EA Bans Users for Asking for Refunds

[Sargonas42]

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?

Honestly? You want to know why? Because for the last 10 years I have dedicated my career to making video games, something I love, for other people. 6 of those years (but not any longer) were spent at EA. Did they fuck this up? You damn well *bet* they did. Could they have done better? Yup! Do they make stupid decisions that look at the bottom line and not the consumer at times? Yup.

They, (and many other studios like 343, Gearbox, Bungie, Valve, THQ, Riot, and Blizzard) are also staffed by some great friends and colleagues of mine. These people do amazing work, they spend 40-70 hours a week of their lives voluntarily to make a video game, of all things, for you. Some of these guys have degrees in Neuroscience, Law, even Doctors and Physicists... and they choose to spend their adult life making something else for someone to play with and enjoy for a fifth of what they could make elsewhere because they love it. Shit sometimes gets in the way of that vision that they can't control individually, but at the end of the day these are gamers like you and me who could do anything they want, and what they want to do is slave away for something that by time it's done, we are so burned out we hardly even play it sometimes. We do it for you guys and then when human error (and admittedly yes, miss management, corporate industry politics/finances, shareholder greed, and sometimes just acts of god) get in the way, you guys yell doom and gloom and rant on conspiracy theories and act like EA/Activision/Blizzard/MS/Sony is housed in some evil black obelisk of doom staffed by a bunch of heartless money counters with no care what so ever for the industry.

Devs are gamers too. And when they screw up, best believe they realize it, and they want to fix it. When companies screw up damn right someone should call them out. Heck I'll be right there with you on it. But when pitch forks come out and people start a riot against ANY company, not just EA, based on sensational rumors, arm-char expert speculation, and misguided facts made up to support personal opinions, I and others like me will be there to try to set the record straight for our colleagues.

(As to the worst company in the US thing... I still think that is ridiculous. There is documented proof out there that there are companies who single handedly brought about the recession due to greed and corporate stupidity. Companies who knowingly and maliciously effed over people for billions of dollars and then took another loan from the government for billions more with no intent of paying it back because they were "too big to fail" and someone is going to try to say that EA really was the worst company in America? When EA is forced into laying off 10-20% of its staff (some who have been there for 15+ years) as a direct result of those actions? Please. Have some perspective.)

 

[II2]

I posted this in another Sim City consumer issue thread before I noticed this one. You guys know the story, but for those of you having trouble accessing the OP's article, here's an image of the transcript:

Technically, they threatened a ban for redacting/reclaiming the digital transaction via their bank or credit card after refusing a refund. They said to use this channel request refunds, but did not, in fine print, actually PROMISE any.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

They, (and many other studios like 343, Gearbox, Bungie, Valve, THQ, Riot, and Blizzard) are also staffed by some great friends and colleagues of mine. These people do amazing work, they spend 40-70 hours a week of their lives voluntarily to make a video game, of all things, for you.

What is THIS happy horseshit? They do it for a salary and because they have a passion for the work. They're not doing me a fucking favor. I PAY THEM. This is quid pro quo. Please let us not go down this "noble content provider" route. These games are not an act of charity. This is a business. They slapped a mighty fucking price tag on this game and sold it as a product. All airy fairy notions of "they're doing it for you, dawg!" go out the window at the point that money changes hands.

...act like EA/Activision/Blizzard/MS/Sony is housed in some evil black obelisk of doom staffed by a bunch of heartless money counters with no care what so ever for the industry.

Naturally organizations are staffed by human beings, but our relationship as consumers is not with those individual human beings, it is with the organization as an entity. And a publicly traded organization like EA cares about the shareholders first and foremost and everyone else not so much at all, including (quite notoriously) the health and welfare of their own employees for a period of time. EA is not a misunderstood paragon. EA is a corporation. They want to turn a buck. And they've put on quite the clown show for a great many years now while doing so. They're like a machine designed for the sole purpose of perpetually creating PR blunders. Other large software publishers don't have HALF the taint on their name that EA does. I won't pretend the hate doesn't get silly sometimes, but let's not pretend EA has done nothing to earn this black hat reputation.

(As to the worst company in the US thing... I still think that is ridiculous. There is documented proof out there that there are companies who single handedly brought about the recession due to greed and corporate stupidity. Companies who knowingly and maliciously effed over people for billions of dollars and then took another loan from the government for billions more with no intent of paying it back because they were "too big to fail" and someone is going to try to say that EA really was the worst company in America? When EA is forced into laying off 10-20% of its staff (some who have been there for 15+ years) as a direct result of those actions? Please. Have some perspective.)

Yes, that was absurd. On that, we are in agreement. Worst gaming company, maybe, although that honor rightly belongs to Hammerpoint this year. Worst company? Not even in the same ballpark. Not even in the same LEAGUE.

PS - A few posts back you essentially applauded a rambling post that said this Simcity launch was business as usual for an online game and that everyone complaining was more or less being a big whiny prat having a tantrum because the game wasn't "perfect". I will say the same thing to you that I say to Dexter. You are BIASED, sir. Your long standing relationship with the company has left you unable to be objective on this issue. The launch of this game has been a bed-shit of cosmic proportions. They do not merit the enthusiasm of your defense.

Technically, they threatened a ban for redacting/reclaiming the digital transaction via their bank or credit card after refusing a refund. They said to use this channel request refunds, but did not, in fine print, actually PROMISE any.

We've all seen that, it's been making the rounds for days. The rep handled it terribly, but a ban is an automatic consequence of a charge back on any digital distribution platform. As TB said, the charge back is the nuclear deterrent of customer/vendor relations. You don't break it out unless you intend to go to war.

 

[Galen Marek]

Then later in the thread we have evidence that EA will hand out a refund if you ask them and don't go to your bank first trying to get a charge back.

wat?

My question is, where was the first guy from? Was he American in America?
Because the second bloke was an Australian in Australia it would seem and our laws/policies regarding these situation are, if I'm not mistaken, different to those of America.

If that is the case, your comparing Apples with Oranges.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Large companies never give agency to people who pick up the phones, and you're never going to get anywhere because they can't do anything. All they can do is parrot the official stance. I think EA should definitely be giving refunds because the product does not work as advertised, but I believe the threat of banning was in response to the threat of bank-enforced refund, which would be fair enough.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

You know what else is a virtue? Honesty. The folks producing these products are virtue free.

You know what really should be a virtue? Holding up to your obligations. Apparently, not doing that is okay, though, as you attack the virture of only the people who want money back for a defective (yes, it's defective) product.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

He was being a bastard about it. The staff member clearly stated its their policy and he can't. The idiot decided to keep going on about it.
If I was the staff member, even if I could have done something I wouldn't have.

 

[Laughing Man]

Quite a lot of opinion on something that seems quite simple.

The guy requested a refund, EA should have given it to him but for some reason the rep on the other end decided not to go ahead and do it, why we don't know. The guy trying to get the refund then proceed to make a very stupid threat of getting a refund via his bank, AND IT WAS A THREAT so the EA rep said that if did this he would get banned, which I am pretty sure is common policy for any of the DD services out there including the much vaunted Steam. The guy then decided that he was a total winner and proceeded to act like a douche bag.

All he had to do was log off, wait an hour and then try to get a refund from another rep and chances are he would have gotten one.

As for the rest of it, shock horror internets in uproar over balls up in new release that requires always on DRM and it isn't working... move on nothing to see here folks!

 

[Rattja]

I'll just pop this one in here too I guess

http://static.gamer.no/images/13/1382/138205/61bbe87891f267ba9e6ccbca4dfe2fa2_easupport2_1306x606.f.png

Regardless if they want to give refunds or not, it is (as the guy says) in direct conflict with our laws.

But my biggest problem here is their attitude, this is no way to treat your costumers =/

 

[Rachmaninov]

The rep handled it terribly, but a ban is an automatic consequence of a charge back on any digital distribution platform.

The guy trying to get the refund then proceed to make a very stupid threat of getting a refund via his bank, AND IT WAS A THREAT so the EA rep said that if did this he would get banned, which I am pretty sure is common policy for any of the DD services out there including the much vaunted Steam.

This isn't true. Earlier in this very thread someone posted a screencap of Steam's rules regarding chargebacks. If I remember it correctly, they temporarily suspend you, and once everything's cleared, unsuspend you again.

Banning someone from the whole service is not a fair, or even remotely legal response to disputing the validity of one charge. Some people would lose hundreds of dollars of games. Just because you had a problem with a customer on one charge does not give you the right to retroactively take away everything they've ever bought from you, regardless of what any TOS says, because a TOS can never override the law.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This isn't true. Earlier in this very thread someone posted a screencap of Steam's rules regarding chargebacks. If I remember it correctly, they temporarily suspend you, and once everything's cleared, unsuspend you again.

Banning someone from the whole service is not a fair, or even remotely legal response to disputing the validity of one charge. Some people would lose hundreds of dollars of games. Just because you had a problem with a customer on one charge does not give you the right to retroactively take away everything they've ever bought from you, regardless of what any TOS says, because a TOS can never override the law.

Yeah I did some reading about that after you posted this. Seems it's a very recent change. For the longest time Valve had a zero-tolerance policy for charge-backs.

As I understand it, the reason charge backs are viewed so negatively is because the seller not only loses the sale, they also get slapped with financial penalties on top of the lost sale, and can eventually end up with a soured relationship with the bank or credit card provider. It's not the same as a refund. It's basically an accusation of fraud.

While shutting down an entire account with hundreds of dollars in it does seem extreme, and I am not contesting that, people should really not be processing charge-backs as a way of forcing a refund unless they have incredibly compelling reasons. If you read through this thread I think you'll find I am not charitably disposed towards EA or their launch of Simcity at the moment, but I still think charge backs are needlessly inflammatory and I'm not terribly surprised at a hostile reaction to them by the company. Especially when it's a rep who already refused to give a refund for the douchiest reason imaginable. What did you expect a rep like that to say in response to a charge back threat? Go ahead sir, we won't mind?

 

[Rachmaninov]

This isn't true. Earlier in this very thread someone posted a screencap of Steam's rules regarding chargebacks. If I remember it correctly, they temporarily suspend you, and once everything's cleared, unsuspend you again.

Banning someone from the whole service is not a fair, or even remotely legal response to disputing the validity of one charge. Some people would lose hundreds of dollars of games. Just because you had a problem with a customer on one charge does not give you the right to retroactively take away everything they've ever bought from you, regardless of what any TOS says, because a TOS can never override the law.

Yeah I did some reading about that after you posted this. Seems it's a very recent change. For the longest time Valve had a zero-tolerance policy for charge-backs.

As I understand it, the reason charge backs are viewed so negatively is because the seller not only loses the sale, they also get slapped with financial penalties on top of the lost sale, and can eventually end up with a soured relationship with the bank or credit card provider. It's not the same as a refund. It's basically an accusation of fraud.

While shutting down an entire account with hundreds of dollars in it does seem extreme, and I am not contesting that, people should really not be processing charge-backs as a way of forcing a refund unless they have incredibly compelling reasons. If you read through this thread I think you'll find I am not charitably disposed towards EA or their launch of Simcity at the moment, but I still think charge backs are needlessly inflammatory and I'm not terribly surprised at a hostile reaction to them by the company. Especially when it's a rep who already refused to give a refund for the douchiest reason imaginable. What did you expect a rep like that to say in response to a charge back threat? Go ahead sir, we won't mind?

Nah, of course a crappy customer service rep like that would threaten. I've worked alongside people like that before. The kind of people who are unnecessarily rude to customers are usually the type who just love to threaten customers with some kind of punishment if they can get away with it.

And I agree about customers not chasing charge-backs against companies under these circumstances, but right now, you're literally left with no recourse if they won't otherwise refund you. As far as the law goes (in the UK, at least) if you buy a product and it doesn't work as described, you're entitled to a refund, and that includes software, so neither Origin nor Steam really have a legal leg to stand on with their "No refunds, no matter the reason!" policy. Because again, it doesn't matter if it's their policy, if it's in the TOS, or if you signed your name in blood on a contract with witnesses too, the law can't be bypassed.

I can't really have any sympathy for a company getting charge-backs used against them, when they operate a policy which is counter to law in the hopes that people just don't know their rights, and deny them refunds that they're rightfully entitled to. Maybe the extra charges could be karmic retribution for all of the unaware people who fall for their "no refunds, no matter the reason!" line and walk away, leaving the company with their money that they didn't earn.

 

[WoW Killer]

I can kind of understand a no-returns policy for general gaming. You can return a hard copy of a game, but it's essentially a consumable product for all intents and purposes; once you've played through it, you've got your money's worth. Even if you set no returns after say a week, that's plenty of time to play through most releases. What you absolutely can't have is people returning products just because they're finished with it. But in this case, it's funnily enough the always-online that counters that argument. EA has all the information they need to enforce a proper policy. You could say something like no returns after 10 hours of playtime. And if people haven't been able to log on and play at all yet, what's it costing EA to return the thing?

Furthermore, I can't see there being that many people going for a return. It's all talk. This happens every time EA puts out a big release. People ***** and moan, but they did exactly the same thing for the last game. You'd have thought if people hated the company that much they'd stop giving them their money. I swear some people buy these games just so that they have something to moan about.

 

[ThriKreen]

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.

That's the thing, they're using Amazon EC2, so it's not hard for them to scale up the cloud. Look at SWTOR, they had a fairly painless launch for it (if not TOO many servers), so the capacity is there.

But you'd notice they're not just adding more capacity, but more server farms for us to select. For a cloud service, one should really be able to just scale up the back end and retain the existing pool. That hints there's something on the back end, perhaps the database or the software managing the region calculations, that is the bottleneck. It's not a hardware problem, but something on the software that can't handle the data and is requiring the load to be spread out.

Maybe the region calculations are handled with some Java app and chokes over 10 million cities, and that limit was not hit over the beta stress tests.

 

[Rachmaninov]

Furthermore, I can't see there being that many people going for a return. It's all talk. This happens every time EA puts out a big release. People ***** and moan, but they did exactly the same thing for the last game. You'd have thought if people hated the company that much they'd stop giving them their money. I swear some people buy these games just so that they have something to moan about.

The vocal minority buying their games and then bitching about it actually does tenfold the damage to EA that it would do if that same group didn't buy their products.

The whining damages their PR, forces them to do stuff like promise to give away free games and pull their advertisements. It forced them to change Mass Effect 3's ending, and it forced Capcom to abandon Day One DLC. These are just a few examples.

Buying a product and moaning about it is what makes EA sweat. If that same vocal minority didn't buy the game, EA wouldn't notice for a second, since the dent in sales would be too small. But bad PR damages the way the majority think of EA.

 

[michiehoward]

What you don't like getting fucked?

EA Masters of the Mustache Twirl

 

[ResonanceSD]

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).

You aren't really representative of the gaming market dude.

 

[Colt47]

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).

You aren't really representative of the gaming market dude.

Gut reactions aren't representative of a persons complete opinion.

 

[asinann]

Wow, isn't it a bit early for refunds in the first place?

To answer my own question, yes, yes it is too early. The vast majority of time, online games aren't going to work exactly right on release, it really is an unavoidable fact. A company can plan for ever contingency, but then things can happen out of the blue, even things that tests upon tests say will never happen.

EA were always up front about the fact the game was going to need an always on connection and that some of the game was going to be controlled via the servers.

Seriously, consumer rule number one for such a game is to not expect the launch to go smoothly.

Also, as people have been pointing out about the charge backs, with that EA has a very valid reason for such cowardice when dealing with a problem.

People need to take their refund request to EA first.

Of course, after giving them time to regroup the system to accommodate the actual amount of people lining up to play and address the problems caused by the influx of so many people.

The SimCity released like two days ago. Two days is not a viable maintenance and repair window. I would give them a couple weeks at the least, month at the most.

5 years ago, there was no need for a repair window: companies finished the game before they put it out.

 

[McMullen]

If you read it, they're only banning people who try to get charges reversed at their bank, which is common practice.

Yeah I noticed that too. Even Valve will ban you with no recourse for charge-backs.

This, chargebacks are generally big problems for companies because you have accused them of not providing the product.

A chargeback is an extreme option and using it when you have recieved the product is illegal. Typically it is when you pay for something by credit card and the business goes busto without giving you the product.

Isn't that kind of what happened? I mean, sure it will probably work as intended a month later, but people did pay for a product they can't use. I don't see why that should be tolerated, do you?

Sure, that may be "just the way things are", but I think that "the way things are" might be because people have been too willing to accept this kind of negligence on the part of software companies so far. I think that many of the problems with the software industry stem from the fact that they are not held accountable for the quality of their work.