What if you lose your LastPass master password? Then you're doomed... You'll lose your password vault for good.
But hey, you can still to lose all your sensitive data even if you don't forget that crucial password!
I mean, if it has already happened to us...
Apparently, there's no guarantee that one day, for no reason, LastPass won't:
- lock you out of your account and block your access for... mere fun
- keep advising you to use their recovery password form… one that doesn't work and that you had already tried, several times, with no success
- keep suggesting that you're some sort of a "liar", insisting that you had, in fact, changed your master password and that's why you can't log in now
- keep giving you a "suicidal" advice: delete your account and open a new one, even if this means losing all your data
- refuse to allow you to retrieve the data that you stored in your "old" account to export it to that new account they keep insisting to create
- refuse to refund you the money you had paid, in advance, for a service that apparently doesn't serve your needs: it keeps you blocked out and puts a garnishment on your passwords
So, just beware of which company you choose to trust with your sensitive data!
Their "The last password you'll ever need" slogan might just turn into:
"The last password you'll ever have".
For once they block you, you'll be left with... none.
But let's rewind and go back to the day when it all started.
Little did we expect for it to turn into our worst-ever scenario, considering that we had been happy LastPass users since... 2009.
1. It Started Like Just Another Ordinary Log In to Our LastPass Account...
But — surprise, surprise — we couldn't sign in. And our master password was the same old one: we did NOT forget it!
I mean, we had been LastPass users for almost 10 years':
We were fully aware of what would happen if we ever lost that priceless password!
So, we jumped straight to their “Recover Account” form, which brutally served us the following message:
And it was about that time that things started to go wrong. When the “ordinary” slowly turned into... extraordinary:
An extraordinarily bad experience with the LastPass support team.
2. When in Trouble, Contact LastPass Support and... Start a Deaf Dialogue
This is where our deaf dialogue with lovely Michelle from LastPass's support team started.
And it was such a nice and fruitful chat that we had there!
I let her know that, by some mysterious reasons, that day, from all the other days in the previous 9 years, I couldn't access our account. Nor could I use their recovery account system for... it didn't work.
Lovely Michelle either:
- suggested that I was lying when I told her about my attempts to use their recovery account form
- understood everything just too well, but she had a script to follow, so she decided to ignore parts of my message
- thought she was dealing with some a retarded person
… and told me that, in fact, I had managed, somehow, to change my master password. Then she kindly advised me to... go through their recovery account steps.
Even though I had told her I already had done that.
But, who was I to come in between her and the script she had to follow blindly?
And then came her somehow “suicidal” advice for us, the OPTASY team, one of the loyal LastPass customers:
To delete my current account (for which I had already paid in advance) and create a new one! Just like that!
3. News Alert! LastPass Can Block You Out and Withhold Your Stored Data
For that's what happens when they advise you to delete your account and “start over”:
Your password vault goes... down the drain or gets stuck in their cloud, no matter how you want to look at it.
Here's a tricky question for you: What would be a worse scenario for you?
- To lose all the passwords that you've trusted LastPass with?
- To lose all your passwords with no guarantee that no one else can access them later on?
And here's charming Michelle's brutally honest answer to my legitimate question(s):
“What's gonna happen with all the records in our OLD account? How can we import them into the new one?”
And that reply just... sent cold shivers down our spines...
4. Being Punished Without Fault: No Refund and No Chance to Export Our Data
Now, you do guess that it was about then that we reached the climax of our conversation with the LastPass support team (aka Michelle).
And so, masochistically enough, we dared to pop up another question:
“If you're not able to help me reset the password, please let me know how can I export all the data from my old account and refund the money I paid in advance.”
The answer was a... slap in the face, like the previous ones:
To sum up now:
- locked out from our LastPass account, after several years
- left to somehow make their not-working “recovery account system”... work for us
- forced to keep trying it over and over again
- given just one option: to create a new account and lose all our passwords (and the money paid in advance, as well)
Can you imagine that we trusted LastPass for years? And that we ended up getting treated like this?
With no fault.
5. Their Invariable Response? To Start Over and Knowingly Lose All Passwords
Needless to add that I kept on explaining to the LastPass support that in vain did they point out to the recovery steps to take:
I had already taken them, even before I had even contacted them in the first place. With zero success...
I claimed back the money we had paid in advance for their password manager service, as well as the possibility to export our password to that new account that they insisted that we should set up.
Michelle's answer:
The END!
No happy ending, though, to this story of our terrible experience with LastPass.
Who would have thought that all these years we were trusting them with our most valuable data! And that one day they'd just... kick us out and withhold precisely that sensitive data with:
- no fault from our side
- no clear explanation on their side
So, just beware, be informed, be skeptical about trusting LastPass...
