Correct, you’ll never get them. You waited too long to connect. They put out announcements for nearly a year to let people know you had to connect or you would lose vBAT.
One of the first articles is below, which was shared in January 2023:
Then they provided an updated announcement in link below around August 2023 which said you had until the end of October to connect:
ZebPay became available in September:
And people were talking about it all over, including topics like below:
So pretty much majority of September and all of October is what you had to notice you could connect and to link to ZebPay. If you didn’t do this, then all that old vBAT was pointless and you could never withdraw it.
The only thing you can do is earn BAT each month now. So whatever ads you view as you’re linked to ZebPay should get paid to you monthly.