Premium Account Lost, Poor Customer Service

[jeffochfeld]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

iPhone XR

Operating System

iOS (most recent)

My Question or Issue - - Account Lost, Terrible Customer Service.

Hello. A few days ago my Premium account of 4+ years, under the account name "jochfeld" had kicked me off of the service (i.e., needed to log back in) -- unfortunately I could not remember the password. I had come to find out, after more than an hour talking via chat to a Spotify customer service representative, that the e-mail on the underlying e-mail address was a "typo" (I still find this hard to believe), and because I could not obtain my password the individual stated that the account is effectively lost. Given how long I have been a Premium, paying member, I found it hard to believe that all the songs and information I have on the platform had been entirely lost. The individual recommended that I "simply create a new account". 

Subsequently I reached out to customer service via e-mail to get another opinion. In short, it was the same result, however they had the (in my view laughable) authentication technique of "give us a name of a private playlist", which, given the abundance of authentication criteria Spotify can lean on, is hilariously rudimentary. Regardless, this method did not seem to work either.

Now, for my third channel, this community. While I appreciate the context moderators and Rock Stars have provided here, this "being booted from the system" issue, compounded with a lack of a reliable underlying email address, seems to be quite a systemic issue. Rather than providing a satisfactory fix, I've seen a very boiler-plate set of procedures that don't solve the problem.

In an additional attempt to resolve the issue, I've logged in into another account linked to Facebook, which, despite Facebook referencing my current e-mail address, Spotify has locked onto another e-mail address literally used years ago, which seemingly cannot be changed here (despite being changed on Facebook). Again, the advice provided from this Community is simply "create another account". I find this short-sighted and not in the best interest of the customer considering the large fixed cost of building a comprehensive music library.

In short, I've seemingly lost a large music library compounded over 4 years. I have tried every method available to me, in tandem with the customer care channels that are provided, and I receive asynchronous feedback that takes hours and days to get a response rather than a simple, continuous conversation to get this solved. Needless to say, I am incredibly disappointed by the customer care experience on Spotify.

[Peter]

Hey @jeffochfeld.

Thanks for reaching out to us on the Community.

We understand how important it is for you to get back to your Spotify music library, and we'll do our best to help you out.

We have security verification guidelines which we follow when verifying the account holder before we can update an email address on an account.

If you're a Premium customer, then you will be asked to provide some payment details or an order ID as a verification method.

Can you confirm that this is what you were asked to provide?

Keep us posted 🙂

[jeffochfeld]

Hi Peter. 

I was asked to confirm my underlying e-mail address (again, this was allegedly typo'd, which I still find hard to believe) and a name of a private playlist, which I recounted to the best of my ability in terms of the name of the playlist and content within it. I received the following e-mail this morning from Anjo in Spotify Customer Support:

"We're very sorry for what this have caused you.

We're sad to say that since you can't verify the account, we can't proceed to your request."

And that was it. This also took me another 24 hours to get a simple response. This back-and-forth has been going on for days on end. 

[jeffochfeld]

Again, it's taken days for any sort of response on any channel from Spotify.

[user-removed]

Hello — I'd like to chime in here and echo everything said in the issue above. I've had nearly the exact same thing happen to me, all without a solid solution provided by Spotify. I've been an avid, Premium-paying member of Spotify for over 4 years, and have over 100 playlists. The data collected by Spotify on my listening preferences is immense, I'm sure. I've spent overall 5+ hours trying to log into different accounts, different email addresses, all trying to get back into my account after I was logged out of all platforms with no explanation.

I'm in disbelief that there isn't a more succint way to solve the logged-out/lost password problem, especially for users who have been paying $9.99 a month for years. I hope this comment, and mine, are addressed soon and a more true "solution" is offered.

If payment receipts, security questions, and other account-specific details can be proved and recalled, I see no reason to force someone to make a new account (which, by the way, is not a solution. 4+ years of playlists and aggregated listening habit data is not easily forgotten...)

[Katerina]

Hey there @user-removed,

Thanks for posting here in the Community regarding this.

Keep in mind that as @Peter mentioned above, Premium accounts can be verified using payment information.

Further, we always apply rigorous security practices to protect your information. If our support team can't verify an account based on the information you've provided, it won't be possible to modify or update any information on that account.

On another note, as long as your playlists are public on your account, you can always follow the steps in this Spotify Answer to have them over to a new account.

Hope this helps clarify things further! Don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything else we can help with and we'll be happy to lend a hand.

Have a lovely day 🙂

[jeffochfeld]

I can’t speak for @ellerego, but my Premium account had been paid for via iTunes. A payment verification was never used to authenticate my account. 

[Katerina]

Hey again @jeffochfeld,

Thanks for keeping in touch!

Keep in mind that since you subscribed through a third party service, like iTunes, they'll be the ones managing your subscription and payments. 

As we don’t have access to the billing systems of third party services, we can't check or provide information based on your payments. This would explain what happened here regarding verifying information for your account.

If you'd like to go on and cancel your subscription, please see Apple's instructions for canceling.

Further, if any playlists from your original account are set to Public, you can easily have them over to your new account by following the steps here.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit more! Don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything else we can lend a hand with.

Have a lovely day 🙂