What is a pass phrase? Customer support can't help me reactivate my account because of it

[HutchDaxon]

To keep things short, I deactivated my account some time ago and, regretting it, I now wish to reactivate it again.
(I'm posting from a different account)
After submitting plenty of cases asking if it could be done through the mail, the answer remained, "Call us".
And so I finally did. Gave them my account name, ready to answer the upcoming security questions. And then they asked me what my pass phrase was, stating that one had been installed on my account. I was confused. What pass phrase? I've either never done that, can't remember it, or Second Life themselves have placed a pass phrase on my account as part of the process of putting it on "Administrative hold", even though they told me they can't do anything with it now, so it seems they may not be responsible either... are they? Before I could ask more, they hung up on me. I figured I may be able to get more information from here. I think this may be the first time I've heard of a "pass phrase" for Second Life accounts.

Can anyone tell me what the problem could be, and what I might be able to do from this point?

[Cinos Field]

Surely they mean your password? There's nothing else I can think of.

[HutchDaxon]

Perhaps that's it, I'll try, thanks. I can't think of anything else either, and they wouldn't tell me what a "pass phrase" meant, either, so I'll just go ahead and try it by giving them my password.

[HutchDaxon]

Nope, apparently not it. The person who helped me over the phone said the account couldn't be verified, or something, after I gave the password to my account, so apparently that's not what they mean by pass phrase. I can't find anything about it anywhere else either and they keep saying they can't help me when I ask what they mean by pass phrase... it's a confusing mess and I don't know what to do.

[Pamela Galli]

I have little experience with this sort of thing, but it sounds a bit fishy. Does LL even ask for your password? 

[HutchDaxon]

No clue, I found the number on the actual site here, called them through Skype and all... though I think they don't mean the account password at all, but something else entirely. What they do mean, however, is something that seems to be difficult to find out. I can't find anything in any of my old mails, starting from the first ones I ever got related to SL, and my account is no longer linked to an e-mail address I can use. Damn.

[Pamela Galli]

I guess if you called a LL number it is legit, but support has been known to have no idea what they are talking about. 

[Alwin Alcott]

i NEVER had to call them for reactivating a account, it always was by ticket on a guest email account, or my main.

Never been asked for anything else than : secret/security question, ID and some basic info about people on friendslist.

You can login with this account, so open a ticket to re activate old account should be enough i think.

[HutchDaxon]

Two out of three people from customer support asked me for a pass phrase, and the remaining one only asked for security questions and told me she couldn't help me from there. So I have no clue where to continue from here, if I can't contact anyone by e-mail as they keep re-directing me to calling them, and if they themselves don't know what they're talking about... pfft D:

[HutchDaxon]

Strange. Maybe because it's not the first time I've deactivated my account, but they keep asking me to call them.
I also logged into my main account and opened a support case from it, but it still keeps telling me it's been put on hold.
Maybe they sent me a pass phrase to the e-mail my main account is linked to, but I've already notified them of the fact that I cannot use that e-mail account.

[Alwin Alcott]

sounds to me you don't give the right answers they expect for some reason. If you indeed don't they will never help you any further. So be really sure you did give all correct info during sign up and now for recovery.

Support will not do anything as long they'r not sure you are the real holder of the account. Believe me... it can be a pain, i once confused two answers of a security question... they nearly dared to ask for my shoe size and brand of underwear before they were conviced

[HutchDaxon]

I seem to recall that I may have entered my birthyear wrong by a year, so I'll try that to begin with.
The rest... well, they've re-activated my account before through mail support, but this time it's just a pain in the behind.
But you actually never had to call? They never asked you to do these things they're asking of me now?

[Alwin Alcott]

i never had to call, my last reactivation was januari this year. ( i had a lot of accounts during my years here )

Only had to answer security / send ID ...on others sometimes also few questions about friends

[Phil Deakins]

A phrase is a part of a sentence. A question is a complete sentence. So it doesn't sound like the 'pass phrase' is the 'security question'. If it's meant to be, then LL needs lessons in english.

What occurs to me is the possibility that, when you deactivated your account, they sent you an email, which included a 'pass phrase' that you'll need to state if you ever want to reactivate it. And, since you can't access the email address it was sent to, you can't know what the phrase is.

That's just a theory, but it would fit.

[HutchDaxon]

That sounded like a pretty spot on theory to me, so I went and digged a bit further.
Also because, earlier today, I suddenly had a vague memory of a pass phrase being sent to me...
So I went to an e-mail account I used to send one of my earlier re-activation cases. And what do ya know? There it was.
The actual pass phrase, in a mail. I didn't know what they were talking about at first, but things started to click,
and I decided to dig a bit deeper after you said this, so thanks for that! Calling them now to get my account back up again.
I hope they didn't replace it with something else by now, but... here goes.

[HutchDaxon]

Yep, that did the trick! It was indeed a phrase that was sent to me over the mail. Luckily I could access that mail address which they sent it to, so my account has been reinstated. Thank you and I also thank all the others who have responded here. :-)

[Phil Deakins]

Excellent! It was just a bit of my imagination that would fit - just imagination. I had no idea they did something like that. I'm glad it worked out for you.

[Alwin Alcott]

i really never known you get a phrase... i wonder when that started.

I had several accounts reactivated but must have been before they started sending secret messages

[Phil Deakins]

Me neither, but I've never deactivated an account so there's no way I would know except from posts here. Of course, the best thing is not to deactivate accounts, since there's usually no need to do it.

[Rufferta]

Just for information, rather than close a Premium account you can ask for the account to be changed to a regular account.