Is Whatsapp Support a Joke?

[Boris_yo]

Used their web form to contact them. The answer I received came after 10 minutes and was a canned reply with FAQ part. It didn't answer my question at all.

Replying that I received another canned reply with different FAQ part which was more relevant this time.

This time I tried to be more concise and received slightly more relevant canned reply.

Finally I typed in made-up code which didn't do anything but to test what reply I received. Funny enough I received canned reply again and it still didn't address my question directly.

Strangely enough is that under every reply I could see my original inquiry quoted so it seems like my replies just submitted my original inquiry over and over.

Whole thing seems automated and run by AI.

 

[Farva]

It is owned by Facebook, so ya.

 

[toast0]

I used to work there, but it's been a while, so who knows. There is a lot of automation in the support queue (even before FB), and when humans read messages, there's a lot of augmentation to quickly send (hopefully relevant) canned responses. Usually a human will read more closely after a reply or two from the requestor, and at least when I was there, there were escalation paths to get engineer review for things that need it (bug reports, patterns of issues, etc).

I'm a little weirded out that the quoted portion is wrong; if it's not urgent, I'd wait a few business days and try again and see if that changed. But if the response changed, it's likely that the tools see your message, but it's just a cosmetic error.

Did you provide your full international number? That's the number one thing people didn't do in emails. It's usually helpful for support to have that. (If you can email support from in the app, I think that'll be included in the email automatically) Number two was writing a one word email: "código"

You can PM your question and I can try to help too, but obviously I have no access to anything and lots of things changed, so I have a 70% likelyhood of saying hmmm, I don't know.

 

[Boris_yo]

You can PM your question and I can try to help too, but obviously I have no access to anything and lots of things changed, so I have a 70% likelyhood of saying hmmm, I don't know.

You worked in Facebook/WhatsApp support? Do they outsource to support center or have internal department?

I wanted to know what happens after I change my phone number tied to WhatsApp account without restoring my old account and without notifying my contacts.

• Will I disappear from froends' chat list?
• Will our chat history be deleted for us?
• How will my profile appear to rhem?
• What happens when they message me?
• Will they be able to find me and add me?

 

[toast0]

I was in server engineering, but worked with the support team from time to time; I did verification, so when I started there was lots of escalation for people who couldn't get codes, but that got a lot better, so I mostly got escalations for strange things, especially on older devices that we barely supported and server changes accidentally broke in weird ways. When I left, there was a dedicated support team in California and another team in Ireland that was mostly staffed by an agency, I think there's another agency team in Austin now, maybe.

So, if you go through the change number flow from settings/account, but select not to notify people, they may still get a notification if they're in a group with you.

If they don't have any chats with you, you'd stop showing up in the new message list (unless they have your number otherwise). I don't remember if this waits for a periodic address book sync or if there's a faster propigation of the deletion of the old number.

Your chat history will not change, neither will theirs. But if they send a message in that window, it won't go to you (it might get one check mark, or just a clock, I forget the details). If you send a message, it'll come from your new number.

Your picture will be removed from the old number, but if they've got you in their address book at that number, it will still show your name (or whatever they put).

If you're in a group together, they'll see your new number, but if not, they wouldn't, and someone would need to tell them the new number (you or ???) in order for them to find you. WhatsApp doesn't have a person search feature, just phone number matching.

If you're worried that people won't find your new number, the notification during number change is for this case and you should use it. If you're worried that people will find you, I'd be careful to leave groups first, so the information doesn't leak that way; you could delete account and then reregister with the new account, but that would delete your local message history, so that's not great. If your account is old enough that you were able to opt-out of some of the data sharing with FB (and you did opt-out), you'd lose that if you deleted rather than changed number. I think that might be visible in the (GDPR) account report, but otherwise there's no UI for it.

If you got a new phone and a new phone number at the same time, and abandoned the old number so you couldn't verify it for WhatsApp on the new phone to do a change numbee, a lot of the answers are the same, but you'd have to wait for the old account to get deleted for inactivity (looks like that happens at 120 days now). In the mean time, messages to your old number would definitely get one check mark.

 

[Boris_yo]

toast0 Thanks for thorough answer. I want to disappear for everyone in WhatsApp except only one contact and when other contacts try to message/record audio/call me it would not appear as if I ignore them but rather that I no longer have WhatsApp account. When they will ask me why I can't be reached on WhatsApp I will say that I no longer use WhatsApp.

 

[toast0]

Ok, that's a tricky situation. Obviously, not what WhatsApp was designed for. In that case, I think you probably do want to delete your current account (after somehow exporting whatever content you want to save!) so it's as clear as possible that you're not using it. Then sign up with a different number (that only you and your confidant know is you). Try not giving contact permission to WhatsApp (I don't know how well that works, but I think it should be ok for one chat only), and make sure to set your privacy settings to nobody for profile photo and stuff. Probably, don't set a profile photo anyway.

 

[Boris_yo]

In that case, I think you probably do want to delete your current account (after somehow exporting whatever content you want to save!) so it's as clear as possible that you're not using it.

You think I can export chat history and import it to a new account?

 

[toast0]

You think I can export chat history and import it to a new account?

The short answer is export yes, import no. There's UI to export your chats (even if it's cumbersome), but not to import, except through backup restore which I don't think works across number changes. The longer answer is it's possible, but only if you're willing and able to mess with the sqlite files in app storage with no documentation. I've heard there's 3rd party tools, but they were also built with no documentation, so who knows.

You *might* be able to register your existing number on a different phone and then delete the account, and on your current phone register with your new number when you get the prompt about being registered on a different phone, but it's been too long since I mucked about like that, that I'm not sure if you'd get the results you want. When I switched platforms (android -> windows phone and eventually and sadly back to android) and needed to refer to old messages, I would put the old phone in airplane mode and stick it in a drawer just in case.

 

[Boris_yo]

The short answer is export yes, import no. There's UI to export your chats (even if it's cumbersome), but not to import, except through backup restore which I don't think works across number changes.

Hello. What file format is chat history exported to? Once I export, how do I read this format?

 

[toast0]

I've never messed with export. Looks like a txt file plus whatever media files.