gmail password retrieval problems

I recently had to go through this process with an account I hadn't accessed in over a year. I followed the steps at https://support.google.com/dartsignin/answer/114767?hl=en and after a day or two of back-and-forth emails with customer support they eventually called me* & asked lots of questions like when I had first used the account, email addresses in my contact list, etc. Once I had answered those, they reset the password for me. * They asked for a phone number at this point. The account did not have a phone number already associated via two-step authentication.

can I hack my own gmail account? Think about it: given the existence of some reliable method that let the answer to that be "yes", there would be no point in having a password. If you could "hack" your own account, you could obviously use the same method to "hack" anybody else's. Short of a contact inside the NSA, the closest you're ever going to get is (a) getting the attention of Google customer service and (b) convincing them that you are who you say you are. If you get no joy from Google (and you should not expect to, as only those who buy its advertising services are its customers; Gmail users are merely livestock) you might consider paying a small amount to become an actual customer of http://www.fastmail.fm

gmail is not giving me the security questions. I dont know why. Has the account been idle for 24 hours yet?

There;s a way you can pay google a dollar or two to get a password reset without the safety features. They ask things like emails addresses sent/received, locations and browsers accessed from, etc. I've done it in the past. It takes a few days.

Just for kicks, I just went through the password retrieval process for my Gmail account. It asks a ton of specific questions about the account, and even though I purposely guessed wrong on some, Gmail gave me a link to reset my password for the account. I don't have two-step activation activated, but I know for a fact that even if you do (I manage Gmail accounts at work), you can skip that part and go straight to the "answer all these security questions step." At what step is this not working for you? Is the account so old you just can't answer enough questions correctly? All apologies, but things like "standard retrieval options point to that account" and "all the options google provides require me to get into that gmail account" are way too vague.

jeather, I would gladly pay for this situation to be fixed, how do I go about it? thanks so much!!

In case you haven't already tried it, the http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/gmail is one possible last-ditch way of getting a real human to look at your problem. The moderators there don't have direct authority to unlock accounts, but they seem to have at least a little bit of pull with the Gmail staff.

I suspect this is impossible these days, but here's a weird personal anecdote from the Hotmail era. Someone hacked my girlfriend's email account and changed the password. I altavista'd around and found the geocities page of some guy claiming to be a hacker who could get into email accounts. I sent him her email address and I'll be damned if he didn't write back the next day with the new password for her account and she had her Hotmail back. He didn't even ask for anything. So ... Maybe you could find someone online with mysterious cracking abilities?

I think I'm just screwed here. I do appreciate the help :P