Recent experience with being locked out of 2 accounts.

Hi,

I recently had a pretty bad experience with support when I was locked out of 2 accounts, and I just felt like I needed to share the story because it is utterly ridiculous.

Last week, I created a new envato account. This account was meant to be shared by several people so we can all have the ability to buy things and use a shared payment method. So I went to purchase some music using our shared card, and I was locked out of the account. At this point I realized I had forgotten to verify the email address, so I thought this could be the reason why it was locked. Anyways, I created a support request to get my account unlocked.

Support got back to me quickly, which was nice. However, I was surprised to see their response:

“Regrettably, after further investigation, we’re using our discretion and will not be re-enabling your account.”

Um… for what reason? Naturally I responded asking why the account was not going to be re-enabled.

I really wanted to go ahead and purchase what I needed, so I logged into my personal account (this account) of over 2 years and tried again with the same payment method. Bam, locked again.

It was obvious something about the card was causing problems. From experience I know the fraud protection can be over-zealous. Pretty much any time I use it on an online store I’ve never used it on before, the transaction is declined. All I have to do in this case, though, is approve it and try again. The weird thing was that we were not getting any fraud or declined transaction notifications.

So submitted another support request to get my personal account unlocked. I also referenced the other account’s details and ticket number in the hopes that I could influence that in some way to get it unlocked. I could possibly see how it had been marked as a spam account or a fraudulent account because it was created and locked in the same day. However, with an account holder of 2 years and many purchases directly referencing the account, perhaps they would “use their discretion” and re-enable it.

The next morning, I receive my answer as to why my 1st account was locked:

Unfortunately like all companies, we have a number of internal policies in place which, for business reasons, we do not divulge. After reviewing your application for service, we are unfortunately unable to re-enable your account.

Or not…

A few days after, my personal account is unlocked. I again make a reference to my 1st account and support ticket number and get this response:

Unfortunately, we do not have access to this information and if it has already been decided that your other account will not be re-enabled then we regret to you that the decision is final.

So you’re locking me out of a totally valid account that was meant to be a very useful shared account, and not even providing me any reason whatsoever for it?

There are many ways I would love to describe this that are not appropriate for this forum. After this, I will be avoiding purchasing anything via envato at all costs.

No one will help you. Facing the same. WORST SUPPORT.

While no one in these forums will have access to the info relating to the official decision - out of interest,

  • when you created a “shared account” was that on the main marketplaces or envato elements?

  • If it was the main marketplaces then did other people on your team try to login?

Given that transferring or sharing access to your account is not allowed (except in the case of team subscriptions to elements) and your different team members will be using multiple IP addresses, then it’s very possible that this would raise red flags and be in breach of terms and conditions

Didn’t expect to see any replies after all this time haha.

This account was created on the main marketplaces (I only ever used AudioJungle). I was hoping that this would have been a kind of company account that my team of 3 could use, instead of us each having separate accounts with the same payment info. If that’s against the terms and conditions though then I guess that’s on me.

Regardless of that, nobody else attempted to log on and I never told support of the intended use of the account, so they wouldn’t have known of any potential breach of the terms and conditions.

The main issue in my mind isn’t even the locking of the account. It’s that support refused to give me any reason as to why they would not unlock the account.