A good, bad, good day

I was planning a post today about how I think the new spellpower stat may effect my priest. That post however has gone to the back burner for today (perhaps I will revisit it later this week). I decided today to share an experience of mine from yesterday afternoon.

Ever heard of killing someone with kindness?

Well, contrary to what my son said it does not mean being beaten up by kittens and puppies (kids say the darnedest things). In this case it involved people (my kids) doing something really really nice for me, but with potentialy dire consequences.

You see, out of the blue, with no prior warning, the sneaky buggers jumped into action. They recognized a mess when they saw one. (they should, look at their rooms. but I digress) While I was busy out trying in vain to avoid work while still getting paid it happened. They cleaned. Living room, dining room, dishes, even that place behind the garage where the garbage cans go was cleaned. That’s when it happened.

They cleaned the computer room.

Something was out of place, but I just could not put my finger on what. They were not fools though, not by a long shot. They knew that the bin full of mail and bills and such was off limits. They put all the manuals and disks that seemed to have no home in a plastic tote for my later organising pleasure. they dusted and swept. The place looked great and I told them so.

A few minutes later I grabbed a bottle of dew and headed over to the computer to sign in and scan the auction house while getting some lunch together. That’s when it hit me. I knew what was out of place.

my authenticator was missing!

An hour of more and more frantic searching later it was just as gone as when we started. I had gone out of my way to secure my account and it turns out the one locked out of it was me. After making sure in a proper fatherly way that the kids knew I was not mad at them, I proceeded to bite the bullet and call Blizzards customer service. You see I have only dealt indirectly with them once (When my brothers account was hacked) and It was about as pleasant as shaving with sandpaper.

Preparing myself for a long drawn out process in getting my account unlocked so I could access it again, I thought to myself “well, at least I parked in the inn. I’ll have lots of rest xp” And then I called.

I waded through several layers of phone menu’s nothing really seemed to apply. They really need an “I’m a noob, just let me talk to a person” button in the beginning. There is one, it just took a little waiting to find. I believe it actually said “to speak to a customer service agent press 3” or some such, but it meant the same thing.

After spending about 14 minutes on hold A rather pleasant gentleman came on the line. He told me his name was Gilbert and asked mine. He asked what was going on, I told him about the missing authenticator. My questions for him were what it would now take to remove it from the account in question, and in the event I found it later (there is always hope it did not end up in the trash) if it could be reinstated onto the account or was that serial number listed as “lost” or some-such.

After a minute or so on hold while he checked on this particular problem he came back on, we checked my name, billing address, secret question, and after some scrounging through the manuals and cd’s looking for it my cd key. You know the one you need to prove the disks are yours? The one you put “someplace safe” so it would not get lost? Yea, you know what I mean, but I digress again.

Where were we? CD key? right. well after giving my info and proving I was me he informed me that it was taken care of. No waiting like I had thought it was done while we were still on the phone. Start to finish I think I was one the phone about 20 minutes. I have spent that long on hold waiting to talk to someone at other places.

He was also kind enough to let me know that should I find the authenticator in the future buried in a couch cushion or something I could simply go back to account management and set it back up the same way I had when I first got it. Further he informed  me that there was in fact a procedure to remove one even if you cannot find your original CD key (there was a time when I thought I might not find it). This involves having E-paperwork sent to the registered email on the account and working it through that way, however it would by necessity take longer than doing it over the phone.

Overall It was a surprisingly painless experience considering what my only prior exposure to them had been A bad one. Although having an account issue is never fun, I really appreciated them getting me back in the game so quickly. The odds of Gilbert or anyone at Blizz that knows him reading this are pretty slim. If you do stumble across this, thanks. You took a good chunk of the “bad” out of my day.