Origin Permaban for Nothing!

I'm not a law guru but surely any contract needs to have fair and reasonable terms to be enforceable?

I think these steam/origin/etc. terms of service contracts need testing in law. I suspect that the companies would be on shaky grounds claiming that each payment (ie each game bought) is NOT a separate contract. If so, removing access to content already paid for would be bad faith on their end. They could claim that origin is a service as a whole but in doing so they would have to prove that you are paying for a service....difficult to prove when there is no subscription charge and they advertise & sell items singly.

Even if they could prove that it was a service as a whole, I still think they would be in serious trouble explaining why they permanently removed access to a service already paid for (in perpetuity) for a minor payment dispute without making far reaching efforts to resolve it to the satisfaction of both parties.

I find it hard to believe that nobody has ever decided to sue either of these companies over these issues. Which leads me to believe that they do not want the contracts tested in court so have, and always will settle before it gets there.

It's a sad world we live in nowadays: do what you want, settle before it's tested in court, continue to do what you want.
 
I don't think any old consumer is going to be willing to take EA to court over a dispute which would leave them out of pocket regardless of how much the value of the games on the account was worth. Even if EA are in the wrong, they have the money so they would win in court.
 
Solaris said:
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.
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Solaris said:
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?
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You weren't double charged though were you?

You, as a result of a crash granted, 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.

I hope you get this sorted but remember in future when complaining be very careful how you word things.
 
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Fenris said:
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.
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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??
 
valkynaz said:
I don't think any old consumer is going to be willing to take EA to court over a dispute which would leave them out of pocket regardless of how much the value of the games on the account was worth. Even if EA are in the wrong, they have the money so they would win in court.
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And that is exactly the point. Corps can do what they like, legal or not, because very few can afford to sue them.
 
Solaris said:
So why would I buy the points twice??
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How should I or EA know that? It is neither their problem nor responsibility to know why or how their customers spend their money.

Also Bioware Points can be used in the ME3 multiplayer.

Look, chances are this problem will get resolved at least to the extent of getting your account unbanned as it looks like the whole thing is down to miscommunication, just remember to be VERY careful how you word EVERYTHING and take nothing for granted.
 
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I suppose one lesson from this is to still exercise patience when buying digital. Just because digital is normally instant doesn't mean it always is. So give it a decent length of time before re-ordering, as it will still be quicker than postal system.

Would credit card have been any help? As I thought that feature was only available on purchases over a certain amount, e.g. £100
 
ThomBassmonkey said:
In what way are they not legal? :)

I'm genuinely interested by the way, I'm no law graduate, nor have I read the T&C thoroughly (despite using Origin, I briefly read them to get the gist but didn't properly read through everything).
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EA have every right to ban people from Origin for a variety or reasons but I suspect (it's untested) they have very little right to restrict access to completed purchases and this would go for Steam also.

It would be an interesting one really to go to a court of law because on one hand they could say they are offering a service that you've agreed to but T+Cs that are unreasonable are unenforceable. As stated above it would be hard for them to say each individual purchase was not a separate contract. What they would maybe forced to do would be to allow you to access and use games in an offline mode and not be accountable for updates which they could easily argue is part of a service they could stop.

My understanding would be:

You buy a game from Origin or Steam as a contract that is completed upon payment and your unique code is given.
You use Origin and Steam for their functionality ie updates downloading etc. i.e a different agreement.

It's a tricky one really as they have a right to protect themselves and the result of such a suit maybe that the terms and conditions change to be a lot more unfriendly than they are atm eg all those Dirt 3 codes - Valve were pretty good there and didn't ban accounts. Would you really want that kind of stuff to change. Would you want EA and Valve to say ok you've got your games here in offline mode but btw we are now taking legal action against you for fraud.

As in the case of the OP yes EAs stance was punitive and stupid but the OP pushed himself into a place where such events were likely to happen. None of this need of happened. And I thought until a year or so EA had changed their ways - they seemed to be getting better for a while now I am struggling with EA, Ubi etc all being muppets - if Paradox go that way I'll think I'll just give up gaming ...
 
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I love Steam and have had the odd problem with Origin but surely both are kind of illegal as you can't play certain games without signing up?
 
Nothing surprises me with EA support unfortunately, they are dreadful to deal with.

I've got an ongoing ticket with them as I bought NFS:Shift through Origin when it was cheap, and it has no online functionality as it says the CD Key is already registered.
Their solutions up to now have been laughable, including turning off my firewall and antivirus (same copy/paste reply was sent to me 3 times advising this) as that is somehow going to magically make my cd key valid.

6 weeks down the line and they've still not sorted it out. Useless.
 
Fenris said:
Why would that make them illegal?
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Well seeing as most of the shops are going down the swanny it will be the only way to buy games but, you used to be able to run games from the disc, now you have to get an account (Blizzard, Steam, Origin, ETC) and sign up and all that jazz, that must be illegal somewhere?
 
I personally despise EA, they're customer service reps are all based in some back water country who's technical and lingual know how is next to zero, I bought need for speed the run a few weeks ago and it freezes and crashes every 10 minutes on the dot, no idea why, I asked for help through the talk now feature on the EA site and the rep said "you be must using browser different now please" and then ended the conversation.
I emailed again and got a warning ???????? WTF this is why EA should be bombed in to oblivion and all the bosses lynched.
 
Solaris said:
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.
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Your analogy's wrong, it assumes that the store knows that there was a problem with the original transaction.

A more accurate one would be buying phone credit, the guy behind the counter saying "you're sure you want this? Once you buy it, you can't get a refund", you accepting then leaving the store and realising neither your bank account or your credit have changed.

Then instead of going back to the store and complaining, you just go back in again and buy more, again agreeing that you know there's no refunds given.

Then after you realise you've had (and paid for) your credit twice, you go in and you're told that you fairly agreed that you couldn't get a refund on it so you cancel the payment made for one lot with no warning to the store at all.

I agree, it's harsh to lose all your games over it but they are known to do it. I don't even need to read the T&C to know that they do that to people they suspect are trying to rip them off.

Sadly the whole thing comes under the "when you buy a game, you're not buying the game, you're buying a license to use the game" thing. Even after having a completed transaction, the license can be taken away again. NOt something I agree with, but that's how it is.
 
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