Customer service rep caused loss of access to all notes. “Sorry.”

[Woodson 0]

Regarding ticket: 2144222

After losing my smartphone in July I have been unable to log in to Evernote on any of my devices. Recovery codes are not working and customer service rep could not tell me why (“that’s strange behaviour”). 

I had one MacBook which could still see all my notes (years and years of notes). With the failure of the recovery feature on iPhone and web app, the customer service rep told me to log out of my Evernote account on my last MacBook, and export my notes to a new account.

This seemed super risky to me, so I emailed him back confirming that I would not lose access to my notes forever:

Quote

 

My fear is that if I log out at this step:

Then, please execute these steps in Evernote on your Mac:

• Open Evernote
• Sign out of all usernames, so that you are directed to Evernote's Login Screen
• From the Login Screen, hit Control + Option+ Command + E (simultaneously)

Then I will no longer be able to log in on ANY device. That will be it. I could lose access to my notes forever.

 

Can I confirm that the Control + Option+ Command + E command will work to export an account without requiring a password or 2FA?

 

 

 

He responded with:

Quote

 

Yes, it should work and allow me to elaborate.

Whenever you use the Evernote App for Mac, it will create an internal Evernote database on your Mac that contains all of the notes from the last time you synced your account to our service

Therefore, 2FA is not necessary as we are extracting the data directly from an internal database on your Mac.

 

So I took the plunge and logged out. Then Ctrl + Option + Cmd + E did not work. 

Customer service rep claims that the local export feature was disabled between him confirming it was safe and me logging out!!!

This is fairly distressing. I have years of very valuable notes in my Evernote account. Both business-related and personal.

And finally, after all this, all the CS rep could comfort me with was:

Quote

My most sincere apologies for any trouble or inconvenience this may cause.

Is he joking?

I can prove that I am the owner of the account by any means necessary. I have backup codes that for some reason are not working. Can anyone advise how I can regain access to the notes in the account?

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2017-11-06 at 6:54 PM, Woodson said:

I had one MacBook which could still see all my notes (years and years of notes).

This is good news, although the master version of your data is maintained on the Evernote servers (accessed via the web platform)

Exporting your notes should have no impact.  I do daily/weekly exports as backup
I don't know that key sequence; I would just select all, right click and export

>>After losing my smartphone in July I have been unable to log in to Evernote on any of my devices.

I have no idea why losing a device would cause you access problems with your other devices