Authenticator: Will this work?

[Dooz]

I just got my authenticators yesterday and was surprised to see that there's not a way to replace a battery. This lead me to think about what happens if I lose it, or it fails for some reason. They only let you buy two, and I'm sharing one across five acounts and the other across three. Could I write a few numbers down, not using them of course, and save them on paper? I would do this just so I could get into account management and turn off the authenticators until I can get another one. Does anyone know if this will work? It says to call Blizzard if its lost or stolen, but I've read the horror stories about people trying to contact billing, or customer service. Has anyone had a problem like this yet. If so, how did you handle it?

[Aenar]

write down the S/N on the back & store it somewhere. If the keycoder dies/lost/breaks you'll need the S/N to remove it from your account (then you can get a new one).

[Ualaa]

I've been using mine 10+ times a day, for over a year.
The battery is good so far.

I'd guess it is not much of a drain.

Still, authenticators are cheap.
You can easily get an extra or whatever.

[Catamer]

it should last about 3-4 years maybe more. they figure that most people don't play the same game that long.

[Dooz]

I've been using mine 10+ times a day, for over a year.
The battery is good so far.

I'd guess it is not much of a drain.

Still, authenticators are cheap.
You can easily get an extra or whatever.

Buying an extra is not a problem, you're right they are cheap... though I think they should come with the game. Maybe I wasn't clear, I'm sorry. The fact that I couldn't find a place to replace the battery got me to thinking about failures/loss/destruction. I'm not necessarily worried about battery failure. I'm more worried about loss or destruction. So if I had a few codes stashed away, this could help me log into account management to turn off the authenticators until I could get new ones... so I could play.

Also, I'm guessing you're using the authenticator 10 times a day for each account that you have. What's the reason for that? I've been using the same code across multiple accounts, and it works fine. Is that a bad thing to do?

[ILikeTwins]

You cannot save the numbers that the authenticator generates. Those numbers are randomly generated (every 15 seconds or so I believe) so storing them won't work. The only thing you can do is store the serial number on the authenticator if you lose it so you can get a hold of billing to have them remove it.

I am not sure how a single authenticator code works across multiple accounts for you unless you don't have a battle.net account yet. It never lets me log in to multiple accounts using the same code.

[emps]

I am not sure how a single authenticator code works across multiple accounts for you unless you don't have a battle.net account yet. It never lets me log in to multiple accounts using the same code.

Same here. Used to be able to do it across all my accounts in the beginning.

[ElectronDF]

I use 1 code across 5 B.Net accounts. You can only use 1 code on one WOW account on each B.Net. But if you have 5 B.Nets, you can use the 1 code across all of them at the same time.

[Toned]

ya but then you don't get your ubr murloc marine pet

[Dooz]

I use one code across 5 battle net accounts. It's worked every time so far.