How long does it take for steam to recover your lost/hijacked account's email and password

[Boboran]

2015/10/14 Update:

Steam Support has replied my ticket and my account has been recovered!

I posted ticket on Aug 21 (GMT +8:00). and got replied on Oct 14 12:50AM (GMT +8). Although it is slow, but still thanks the support team. I will protect it carefully with mobile authentication.

Hope all hijacked accounts will be recovered soon.

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2015/8/26 Posted:

Hi,

I have looked through the forum and read many posts about recovery of lost account. I am a victim of account hijack last Friday. My contact email account was hijacked therefore my steam account was stolen and the hacked changed my steam's contact email.

I have created a ticked last Friday, and my ticket number is: 9790-IPKN-62**
I also provided all the necessary information to prove the ownership as required by steam support team's instruction.

I did not receive any reply yet (besides the auto-reply). The good thing is I have locked my account, but bad thing is one of the most expensive item in my DOTA2 inventory has disappeared. **Steam Support, please be more quickly**

I believe Steam receives huge amount of tickets every day and I believe your sales profit make you affordable for hiring more supports or invest more on the automation of the process. Even Tencent (one of the biggest internet company in the world) can recover account's ownership within 7days after an appeal is raised with proof of ownership. I believe you are able to do so as well! Come on dude, you are the best games retailer in the world!

For people whose items are stolen, I have two friends had experiences of it previously, it took about one month to recover all the items for both of them.

I am just curious about how long will it take normally to recover the email and password of a lost account. For people who have experienced such kind of things, please put your answer down. I wanna to have a big picture of it and I BELIEVE IT WILL ALSO HELP MANY PEOPLE WHO HAS SIMILAR QUESTION LIKE MYSELF.

Thanks! By the way, I will keep this post updated to provide information to those people who have similar problem as myself.

[grieF Road to Silver !]

Hey :)

what i can tell you about this...is that my account was hijacked on 05.08.2015 ,i made a ticket in 10 min after i receive an email on my phone that my password was changed ...today is 26.08 and still no answer.. so i just think i need to wait more,the proof was provided(credit cards/key/steam wallet code etc) so i think they are just too slow

[csgo smoother got me vac :(]

Hi :)

all i can tell you is that do not think that it will come in a blink of an eye or with some proof my account was stolen in 2014 and all my counter strike knives were taken and when i made a ticket from that time all what's still written as a reply is the auto-reply and now nothing they seem they want us to keep buying games and reseting everything back to point 0 and wait i forget to mention after all my items were stolen and no reply were made it was vac banned on 9/10/2014 :( and the ticket date 2/2/2014 so how about that

[Boboran]

Originally posted by praF :( cont furat:

Hey :)

what i can tell you about this...is that my account was hijacked on 05.08.2015 ,i made a ticket in 10 min after i receive an email on my phone that my password was changed ...today is 26.08 and still no answer.. so i just think i need to wait more,the proof was provided(credit cards/key/steam wallet code etc) so i think they are just too slow

How many messages you made within your ticket? I am wondering is it too troublesome for them to have a look if we made too many messages before they reply.

Anyway, I am prepared for waiting a month. I have invested so much money in DOTA2, and my GTA5 is associated with the steam account as well. I am hopeless, but it seems it's time to start a new life.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

*snip*

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/search/?gidforum=882959061466924237&include_deleted=1&q=support+response+time
Why not just search?

[Boboran]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

*snip*

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/search/?gidforum=882959061466924237&include_deleted=1&q=support+response+time
Why not just search?

I have searched. It does not always make sense since the purpose of submitting a support ticket is different.

As for my own experience, the support ticket about purchasing always get replied at the same day (OFC, because Steam wants to earn money).

[♛ HyperBeat ♛]

i wrote a ticket on 14/08/2015 and today is 26/08 still no reply from them.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

As for my own experience, the support ticket about purchasing always get replied at the same day (OFC, because Steam wants to earn money).

Not really, it's rather because the waiting line is shorter. The waiting line for stolen items & accounts is ludicrously long because there are ludicriously many people who give their accounts to strangers.

[Boboran]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

As for my own experience, the support ticket about purchasing always get replied at the same day (OFC, because Steam wants to earn money).

Not really, it's rather because the waiting line is shorter. The waiting line for stolen items & accounts is ludicrously long because there are ludicriously many people who give their accounts to strangers.

Ok, it makes sense. However, I understand whatever the case is, we users are responsible for the safety of the credential of our accounts. I know it is our fault if our account got lost (or only if steam's database is hacked), so I really appreciate Steam a lot for providing this kind of service to help users to gain the control of the account again.

However, the question I always ask myself and compare with other online games companies/communities are:

1. Can we really build an automated system to boost the process? Of course not 100% automated, but at least automating those tedious processes of verifying email, account, last 4 digit of credit card and etc.

2. Since there is a high demand of this kind of service (I guess, since the queue time is so long), why not investment more on improving it? Negative comments on long reply time of recovering account has been complained since 2013 if you go to Google to search this topic.

3. If a company always keep this kind of quality of servicing customers, will they really be sustainable and competitive? I am wondering what kind of personalities and leadership style the leaders of Steam has. It seems they are very proud of their products, but neglecting the feeling from hopeless users who need help. As a gamer, we put tremendous efforts on gaming and items (For me, it is DOTA2 items). If Steam understand it and give a faster response to those hopeless gamers, I believe Steam will become even more competitive than it now.

Do you agree?

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

1. Can we really build an automated system to boost the process? Of course not 100% automated, but at least automating those tedious processes of verifying email, account, last 4 digit of credit card and etc.

This system already exists. I've seen reports of people getting an alert from Steam support about potentially shady activities from the account. This is triggered by exactly the system you're talking about.

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

2. Since there is a high demand of this kind of service (I guess, since the queue time is so long), why not investment more on improving it? Negative comments on long reply time of recovering account has been complained since 2013 if you go to Google to search this topic.

I don't know why. You might have noticed how I don't work for Valve.
Frankly, I personally think the line is just fine. People who do mistakes have to realize they do mistakes. Getting a stolen account back within few days without all the suffering involved in waiting one month is less of a learning experience.

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

3. If a company always keep this kind of quality of servicing customers, will they really be sustainable and competitive? I am wondering what kind of personalities and leadership style the leaders of Steam has. It seems they are very proud of their products, but neglecting the feeling from hopeless users who need help. As a gamer, we put tremendous efforts on gaming and items (For me, it is DOTA2 items). If Steam understand it and give a faster response to those hopeless gamers, I believe Steam will become even more competitive than it now.

I don't know and I don't care. I am not a business analyst. However, I'd like to see Valve thrive. Frankly, Steam's usage statistics are good and rising. And please don't use the royal "we". A high absolute number of incidents doesn't mean jack if the absolute number of users is sky-high. It's just as well possible that you're still a part of a minority. Which I think you are.

[Boboran]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

1. Can we really build an automated system to boost the process? Of course not 100% automated, but at least automating those tedious processes of verifying email, account, last 4 digit of credit card and etc.

This system already exists. I've seen reports of people getting an alert from Steam support about potentially shady activities from the account. This is triggered by exactly the system you're talking about.

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

2. Since there is a high demand of this kind of service (I guess, since the queue time is so long), why not investment more on improving it? Negative comments on long reply time of recovering account has been complained since 2013 if you go to Google to search this topic.

I don't know why. You might have noticed how I don't work for Valve.
Frankly, I personally think the line is just fine. People who do mistakes have to realize they do mistakes. Getting a stolen account back within few days without all the suffering involved in waiting one month is less of a learning experience.

Originally posted by Burning - My Favorite:

3. If a company always keep this kind of quality of servicing customers, will they really be sustainable and competitive? I am wondering what kind of personalities and leadership style the leaders of Steam has. It seems they are very proud of their products, but neglecting the feeling from hopeless users who need help. As a gamer, we put tremendous efforts on gaming and items (For me, it is DOTA2 items). If Steam understand it and give a faster response to those hopeless gamers, I believe Steam will become even more competitive than it now.

I don't know and I don't care. I am not a business analyst. However, I'd like to see Valve thrive. Frankly, Steam's usage statistics are good and rising. And please don't use the royal "we". A high absolute number of incidents doesn't mean jack if the absolute number of users is sky-high. It's just as well possible that you're still a part of a minority. Which I think you are.

Cool, Whatever you care or not care, I agree with or not agree with. The unchanging truth is that "No reply from support team about account stolen/hijacked" is becoming commonly aware. People get angry and impatient not mainly because it takes such long. It becauses we don't even know how long we should wait for in max. If the system can tell how long we should wait more or how many tickets are lined up in the queue before mine, it will be definitely more helpful for users in terms of usability and loyalty.

[ReBoot]

You can't know how long youll wait "for in max", as there's no set time. There's a line and if more people join the line, it will get longer. That's just how lines work. It's literally not possible to provide a guaranteed maximum waiting time without magically making all users smarter.
But there are several threads about response times, so you can draw information from other forum users.

[csgo smoother got me vac :(]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

You can't know how long youll wait "for in max", as there's no set time. There's a line and if more people join the line, it will get longer. That's just how lines work. It's literally not possible to provide a guaranteed maximum waiting time without magically making all users smarter.
But there are several threads about response times, so you can draw information from other forum users.

ok that does not mean waiting almost 8 months to get a reply and nothing

[grieF Road to Silver !]

well what can i say ...i provided like 7 messeges in 1 ticket,i search on email for proof's and stuff so i dont think the numbers of messeges have something to do with this ...one of my friend got his account back in 2 days.
And btw dont know how ,dont know what happend i just got hacked ,i dint link,i dint trade or evything else with no one...i just got an alarm on 2 in the night that my password on email got changed and i realized that i've been hacked ,my computer was shuted down and still dont know what happend,i use a firewall,i use an antivirus,i dont download .exe,games or anything else. I use this computer only for gaming with steam ,nothing else. And still this is absurd for a client to wait more than 48 hours for an answear !

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by DreaM:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

You can't know how long youll wait "for in max", as there's no set time. There's a line and if more people join the line, it will get longer. That's just how lines work. It's literally not possible to provide a guaranteed maximum waiting time without magically making all users smarter.
But there are several threads about response times, so you can draw information from other forum users.

ok that does not mean waiting almost 8 months to get a reply and nothing

You're waiting 8 months? Is your ticket still open.

[Boboran]

Originally posted by praF :( cont furat:

well what can i say ...i provided like 7 messeges in 1 ticket,i search on email for proof's and stuff so i dont think the numbers of messeges have something to do with this ...one of my friend got his account back in 2 days.
And btw dont know how ,dont know what happend i just got hacked ,i dint link,i dint trade or evything else with no one...i just got an alarm on 2 in the night that my password on email got changed and i realized that i've been hacked ,my computer was shuted down and still dont know what happend,i use a firewall,i use an antivirus,i dont download .exe,games or anything else. I use this computer only for gaming with steam ,nothing else. And still this is absurd for a client to wait more than 48 hours for an answear !

That is sad. I also know one friend got hijacked on Aug 20. He just got his account back on Aug 24. I am very sad now.