorth]

Damned carpetbagger. That's what you get.

What in the world? This is my first time on this forum. Is this just one of those juvenile forums, not worth the effort? I hate dealing with children learning to deal with their new-found confidence, from behind the anonimity of their computer.

To anyone who might have experienced this Yahoo problem, after about 30 minutes, I was able to get back in. Must have been a temporary issue.

 

[Leros]

What in the world? This is my first time on this forum. Is this just one of those juvenile forums, not worth the effort? I hate dealing with children learning to deal with their new-found confidence, from behind the anonimity of their computer.

To anyone who might have experienced this Yahoo problem, after about 30 minutes, I was able to get back in. Must have been a temporary issue.

There are a lot of sarcastic people on the internet. Most threads are going to contain some jokes.

 

[CZroe]

What in the world? This is my first time on this forum. Is this just one of those juvenile forums, not worth the effort? I hate dealing with children learning to deal with their new-found confidence, from behind the anonimity of their computer.

To anyone who might have experienced this Yahoo problem, after about 30 minutes, I was able to get back in. Must have been a temporary issue.

Spoilers! I think it's a Game of Thrones reference to you being "in the north."