This is a convoluted story, so please bear with me. To summarize up front, I need access to an old Hotmail account I made when I was a teenager in order to renovate the passport of my country of origin. I have tried the damned recovery form dozens of times, to no avail. I am looking for a Microsoft representative to look into this very particular case and make an exception to their security policy, because it is simply outrageous that I am prevented from renovating a critical legal document that is my birthright simply because I cannot remember a password.
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. I lived there all the way up to the beginning of middle school, when, due to my parents' work, I moved to Kobe, Japan. During high school I once again moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where my parents applied for permanent residency and, several years later, citizenship. By 2015, I was a dual citizen of both Venezuela and the US. I had let my Venezuelan passport expire years prior and because I had an American substitute, I neglected to renovate it in the intervening years. During this time, I used two Hotmail accounts: one which I had made in Venezuela as a boy (virgiliochocolate*@hotmail.com), and a second (*@hotmail.com) - the email address in question - that I made either while I lived in Japan or in Cincinnati. I cannot remember the exact date.
Crucially, while I lived outside of Venezuela, its electronic ID system (SAIME, in its Spanish acronyms) was established. The authorities in Venezuela transferred all the relevant information from my birth certificate and passport to that account - all without my knowledge -, including, as it turned out, that second Hotmail email address. By the time I entered college, I no longer used that address: I had switched to Gmail and had never looked back. Years passed. I forgot not only the password to the Hotmail account, but all the recovery details as well.
Fast forward to this past year, when an invitation to a friend's wedding and a coincidental family situation is bidding me come home to Caracas. I thought this would be an opportune moment to renovate my Venezuelan passport from where I currently reside, which is Amsterdam, since the Netherlands - unlike the United States - has maintained diplomatic relations with Venezuela. This is when I discover that to apply to renovate my passport, I have to access the SAIME account I wasn't even aware I had. And it turns out that that SAIME account is inaccessible without my accessing the Hotmail account I made as a moronic teenager. I have tried and tried and tried again with the recovery form. I have spoken to agents through the website, who robotically told me time and time again that "policy" dictated that there was no other way to recover the account.
Well, now I am begging you, Microsoft: please, for the love of God, let me into this account! I'll do anything to prove I'm the same goddamned Virgilio Urbina Lazardi who made ******@hotmail.com! Just get me in a room with someone who has some amount of discretion!