I got locked out of an account and it would not allow me to recover the account, even though it had a recovery email on file. They didn't think that was enough

I got locked out of an account and it would not allow me to recover the account, even though it had a recovery email on file. They didn't think that was enough to prove I owned the account. What's the purpose of a recovery account, if you can't recover with it? Fair disclosure: I'm not sure why I lost access to the account, but I had been planning on changing the password. There's a non-zero chance this was self inflicted. But it should have been recoverable.