Google broke my mother’s Gmail account.

June 23, 2009 12:12 PM

My mother had forgotten her Gmail password and no longer had access to the e-mail address that was used to set up the account. I used the form Google provides for this situation but there seems to have been a problem.

I gave them a new alternate e-mail address to associate with the account to use for password recovery but they changed her login name to this new e-mail address and made it the primary e-mail for her Gmail account. So now when I log in to her account I can see all her old e-mail but her “Send mail as:” address is the new non-Gmail address and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change this from my end.

It also seems that her old Gmail address is no longer working. When I tried sending it a test message I got:
host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.210.43]:
550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

Anyone have any suggestions I how I might be able to get this fixed?

posted by Tenuki to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Go into Settings > Accounts

The first heading should be "Send mail as:"

Perhaps the other email was added to this and made the default. If that's the case, make the Gmail email the default one. Just a thought. Probably not that simple.
posted by 913 at 12:14 PM on June 23, 2009

Response by poster: That would work, but I can't verify her old gmail address since it's bouncing and no longer appears to exist.
posted by Tenuki at 12:21 PM on June 23, 2009

If the old Gmail address really doesn't exist any more, you should be able to create a new Gmail account with that login name, and set it up to forward everything it receives to the Gmail account where all her existing mails are.

Or you could make it pull all the old mails from that account via POP3.

And have her write down her password :-)
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 PM on June 23, 2009