I did not play WoW at all for 6 years or so (since somewhere in the Battle for Azeroth expansion I believe) and have just recently subscribed again.
While my subscription was inactive ALL of my characters (approx 12) have had a huge number of their profession recipes ‘unlearned’. I did NOT do this! At no point did I change profession or unlearn anything on any character. I was not even subscribed or logged in at any point!
It appears to be a bug as as a result of changes Blizzard made to the profession systems while I was inactive.
The exact same thing has happened on my wife’s account after a 6 year break also, on ALL of our characters.
I contacted support and they just said that it’s obviously a bug but they couldn’t help. I submitted a bug report but I can’t track that or contact anyone.
It appears you can pay gold to re-learn some of the recipes (which I should not have to do because I DID NOT UNLEARN THEM, but many recipes appear not to be available for ‘repurchase’. They were rare drops, currency rewards etc… that took hundreds of hours to get. I’m extremely disappointed to say the least, and it saps any enthusiam I had for playing when things you earn can just disappear like this.
Is there anything that can be done to escalate or fix this? Help!
Hey Coopoo,
The “Unlearned” tab in your profession book are recipes that you have yet to learn, not recipes that you have forgotten / lost.
It’s a feature that was added around Legion if I recall correctly. 
If you have more questions or concerns about the different aspects of the game since you last played, I would encourage you to ask other players first, or create a thread on the forums, and I’m sure many players will be more than happy to help you. 
But I had learned them, that’s the point! I know for a absolute fact tat I had already learned many of the recipes that now say ‘unlearned’. I even have items that I made in my bags from the recipe.
You’re probably mistaken, or you’re checking the wrong character.
Recipes are unique to a character, so you would need to find the character who had a specific recipe if you believe that you made an item with it in the past (keep in mind that abandoning and relearning a profession will not relearn the recipes, in case you’ve abandoned a profession on one or more character in the past).
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re genuinely trying to be helpfuI, but I’m just feeling insulted at this point.
If you can’t help you can’t, but replying just to tell me that, essentially, you think I’m an idiot is not super helpful.