Yeah well I got locked out of my hotmail account 5 years ago and I never got back in. There was a bug in an iOS release that caused the Mail app to make repeated, unnecessary requests to authenticate hotmail/outlook so Microsoft determined that there was suspicious activity and locked me out. They have an account recovery process for situations like this and I tried, and tried, and tried, and failed to regain access. I just tried again last week. I tried contacting them directly, too of course. No luck.
So I know what happens when you don't know someone on the inside: you are out of luck. You lose important emails, photos, notifications, bills. You have to change a lot of your other accounts. No fun at all.
Wait...you want to know the worst? That's the email I used for coinbase that I think still has a few Bitcoin in it. I can't log into coinbase because I don't have the same phone with the same phone number for Authy, and the recovery email is the hotmail email I am locked out of. Of course I have open support tickets with coinbase bu you can imagine that I'm not exactly real high in their priority queue. So being locked out of my email has cost me a lot of money in the long run.
I'm sympathetic to your situation. But being locked out of selling your bitcoin for a few years might have resulted in you earning a lot of extra money! Hopefully you can regain access to Coinbase. Since they are regulation-complaint and legit, you should eventually be able to gain access to your assets. If it's enough BTC to be worth the expense, maybe you could expedite the process with a lawyer?
I'm in the same situation right now. I didn't back up my Authy keys because when I switched phones, the balance on my Coinbase account was zero (still is), so it wasn't a high priority to me.
Now, I'm trying to get back into the account so I can add some BTC to sell it, and I'm getting nowhere with the customer support. For an account with a 0 balance. And I still have access to the correct email, phone number, etc.
At this point it'd just be easier for me to sign up for a new account I guess, but I don't want to have to use a throw-away email for that. You'd think there'd be some kind of easy path to regain control of an account with zero balance, as there's no risk of theft. Nuke all attached bank accounts and the like as a safety measure.
So I know what happens when you don't know someone on the inside: you are out of luck. You lose important emails, photos, notifications, bills. You have to change a lot of your other accounts. No fun at all.
Wait...you want to know the worst? That's the email I used for coinbase that I think still has a few Bitcoin in it. I can't log into coinbase because I don't have the same phone with the same phone number for Authy, and the recovery email is the hotmail email I am locked out of. Of course I have open support tickets with coinbase bu you can imagine that I'm not exactly real high in their priority queue. So being locked out of my email has cost me a lot of money in the long run.