Comment by ASalazarMX
5 years ago
I'm sorry for your difficulties, but this is exactly the kind of situations social engineering is made of. You can't blame them for not overriding the script out of compassion or empathy, otherwise some random person with a good story could take ownership of Google accounts.
Ordering a replacement phone be sent to the account owner certainly isn't within the scope of social engineering. The fact that I couldn't do _anything_ to verify ownership outside of having access to the code from my Google account seems excessive for device replacement.