EA Bans Users for Asking for Refunds

[srm79]

Well there have to be some of us around to fly the flag of logic when the rest of you are busy slinging your shit around with typical 'lol EA is the devilz' posts.

OT: From what I understand from the replies this was predictably blown out of proportion, but I'm sure I remember someone mentioning in a Sim City thread that it's written into EA's T&C's that if you ask for a refund you can be banned.

I dunno if he was kidding, but the rest of his post seemed serious enough.

See, I just don't understand this "logic". Are you saying it's acceptable for a company to turn around and say "regardless of how unsatisfactory you find our product, we're keeping your money. And if you complain about it, we'll take back our shit and keep your money"?

That's basically theft. And this is OK?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a chip on my shoulder about EA. I don't like the route they have taken with insisting that all games have multiplayer, whether they need it or not, and I don't like what has happened to some once-great studios under their ownership but we're surely at the stage now where any studio selling itself to EA knows what they are getting into.

I even understand the logic behind the yearly sports releases that so many decry. If, say, a football fan is willing to spend £100+ on new strips every year, hundreds of pounds on tickets to games etc, then of course they'll pay £40 for an annual update to FIFA. And in fairness every couple of years they do bring something new into the game.

I could even (gasp) be accused of being part of the "EA problem" - I bought into the Premium thing on Battlefield 3 and have loved every bit of it.

This, however is blatantly wrong, even for a company with EA's reputation. I don't see how any reasonable consumer could look at this situation and say to themselves "nothing wrong with that". They put out a press release saying that unsatisfied customers could ask for a refund. Why do that then tell someone who follows up on it to fuck off? It's not even like the guy trying for the refund was being a douche or being overly aggressive to the EA rep. It's just plain wrong, end of story, and if the guy is in the UK I hope he takes this up with the Office of Trading Standards.

 

[rob_simple]

Well there have to be some of us around to fly the flag of logic when the rest of you are busy slinging your shit around with typical 'lol EA is the devilz' posts.

OT: From what I understand from the replies this was predictably blown out of proportion, but I'm sure I remember someone mentioning in a Sim City thread that it's written into EA's T&C's that if you ask for a refund you can be banned.

I dunno if he was kidding, but the rest of his post seemed serious enough.

See, I just don't understand this "logic". Are you saying it's acceptable for a company to turn around and say "regardless of how unsatisfactory you find our product, we're keeping your money. And if you complain about it, we'll take back our shit and keep your money"?

That's basically theft. And this is OK?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a chip on my shoulder about EA. I don't like the route they have taken with insisting that all games have multiplayer, whether they need it or not, and I don't like what has happened to some once-great studios under their ownership but we're surely at the stage now where any studio selling itself to EA knows what they are getting into.

I even understand the logic behind the yearly sports releases that so many decry. If, say, a football fan is willing to spend £100+ on new strips every year, hundreds of pounds on tickets to games etc, then of course they'll pay £40 for an annual update to FIFA. And in fairness every couple of years they do bring something new into the game.

I could even (gasp) be accused of being part of the "EA problem" - I bought into the Premium thing on Battlefield 3 and have loved every bit of it.

This, however is blatantly wrong, even for a company with EA's reputation. I don't see how any reasonable consumer could look at this situation and say to themselves "nothing wrong with that". They put out a press release saying that unsatisfied customers could ask for a refund. Why do that then tell someone who follows up on it to fuck off? It's not even like the guy trying for the refund was being a douche or being overly aggressive to the EA rep. It's just plain wrong, end of story, and if the guy is in the UK I hope he takes this up with the Office of Trading Standards.

Oh don't misunderstand, I'm not defending EA's actions, what I'm against is the droves of people who flock in every time EA is mentioned to say 'well what do you expect it's EA' or 'and this is why I will never buy a game from EA' before all the facts have come to light, and some even have the cheek to have a go at those of us who actually say, 'well hold on, do we know what really happened, here?'.

I've not been keeping up with this particular story, but my understanding from reading the first couples of pages was that while the OP had implied that this was happening to hundreds of people, the actual story only regarded one user having the problem, and it was the threat of a ban not a flat-out ban. Then it came to light that the ban happens if you reverse the charge for the product at your bank which, if EA's system shows you own the product, they will regard as stealing which is absolutely a bannable offense, not to mention a crime.

The point I'm getting at, here, is that while EA's delivery system is clearly broken and their customer service sucks judging by the posts I've read, it is a completely different story to what all the kneejerk reactionists were painting when this topic first came up.

Like I say, I'm not defending EA in this situation, but I will always give them the benefit of the doubt until we can get all the available information, because the (partially justified) hate against them almost inevitably leads to a heavily biased chain of events, and if people weren't always so quick to jump in with 'told you so' remarks we might be able to foster more rational discussion and get to the truth that much quicker.

 

[Church185]

Well, the way I look at it is this:

If someone buys a game with an online component, say for example Diablo 3, and they (for whatever reason) use a chargeback to get a refund for the game, I think it would be fair for Blizzard to ban you from Diablo 3. After all, if you bought Diablo 3, and felt so appalled that you had to request a chargeback, you clearly didn't want the product after all. And I'd even agree on Blizzard refusing to sell anything else to this person.

If someone buys a game from a digital distribution platform, and feels (again, for whatever reason) the need to use a chargeback, it would not be fair to then deny them access to the rest of the games they've already paid for.

And it doesn't even make sense business-wise. If I used a chargeback for a refund of a Steam game, and permanently lost my access to my extensive Steam library, I'd be after Valve for compensation for all of those games, instead of just the one. At the very least, I'd be a bigger headache, and at most, they'd end up paying me for over a hundred games instead of one.

I completely understand that losing all your games is shitty. I get that, but using a chargeback is claiming that the company put a fraudulent charge on your bank account or credit card. Using it inappropriately to get a refund is fraudulent activity against the company you make the claim against. Getting banned from their digital distribution seems justified in that case. I'm still saying that losing your games is really awful, but if you are really in the right and deserve a refund for the product, they will give it to you. If they don't, take your evidence to the Better Business Bureau, I'm sure they would love to know that a company is screwing consumers. Posting on a forum to get attention will not solve a whole lot.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

This is probably the best worded and most clearly explained position on this topic I have ever seen. If I could give you karma for this I would. I'll probably be often citing this post in the future.

Thanks. I do my best to be as clear as possible, thought it is one of the reasons I try not comment as much as I want to.

I tend to tell myself that I'm going to make a quick and concise comment, but then it ends up being twenty or so minutes later before I post.

You do that. It's a heap of nonsense.

There's a country mile between "perfection" and "remotely functional". If you think the state of the game right now is acceptable for an online product at launch, then you might as well be an alien selling me moon rocks, because we do not inhabit the same reality.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/07/simcity-vs-the-people-why-apologies-arent-enough/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2013/03/07/amazon-pulls-digital-edition-of-simcity-as-ea-struggles-to-fix-servers/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57573053-1/simcity-launch-a-complete-disaster/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/we-built-this-simcity-on-a-shaky-foundation-of-drm/

You can wax poetic and pontificate on consumer awareness and the legitimacy of always online all you want. If you ship a product and sell it to consumers, you have an obligation to meet certain minimal quality standards. The situation with this game is WAY past the point of acceptable/understandable start up issues.

You can point out "articles" like those all you want, which some have already been pointed out in this thread(and other similar rage and news threads.

I still stand by what I said concerning consumer rights and responsibilities. I didn't say those things without full knowledge of whats going on.

I've had plenty of experience with new online launches, and even with all that has happened, I still see a typical online launch with expected out of nowhere problems. I've seen people play the game with no problems and others that did have problems, typical hit and miss online launch problems. With millions of people playing, it is expected you will have large amounts of both types of encounters with the game.

You can test and tweak a game and the servers all you want but you are never going to get a launch where every person can play and is happy.

I consider, if it works for some, as minimal quality standards. With the complexity and temperamental nature of online gaming technology, especially using such a new technology with Cloud storage and processing to run the game, your minimal quality standards for release can't be that the game is outright playable for everybody on the start. That is the reason I say people are looking for perfection, because in order for the game to be at that playability level, it has to be functionally perfect.

If you want online games to be released with that level of playability, developers would have to work on such games for around as long as Duke Nukem Forever's development time(and we all know how that turned out), but then the developer would be faced with the other edge of the proverbial sword with the problem that when they finally release their perfect functioning game, it will be out of date for the times and probably again face functionality problems because it took them so long to tweak the game that it isn't compatible with what technology has progressed to.

At this point, an online game not working for everybody on launch is expected. It is something we have to live with if we want the games we have an invested interest in to come out within a reasonable time.

If I had gotten SimCity on launch and I was one of the ones effected, yes I would be a little annoyed, but I would spend the maintenance time playing one of the other hundreds PC or Console games I have at my finger tips in my room.

With online games, if I can't play on launch because of problems(doesn't matter how much I paid), my first response will never be that I want refund.

Besides, I guarantee that the reason this little problem is getting this kind of attention, is because it is EA.

EA....The company that people love to hate because it is EA. They could give money to help feed starving orphans and people would still find something wrong with what they did. I would at least expect a stupid comment like, "Stupid EA! Orphans can't eat money!"

I'll end by saying:

I'll never be a part of the Rabble Rabble Refund Gang. Patience is a virtue. With calls for refunds only a day or two after an online launch, it's pretty sad how many people aren't virtuous.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You can point out "articles" like those all you want, which some have already been pointed out in this thread (and other similar rage and news threads).

I still stand by what I said concerning consumer rights and responsibilities. I didn't say those things without full knowledge of whats going on.

I've had plenty of experience with new online launches, and even with all that has happened, I still see a typical online launch with expected out of nowhere problems. I've seen people play the game with no problems and others that did have problems, typical hit and miss online launch problems. With millions of people playing, it is expected you will have large amounts of both types of encounters with the game.

You can test and tweak a game and the servers all you want but you are never going to get a launch where every person can play and is happy.

I consider, if it works for some, as minimal quality standards. With the complexity and temperamental nature of online gaming technology, especially using such a new technology with Cloud storage and processing to run the game, your minimal quality standards for release can't be that the game is outright playable for everybody on the start. That is the reason I say people are looking for perfection, because in order for the game to be at that playability level, it has to be functionally perfect.

If you want online games to be released with that level of playability, developers would have to work on such games for around as long as Duke Nukem Forever's development time(and we all know how that turned out), but then the developer would be faced with the other edge of the proverbial sword with the problem that when they finally release their perfect functioning game, it will be out of date for the times and probably again face functionality problems because it took them so long to tweak the game that it isn't compatible with what technology has progressed to.

At this point, an online game not working for everybody on launch is expected. It is something we have to live with if we want the games we have invested interest in to come out within a reasonable time.

If I had gotten SimCity on launch and I was one of the ones effected, yes I would be a little annoyed, but I would spend the maintenance time playing one of the other hundreds PC or Console games I have at my finger tips in my room.

With online games, if I can't play on launch because of problems(doesn't matter how much I paid), my first response will never be that I want refund.

Besides, I guarantee that the reason this little problem is getting this kind of attention, is because it is EA.

EA....The company that people love to hate because it is EA. They could give money to help feed starving orphans and people would still find something wrong with what they did. I would at least expect a stupid comment like, "Stupid EA! Orphans can't eat money!"

I'll end by saying:

I'll never be a part of the Rabble Rabble Refund Gang. Patience is a virtue. With calls for refunds only a day or two after an online launch, it's pretty sad how many people aren't virtuous.

I know it's fait d'accompli that a contentious response to a forum post will provoke an equally contentious reply, but all you've done here is regurgitate your previous talking points, and I've already been pretty frank about how I view your perspective. On the surface, it appears almost willfully obstinate. You hand wave all evidence of the disastrous launch...which has been EXTREMELY well documented and given to us from reputable sources...as "articles", and attribute them to "rage threads". You continue to insist that this is all part and parcel of launching an online game, and that expecting the game to work within a 3-4 day window of launch is "expecting perfection". I honestly don't know what to say to that. It is so far from reasonable you have stunned me into blinkered confusion. So well done on that count.

You carry on with inferred ad hominem in the form of "I would just spend my time doing something else", as though that hadn't occurred to me, or that wasn't exactly what I was already doing. I've not even asked for a refund. I am not leading the refund charge. I do believe, however, that launching a broken product should carry consequences, and customers asking for refunds can and should be one of them.

You ALSO carry on with "people love to hate because it's EA", as though I hadn't defended and promoted this game in spite of that fact right up until the moment of launch. I've hated EA since the late 90's, yet I continue to buy their games. Because I assess games on a case by case basis, and don't run publisher/developer boycotts. I realize the canned response to this is "Lol sucks to be you for trusting EA", but EA products hit as often as they miss. This has nothing to do with who is publishing it, although to be frank EA has done very little in the preceding 12-15 years to earn good will, so they don't have much political capital to draw on when they shit the bed.

I'll say it again...I've been playing online games since the 90's. I've been in like a dirty shirt on almost every major MMO launch since Ultima Online, and I've seen some doozies. This is by far, and without question, the most bungled and singularly fucked up launch of an online product I have ever been witness to. Those "articles" are spot on. The savaging the launch of the game is getting in the gaming press...a press, I might add, that is traditionally sycophantic...is entirely merited. For someone to preen on a forum and claim this is business as usual for online launches takes a level of chutzpah I wasn't even aware existed in the human race.

You have created a false dilemma between "the perfect game" and "a completely non-functional POS" in order to argue that everyone is impatient and silly, and EA are good dudes doing a good job, and little things like "The game doesn't work" is just par for the course in this exciting new era of online gaming, which is almost 20 years old now. It's ridiculous to assume that they, say, would have launched the game with more than 6 servers, to assure this wouldn't happen, after bloviating endlessly about how much they learned from the Diablo 3 fiasco. Or that they'd freeze sales of the game after the demand crushed the servers, like Arena Net did with GW2 despite not experiencing 1/10th of the technical difficulties SimCity has. Or that they'd communicate more clearly and readily, so that it wasn't a constant mystery as to whether or not the server was actually up, or just claims it was up in the bugged launcher. Or that they wouldn't continue to smugly suggest everyone "play on other, available" servers long after it was demonstrated server swapping was bugged and almost no one was able to make cities anywhere. Etc, etc, etc.

No, those would be crazy, reckless assumptions, on the part of impatient, childish consumers. Expecting their game to work. What babies! The Rabble Rabble Refund Gang, we'll call them, and pontificate at length about the merits of infinite patience.

You may reply, if you wish, but unless the reply is "Actually upon reflection I drank some bad milk last night and found myself believing this Simcity launch was entirely business as usual" then you can expect the tenor of conversation to devolve from here. It's probably best we just accept that our views wildly diverge on this issue and leave it at that. I'm going to end up getting a host of infractions if I continue to debate this.

 

[vasiD]

http://i.imgur.com/VEJIVmk.jpg

Ok apparently this guy got a refund with little to no fuss so...what the fuck is going on.

What do you think of Origin & EA?
Answer should be gooks.

Regardless of him being an asshole I still laughed. EA have been acting like assholes to their customers a lot lately. I don't see the issue people have with giving them a little back.

because the little guy you deal with doesn't make these policies, he's just a front of house work a day dude trying to pay his bills like the rest of us and the last thing he needs is a load of abuse from a self entitled customer when all it takes is simply and politely explaining the situation.
Ever wonder what causes bad customer service? It's dealing with people like that for five hours that makes you wanna dick over everyone. Anyone who's worked in customer service knows exactly that.

I think it's more likely the customer Rep actually laughed at this bit here. You have to remember these people hate their company just as much as we do, if not more because for every fucked up thing the CEO does they have to put up with all the pissed off customers while the guys causing the problems are getting extra-marital hand jobs in 'massage parlors'.

While I don't think anyone should ever yell at or get personal with a customer rep (which isn't happening here), I don't think it's unreasonable to be forceful with your demand for a refund when a big company like this has genuinely ripped you off and has already made it publicly known that they're going to be thorny over giving you a refund.

 

[vasiD]

Snip.

Snip.

BLOATEDGUPPY WINS!


FLAWLESS VICTORY!


Seriously though short of being in EA's PR no one has any reason to defend the practice of selling a broken product and refusing refunds, even if that product will work at some point in the future.

If you brought home a microwave but for some weird reason it wouldn't work when you plugged it it, you would be entitled to a refund even if the company said "oh, well it will be working at some point soon..." Only in the games industry is this becoming acceptable to offer a broken product without any recompense.

And don't tell me how this 'happens all the time'. No, no it fucking doesn't, buggy games get released pretty often and patched later but rarely is a game ever ENTIRELY broken, to where you can't even play it at all, and when it is that shit raises a stink.

I seriously can't understand this corporate ball-licking that I see on gamer sites, either it is absurdly fucking crazy how brainwashed into loving these amoral multinational corporations fans of their developers have gotten or they're public relations people in disguise: either way fuck off, we'll be drinking none of your special kool-aid today.

 

[vasiD]

Thats harsh and unfair as hell for the customer but OK its true than they all do this lol.

Harsh? possibly. Unfair? Not really. Chargebacks exist for when a customer has had their credit card info stolen and used to buy things. Or if the company they dealt with has DEFRAUDED them. Not getting a refund is not fraud. People can argue the semantics on if EA delivered what the customer agreed to buy all they want, that is still not fraud. Fraud is a legal term that requires precise things to have happened to be true. In *THOSE* cases is when when chargebacks should be used... and when they are, it costs's everyone money.

I used to run the billing department at a web hosting company about 10 years ago. People liked to sign up for service, then issue a chargeback. When they did, I would have to spend several hours gathering documentation for the credit card company, filling out forms, etc. If they found in our favor great, we keep the money and the customer usually got dumped by their card provider. If they found for the customer however, we would loose the money we got form them, and get hit with tons of fees plus the cost of my time (which billed at about 35 an hour) and the time lost on other more important things I should have been doing.

Chargebacks are no joke and companies are within their right to sever and and all business relationships with someone who issue one against them falsely. As a matter of fact, the credit card companies ENCOURAGE them to do it to lower the likely hood of it happening again by that customer.

Let me just pop in here and cut your ill-defined argument off at the knees. Fraud isn't some magical term that only applies under special conditions, Fraud is defined as the following: In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain.

By this definition it is arguable that EA committed Fraud when it accepted a high number of preorders without purchasing proper servers in an attempt to save themselves money: They even publicly claimed this wouldn't happen, if I may take an exert from this Kotaku article from around the time Diablo III was launching:
"We've got experience from Spore and Darkspore," Katserelis said, citing other recent Maxis games. "EA is an on online company. We're definitely watching what's going on at Blizzard, and we're putting in backstops and checks to try to prevent those kind of things from happening."

So: They publicly claimed their game would be prepared at launch, and it was not ready for that launch just so they could save money on servers they might end up not using after the user base quiets down post-launch, yet they still took a high number of pre-orders.

If I may translate: They lied to people across the world about the state of their game and their readiness for launch so that they could take in extra money from purchases and save money on servers. AKA They created an intentional deception made for personal gain, visa-vie Fraud with a capital F.

Check and mate.

 

[Awexsome]

Again with the EA overreaction hate?

It's already been explained by others how the ban was only threatened for the charge-back action which seems entirely reasonable to do to a customer that would go through with that.

Yeah EA released a broken game with all these issues but other than continuing to keep the internet abuzz with how shit they are (which they've earned) there is no precedent for forcefully taking refunds. They're still working on trying to fix the game so that it does work as intended and so long as they get it into working shape the only thing they earn is more vitriol being thrown at them while the game doesn't work so they don't think they can just leave it and move on.

So yes, EA's launch has been incompetent and horrible but there's always customers that expect more than feasibly and legally possible when things do go wrong.

 

[cefm]

The ban threat is probably a reply to the possible charge-back. But I think it does showcase what a weak position we have as consumers if disagreements arise.....

Your position as a customer is considerably strengthened if you wait a week or so for initial reviews of the product to come out from critics and players. If your money stays in your pocket until you KNOW what you're buying, you don't end up in this situation.

 

[pblizard]

All I can picture is some fat cat sitting in a dark meeting room, yelling at some poor office clerk - "Why isn't anyone buying spunkgargleweewee 77!!"
Poor office clerk "Well, there is no one left to buy it, they have all been banned for demanding refunds."

 

[nope321444141]

People are afraid of EA banning their account? What are they going to do? Lock us out of Origin that basically no one likes? I haven't bought a game from EA in the last three or four years and I can't be alone on that one. Not to mention anyone they ban from their system is now a paying customer of steam (if they weren't already).

I like Origin's client UI, and there Customer Support.

 

[Sargonas42]

Let me just pop in here and cut your ill-defined argument off at the knees. Fraud isn't some magical term that only applies under special conditions, Fraud is defined as the following: In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain.

By this definition it is arguable that EA committed Fraud when it accepted a high number of preorders without purchasing proper servers in an attempt to save themselves money: They even publicly claimed this wouldn't happen, if I may take an exert from this Kotaku article from around the time Diablo III was launching:
"We've got experience from Spore and Darkspore," Katserelis said, citing other recent Maxis games. "EA is an on online company. We're definitely watching what's going on at Blizzard, and we're putting in backstops and checks to try to prevent those kind of things from happening."

So: They publicly claimed their game would be prepared at launch, and it was not ready for that launch just so they could save money on servers they might end up not using after the user base quiets down post-launch, yet they still took a high number of pre-orders.

If I may translate: They lied to people across the world about the state of their game and their readiness for launch so that they could take in extra money from purchases and save money on servers. AKA They created an intentional deception made for personal gain, visa-vie Fraud with a capital F.

Check and mate.

Several problems with this point of yours. First off, you *are* right in that Fraud applies to "Intentional Deception for Gain". The thing is, the bar for what is "Intentional" is kinda tricky. In this case, it would be really hard to explain to any reasonable entity that this scenario is intentional. Intentional would be if EA had done all of this on purpose, with no intent of ever trying to deliver the experience advertised, ever. That's not the case here. Are they are Negligent, due to poor planning on their part? Quite possibly. That would definitely not be intentional deceit however. It's pretty clear here they made a concerted effort to provide what they thought was the best they could do with the resources they had, and discovered it was, in fact, not enough and are now making every effort to correct this issue as fast as possible. One Dev in particular, according to twitter, has not been home in 3 days while working on this. Those are not the actions of fraudulent people trying to take your money and run.

Second of all, you are making an assumption that the problem is with server capacity decisions based on money saving. What if the problem was that they had enough servers, but the software they wrote was being crippled by the amount of data they were handling and routing? (Something which any experienced Ops person will tell you cannot be fixed by just throwing more hardware at it.) In that case, it has nothing to do with them lying about anything to save money and everything to do with software that was no written up to the task. Or maybe the problem is that some 3rd party they are relying on for part of their services has dropped the ball on them and left them holding the bag, but due to the complex bullsh*t of the corporate wold they are not able to point finger and are sucking it up and taking the hit for it. Or what if some group of script kiddies is bored this weekend and though they would take pot shots at EA during prime time and are DDOSing their servers? This is not something EA would openly admit since it would be both an admission of weakness in their infrastructure as well as give those people undue spotlight for their actions, which is exactly what they want. Is any of those scenarios actually the case here? Who knows. Probably not but certainly no one on this forums is in a position to make judgements either way on them and jumping to conclusions is risky.

In short, sorry but I refuse to accept your argument that what they have done is actually Fraud based simply on the *known* facts. A total mess sure, but not Faud.

 

[malestrithe]

http://kotaku.com/5989299/no-ea-wont-ban-you-on-origin-if-you-ask-for-a-refund-for-simcity

It seems like people are jumping on a bandwagon to harang the company.

 

[Ecliptica Wolf]

So much drama. EA doesn't ban users like the thread suggests, it hasn't banned anyone yet has it?

 

[vasiD]

Snip.
Check and mate.

Are they are Negligent, due to poor planning on their part? Quite possibly.

No. No. Not quite possibly, that's fucking bullshit. They have a massive AAA title that at launch can't be played by a large part of it's user base. AT THE VERY LEAST they are negligent and poor planning and to even debate that honestly shows some serious gaps in logic. How are they not negligent? How is it not poor planing to not be prepared for launch?

It's pretty clear here they made a concerted effort to provide what they thought was the best they could do with the resources they had, and discovered it was, in fact, not enough and are now making every effort to correct this issue as fast as possible.

Oh yeah, because I forgot how limited the tiny EA is, I mean I forgot this is a indie company trying to put out their first AAA title, there was no way they could have been any more prepared because they had NO experience with anything like this. OH WAIT! EA has PUBLICLY admitted that they didn't put ANY servers in the Asia region where they had a very high number of preorder, so don't feed me the bullshit company line that they did all they could. They may be working around the clock to fix it, but that doesn't give them a pass. No the only thing that would have given them the pass would have been allowing unsatisfied customers to get refunds without difficulty, period.

Second of all, you are making an assumption that the problem is with server capacity decisions based on money saving. What if the problem was that they had enough servers, but the software they wrote was being crippled by the amount of data they were handling and routing? (Something which any experienced Ops person will tell you cannot be fixed by just throwing more hardware at it.) In that case, it has nothing to do with them lying about anything to save money and everything to do with software that was no written up to the task. Or maybe the problem is that some 3rd party they are relying on for part of their services has dropped the ball on them and left them holding the bag, but due to the complex bullsh*t of the corporate wold they are not able to point finger and are sucking it up and taking the hit for it. Or what if some group of script kiddies is bored this weekend and though they would take pot shots at EA during prime time and are DDOSing their servers? This is not something EA would openly admit since it would be both an admission of weakness in their infrastructure as well as give those people undue spotlight for their actions, which is exactly what they want. Is any of those scenarios actually the case here? Who knows. Probably not but certainly no one on this forums is in a position to make judgements either way on them and jumping to conclusions is risky.

This is some bullshit buck-passage, as I said it is now publicly known that there are no Asia servers, and when it comes to who's fault that is it falls squarely on the publisher as that is one of the very few jobs they have in a game release: they are supposed to print hard copies and see to digital distribution and also ensure the game has adequate servers.

Don't try and pass around the blame to unknown third parties or hackers, that's fucking stupid. If either were the case do you think EA wouldn't say anything about it? What complex corporate bullshit are you talking about? Is it the same bullshit that kept Gearbox from throwing TimeGate under a bus a few weeks ago for Aliens? OH WAIT!!!

In short, sorry but I refuse to accept your argument that what they have done is actually Fraud based simply on the *known* facts. A total mess sure, but not Faud.

So, hopefully by this point you've realized you're wrong and the simple lack of Asian servers solidifies what I was talking about into genuine fraud (especially for that region), if not, you are in denial sir.

If that is the case I have one serious question to ask you, all of this business aside: Why in the fuck are you taking time of your day to defend this multinational corporation that has fucked over it's fans so much that it was quite literally voted the worst company in the Untied States last year?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Second of all, you are making an assumption that the problem is with server capacity decisions based on money saving.

As one of their earliest responses was to add more servers, and they have announced an intention to add still more, it seems like a fairly cogent assumption that they launched with far fewer than might have been advisable, especially given the historical precedent that they swore up and down they were aware of and had taken steps not to duplicate.

However, you are correct. This is not fraud. It is incompetence garnished with greed, but it is not fraud.

 

[WickedSkin]

That was one representative. I've had such problems with NCSoft and others. So this is not an EA exclusive behaviour, we all know this, it all ways boils down to who/how/you. Valve's "Steam" and EA's "Origin" -services is creepy stuff though. I've never tried (or needed to try) to get a refund from those. But I'm a careful customer (because I'm not an idiot).
Also adding that I'm staying well clear of anything called "GFWL" or anything "Live" (associated with Microsoft).

When talking about refunds whether it's online, on the phone OR IRL, it all boils down to;
1. WHO you are talking to
2. HOW determined you are to get a refund
3. How good YOU are at negotiating
/FACT.

 

[Atmos Duality]

COMPLETELY ON TOPIC:
When talking about refunds whether it's online, on the phone OR IRL, it's all about WHO you are talking to and HOW determined you are to get a refund. FACT.

That speaks leagues more about the state of customer service than anything.
And it's a very sad state of affairs indeed.

 

[WickedSkin]

COMPLETELY ON TOPIC:
When talking about refunds whether it's online, on the phone OR IRL, it's all about WHO you are talking to and HOW determined you are to get a refund. FACT.

That speaks leagues more about the state of customer service than anything.
And it's a very sad state of affairs indeed.

Indeed. Consumer protection/rights/laws/agreements are not there for your protection -they're there to it harder for you. How can I say that? Well anyone could easily write an essay on it, no problem, but it's easier just to look into your own experiences with those kinds of things.

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old shoe

No even close to on topic. Well maybe a little with some help.