Origin Permaban for Nothing!

[Solaris]

Ok so I've been banned from Origin for a Month now and I thought I'd share my story with you folk and see what you think?

I started using Origin when BF3 came out, and recently purchased Mass Effect 3. I decided I want the DLC so I went to shell out even more money to buy Bioware points paying with paypal. Origin crashed during the purchase... Typical...

I checked my Bank Balance, Paypal, E-mail... No sign that the transaction had gone through so I went through and bought it again and got two sets of points and charged twice.

I decided to write to Origin support and ask for my money back, they sent me the automated response:

"I like to inform you that, it is not possible to refund you the transactions for the biioware points, if you have any other query please let me know."

So I decided to push a bit harder, ask for a manager to look into it, asked paypal's opinion in a support case, quoted the appropriate laws, all the usual stuff when you're trying to get a refund in a situation like this. Needless to say, they didn't want to budge, paypal didn't care, and I gave up pretty easily (It was only £6.19, hardly the end of the world).

Actually, in total I only asked twice, in the same support thread.

So a day later I go to log into Origin to play Mass Effect, DLC installed...

"Sorry this account is invalid. Please try again or review the account details".

Strange, I can't play the game at all now because it can't verify the DLC, so I contact customer support again.

YOU: For over 24 hours now, when I start mass effect, an error comes up saying "Sorry. This account is invalid. Please try again or review the account details." When I get to the menu I cannot enter multiplayer as it returns the same error message. If I try and resume single player a message appears saying "The selected game cannot be loaded. The following downloadable content is missing: From Ashes" Even though I have purchased, and downloaded the DLC and have been playing it fine up until now. I have tried repairing the install but that did not help.

ADVISOR: Hello Stephen,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.
I understand that you are not able to play the game with your account "***" and getting "Sorry. This account is invalid. Please try again or review the account details" error.
I checked your account and found that your account has been banned by EA Fraud Management for charge back in Mass Effect 3 Points.
If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or browse our extensive knowledge base online at http://help.ea.com.

YOU: Yes I had a dispute with EA because I was double charged for Bioware points. This dispute was case number *****. It has since been closed by both Paypal and EA. How do I get the account unbanned?

ADVISOR: Hello Stephen,
Thank you for getting back to us.
Recently, during an investigation of your account, it was determined that you are in violation of our Terms of Service. The specific violation is abuse of the support systems in an effort to obtain free codes.
Please be advised, contacting our support staff under false pretenses or to "phish" for free game content and other items is abuse of the support system and will not be condoned by any player.
Please understand, we make great efforts to provide the best level of support possible to all of our customers. However, the contact history for your account shows a large amount of contacts in an ongoing effort to gather free items from EA.
This message is a warning, as these actions will no longer be tolerated and further attempts to gather free items from the EA support staff or its affiliates can result in immediate, permanent termination of your account, personas, and any other information tied to the EA account registered to , as well as, any connected accounts found.
We ask that you understand and respect all statutes within the Terms of Service, as they still contractually apply to you as per the original agreement, especially the sections regarding Termination of EA Services and Accounts in Section 8 & Rules of Conduct in Section 10.
You can reference the Terms of Service at any time via the link at the bottom of every EA.com page or through the following direct URL: http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp
If there is anything else we can help you with please let us know.

YOU: How on earth was I phishing for free codes? I requested a refund but I also wanted the Bioware points removed from my account! This would have left me with nothing free at all?? A 'large amount'... ummm two...

ADVISOR: Hello Stephen,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts again.
We want to get you an effective resolution so that going to escalate this issue to higher department. Our senior team is well equipped to handle such issues and I’m confident we’ll solve the issue and suggest alternatives.
Due to a back log of contacts, the current estimated time for response is 1 – 2 weeks.

-----

So 1-2 weeks passed, with no response. I sent another message chasing them.

I then looked back another 2 weeks later and the case had been closed.

I got in contact with their support over live chat and vented, and now they are looking into this again.

So the question is... How does a single person like me fight EA on a matter like this? And where do you think I stand legally?

 

[Solaris]

Yeah, but with the sales Embargo to Game/Gamestation it was the only way to get hold of ME3

 

[Solaris]

Oh yeah, really miss when you used to be able to just install a computer game from a disk...

 

[Solaris]

I tweeted their customer support who are apparently actually English.

All of EA support is run out of India, and while I'm far from Racist (I used to work for Tata who are one of the biggest firms in India) I do think that their thinking is far too black and white for a customer support role of this type. They can't judge situations effectively and will bring the ban hammer down so easily without being able to work out how serious the offence is.

It's infuriating.

 

[Solaris]

Wow positive news. After posting this on multiple forums (Here, PAX, PC Gamer, RPS, Reddit, etc) And then pointing the guys on EAs twitter feed at it they decided to resolve the situation very quickly. Just a shame it had to come to that. Needless to say I'm going to stop using paypal with them now

 

[Solaris]

I hate to play devil's advocate, but Origin didn't really do anything wrong here.

You bought a product from them which took a while to show up, so you bought the same thing again. I'm sure if you check their T&C, it'll say that there's no refunds allowed. You should've sent them a message asking them to sort out the original one rather than buying again.

Once you'd payed for something which you know (assuming you read the T&C) you can't get a refund from and you contact them asking them to refund you and get the T&C layed out for you, you then take back the money you agreed to pay for the product.

If someone bought something from you, then took back the money after you'd given them the item, I'm sure you'd be pretty annoyed. Origin's a huge company with a lot of users, it's a lot of time (and thus money) to contact everyone and ask what's happened, then even more time and money to sort out who's telling the truth and it's a genuine mistake and who's lying to try and get a scamming account re-instated.

Agreed, they should've looked at your case and said "ok, let's give him a chance, it was obviously a mistake to buy the second lot of points", but you did agree to the T&C and a business is out to make money, it's not in their interests to give you back money you've already agreed can't be refunded. And if you take money from them (which by getting a refund from paypal, you did) then they have every right to ban your account, again, that's in the T&C.

Sorry if you feel like you're innocent in this, it's annoying that it all stemmed from a small mistake, but I don't think Origin are being the evil masterminds they're being made out to be on this thread. They've done nothing that they haven't warned about before buying or signing up to Origin.

They are being evil masterminds for banning players from the stuff they had rightfully paid money for because of their own systems malfunction.

What happened to me was effectively me walking into a game store, looking at a copy of a game, taking it to the counter and having the card machine crash mid transaction. Me walking away to a cash machine to check my balance and see nothing had changed, going back into the game store, buying the game again, then them actually going "hey, dude, when you were in earlier... The card machine magically started working after you walked out the door and printed you a new reciept! Here is a second copy of that game you just bought!" and then not letting me get a refund on either copy of the game.

You'd be pretty ****ed if that happened on the highstreet...

Oh and to make matters worse they then ban you from everything in your library!

That's like decking your house out with loads of furniture from Ikea... Then going to Ikea and buying the one last lamp... Getting into a small argument with their staff and returning home to find an empty house because Ikea felt you had broken their T&C in their store. HOW THE HELL DOES THIS MAKE SENSE???

 

[Solaris]

Nope this was my first one...

 

[Solaris]

You weren't double charged though were you?

You, as a result of a crash, purchased and received two sets of points.

Sorry mate but you handled the situation pretty badly yourself. Now I agree EA could have handled the issue better as well instead of a flat out ban but then Steam does exactly the same thing so they are hardly unique in their reactions so going off on one against Origin is a bit silly.

Yes, I paid twice for something I only needed once!

I got two sets of points, but I can't even spend them because there hasn't been any more DLC released yet... So why would I buy the points twice??