They did have a method to recover their account that they tried, though - they said that they used the account recovery codes, but that they were rejected. (Those would be the codes that Google gives you when you initially set up 2FA.)

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firefax 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I first got the account, my cell phone was a recovery method. Later in life I imported the cell into google voice... thus when the recovery codes failed, there was no other option.

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JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry, I meant an external recovery method. Another e-mail address or a phone number.

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subscribed 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Another email address is useless.

Another phone humber only works if you didn't lose that phone.

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ashv 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would another email address be useless?

	▲	ncann 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I had email address X (gmail) that I hadn't logged into for a long time. One day I tried to log in to it. Correct password, but Google, for some reason, simply decided there's something suspicious about my login and blocked it. X had Y as the "recovery email", and I had access to Y, and I indeed received an email from Google sent to Y that it blocked a suspicious login to X. However, THERE WAS NO WAY TO USE Y TO GAIN ACCESS TO X. Google simply did not offer that option for X, and I had no idea why.
	▲	Flimm 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Google doesn't allow you to recover a Google account using only your recovery email address. Despite its name, the recovery email address is not used to recover Google accounts AFAICT, it's only used to receive notifications about security-related events.