Another EA horror story.

[MasochisticAvenger]

-Zooty!-

-Zoot zoot!-

I think you boys had best be moving along. One of you is in the red for comments like that and the other is probably well on his way.

OT: I say the OP's choice of action is correct and EA just decided to act like a child in return. Companies who don't give the customer what they want (like working products) are liable for an inability to commit to a simple service, period. There can be no argument there. No game working? No fix game? No get money. End of story. It's their fault, so they pay for it. So yes, give them every form of hell and, in fact, get on their ass about this bogus banning too. The more you make them have to deal with you, the less they'll want to, and have to acclimate. And they can't DO anything about that because you're not in the wrong.

You're ignoring one very important factor: the original poster did not pay anything for the game. Yes, the game should work, but they haven't paid for a faulty product. They jumped the gun by buying in-game items before ensuring the actual game worked on their computer, so they should have to bare the consequences. This whole customer entitlement is getting a little tiring.

Damn consumers expecting to use the stuff they pay for. They should just give companies money and then eat the turd that gets dumped in their cheerios.

Your basically saying "Okay well he didn't pay for the house, but he paid for stuff in the house, but the house has no doors and it's his fault."

EA apologists.. the worst people on earth.

Yes, that's exactly right. He did not make sure he would be able to have access to the things he bought, so it is his own fault he wasn't able to access them. He paid for the items in the game NOT the game itself.

If he had paid for the game itself it would be a different story.

It's irrelevant if it's the game itself or bonus content. If he paid for it and can't use it for no fault of his own, he should get a refund. No ifs and buts.

Again, he bought the in-game items before downloading the game and ensuring it would work. It is his own fault he did that; EA did not force him to buy the content before getting the game. He really has no one to blame but himself.

Just so we're clear: I am not saying companies shouldn't have to give refunds for faulty products. If he had paid money for the actual game, or he'd confirmed the game worked, bought some content, and then it suddenly stopped working, I would be saying he deserves a refund.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Maybe I should try smoke signals or death rays from orbit.

I'm with you on the death rays thing.

EA generally piss me off. The way they handle digital sales is straight up retarded. For example:
I bought an expansion for Spore and unlocked it on my spore account. Then I tried downloading the expansion onto a different computer and found that I couldn't. There is nothing there when I look on my EA account and the code I have is apparently expired. So I can't access any of the content I paid for.

Compare this to say, Blizzard. With Blizzard, you download an expansion for WoW or whatever, add it to your Battle.net account and then after that you can easily download said expansion to any computer you care to log in on. How hard is it to set up the system like that?

 

[Alma Mare]

-Zooty!-

-Zoot zoot!-

I think you boys had best be moving along. One of you is in the red for comments like that and the other is probably well on his way.

OT: I say the OP's choice of action is correct and EA just decided to act like a child in return. Companies who don't give the customer what they want (like working products) are liable for an inability to commit to a simple service, period. There can be no argument there. No game working? No fix game? No get money. End of story. It's their fault, so they pay for it. So yes, give them every form of hell and, in fact, get on their ass about this bogus banning too. The more you make them have to deal with you, the less they'll want to, and have to acclimate. And they can't DO anything about that because you're not in the wrong.

You're ignoring one very important factor: the original poster did not pay anything for the game. Yes, the game should work, but they haven't paid for a faulty product. They jumped the gun by buying in-game items before ensuring the actual game worked on their computer, so they should have to bare the consequences. This whole customer entitlement is getting a little tiring.

Damn consumers expecting to use the stuff they pay for. They should just give companies money and then eat the turd that gets dumped in their cheerios.

Your basically saying "Okay well he didn't pay for the house, but he paid for stuff in the house, but the house has no doors and it's his fault."

EA apologists.. the worst people on earth.

Yes, that's exactly right. He did not make sure he would be able to have access to the things he bought, so it is his own fault he wasn't able to access them. He paid for the items in the game NOT the game itself.

If he had paid for the game itself it would be a different story.

It's irrelevant if it's the game itself or bonus content. If he paid for it and can't use it for no fault of his own, he should get a refund. No ifs and buts.

Again, he bought the in-game items before downloading the game and ensuring it would work. It is his own fault he did that; EA did not force him to buy the content before getting the game. He really has no one to blame but himself.

Just so we're clear: I am not saying companies shouldn't have to give refunds for faulty products. If he had paid money for the actual game, or he'd confirmed the game worked, bought some content, and then it suddenly stopped working, I would be saying he deserves a refund.

Why are we assuming the game not working is a reasonable state of affairs that a custumer should accept? It's the company's job to state clearly where it should and should not work and correct it when it behaves differently. A free product is still a product. If it didn't work as advertised, they don't get to keep the guy's money. It's not like he's trying to profit from the situation, he just wants the whole thing null and void.

I agree he was careless, but not that EA can use that as an excuse to debase basic consumer rights.

 

[MasochisticAvenger]

Again, he bought the in-game items before downloading the game and ensuring it would work. It is his own fault he did that; EA did not force him to buy the content before getting the game. He really has no one to blame but himself.

So EA shouldn't refund him because fuck that guy?

While the situation is unpleasant, the fact of the matter is the original poster jumped the gun with his purchase. I'm not saying EA is completely blameless: they do have a responsibility to ensure the products they put out do work (from what I've read, this isn't an uncommon problem with the game), but the original poster needs to accept his own responsibility in the matter as well.

 

[MasochisticAvenger]

-Zooty!-

-Zoot zoot!-

I think you boys had best be moving along. One of you is in the red for comments like that and the other is probably well on his way.

OT: I say the OP's choice of action is correct and EA just decided to act like a child in return. Companies who don't give the customer what they want (like working products) are liable for an inability to commit to a simple service, period. There can be no argument there. No game working? No fix game? No get money. End of story. It's their fault, so they pay for it. So yes, give them every form of hell and, in fact, get on their ass about this bogus banning too. The more you make them have to deal with you, the less they'll want to, and have to acclimate. And they can't DO anything about that because you're not in the wrong.

You're ignoring one very important factor: the original poster did not pay anything for the game. Yes, the game should work, but they haven't paid for a faulty product. They jumped the gun by buying in-game items before ensuring the actual game worked on their computer, so they should have to bare the consequences. This whole customer entitlement is getting a little tiring.

Damn consumers expecting to use the stuff they pay for. They should just give companies money and then eat the turd that gets dumped in their cheerios.

Your basically saying "Okay well he didn't pay for the house, but he paid for stuff in the house, but the house has no doors and it's his fault."

EA apologists.. the worst people on earth.

Yes, that's exactly right. He did not make sure he would be able to have access to the things he bought, so it is his own fault he wasn't able to access them. He paid for the items in the game NOT the game itself.

If he had paid for the game itself it would be a different story.

It's irrelevant if it's the game itself or bonus content. If he paid for it and can't use it for no fault of his own, he should get a refund. No ifs and buts.

Again, he bought the in-game items before downloading the game and ensuring it would work. It is his own fault he did that; EA did not force him to buy the content before getting the game. He really has no one to blame but himself.

Just so we're clear: I am not saying companies shouldn't have to give refunds for faulty products. If he had paid money for the actual game, or he'd confirmed the game worked, bought some content, and then it suddenly stopped working, I would be saying he deserves a refund.

Why are we assuming the game not working is a reasonable state of affairs that a custumer should accept? It's the company's job to state clearly where it should and should not work and correct it when it behaves differently. A free product is still a product. If it didn't work as advertised, they don't get to keep the guy's money. It's not like he's trying to profit from the situation, he just wants the whole thing null and void.

I agree he was careless, but not that EA can use that as an excuse to debase basic consumer rights.

I'm not saying the game not working is acceptable. All I'm arguing is the original poster is not innocent in this matter, and he is just trying to pass the blame onto someone else.

Yeah it sucks, and EA could have given him the refund out of good faith, but I do not believe they should have been required to give the refund. Threatening to dispute the charge was over exaggerating; it's no different to those parents who give their credit card details to their kids, then ***** to Microsoft/Facebook/Apple when their kids spend five hundred dollars, and then act like it's all the company's fault because their wasn't a million warnings and a way to stop the child from spending too much.

Honestly, I think the original poster should have just been happy it wasn't any more than twenty dollars and learned from his mistakes.

 

[AnarchistFish]

I find it impossible to sympathise with you because you gave money to EA. Some may call that a petty reason, I call it entirely justified. Complain on reddit or something, but even that website is saturated with "EA are dicks" stories.

Wow, your hatred of EA runs so deep that you don's see victims anymore. All you are are "willing participants."

i've read enough stories of "EA botched this" "EA buggered that" and "EA took my money and delivered a poor product" to be

a) desensitized
b) blame people for continually displaying a shit sense of pattern recognition
c) quite satisfied in being a consumer with a brain rather than relying on a corporation which would rather satisfy shareholders than customers.

d) all of the above.

Who else are they gonna get the games off then?

Yeah that's petty

 

[Rednog]

Just want to chime in that Steam doesn't do refunds either.....well they do a single refund in your lifetime but only if they approve it. Yet it's the same old "Fuck EA how dare they have god awful policies like this, burn them to the ground!" all while giving a luscious blowjob to valve for having the exact same policy.

 

[Baldr]

While the situation is unpleasant, the fact of the matter is the original poster jumped the gun with his purchase. I'm not saying EA is completely blameless: they do have a responsibility to ensure the products they put out do work (from what I've read, this isn't an uncommon problem with the game), but the original poster needs to accept his own responsibility in the matter as well.

To a point. However, were I in EA's position, I would first try to pull out all the stops to get functionality in place for the base product, and failing that, refund the guy. The good will of your customers is more important than some short-term chump change.

I tried for two weeks to get the game running. Did everything the support people asked me. When I ran the diagnostic tool, there was a problem between my ISP and the modem, I was not the only one who was having these problems, there was no documented solution. It just got to the point where the customer service people were telling me to do the same things over and over again.

I agree with others it wasn't the smartest move buying game currency on a game I had never played before, but I have a decent computer and tech savy, so there was no iota of thought that the game was not going to work. Yeah it occurred to me the game could be bad, but I would deal with that.

I'm not really a victim here, I got a refund from a company that has a no refund on digital good policy(only because I threaten them with something that would be worse for them in the long run)

I did want to add this: The customer service representative told be the best option would be to create a new Origin id and to refrain from doing what caused me to get banned in the first place.

Good Advice! Not buy any EA products.