EA Origin Question...

Ocean

Ocean

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 19, 2003
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my cousin is is obsessed with video games, played lots of wow, css, star craft 2, crysis, and buys everything that is even remotely expected to be popular. he has hundreds of games on steam, and buys the stupid expensive gaming laptops.

he bought sim city, and was pissed that he couldnt get it to play at all, and apparently his dad took his laptop to his bank to prove that sim city doesnt work (i checked, he does have a 3g modem) and according to the bank, the "issue will be resolved".

so he calls me upset/bitching that he cant log in to origin to play any of the games he has (his guess is 30 or so)
he buys all of his games at launch so im guessing well around $1500 of games. i would be annoyed too.

he's not computer literate at all, and getting information that makes sense is like pulling teeth. i cant even ascertain if he just cant connect to origin, if his account is on hold, (he assures me he has the right login info, but its "incorrect"). im going to go to his house next week to see if i can reset his password or something. i dont think he is smart enough to hack or cheat and hence ban his account, (the guy installed world of warcraft to his desktop!!) he currently has mse and has only logged in on his home computers.

does ea have some sort of cc fraud protection / drm that would ban an entire origin library until the issue is resolved? with ban presenting as incorrect login info?

tl;dr
cousin cant play any of his origin games
what should i attempt to do when i go to his house?
way to verify if his account is being accessed from from some other location?
 
It sounds like EA banned their account, they could try contacting EA to see if they will restore access to the other games but your cousin probably won't get anywhere unless they raise a big stink online and it goes viral.

Valve will also lock Steam accounts for chargebacks but I've heard they're pretty good about restoring access to the rest of your games, EA not so much.
 
If his dad began a chargeback then his entire account is gone. Poof, nadda, nothing, zilch. Only way is to contact EA itself.

I'm surprised that none of the other hundreds of threads on this issue didn't raise warning flags.
 
Losing your account because you do a chargeback when that's your only viable way to get your money back after being sold a defective product is wrong.
 
His account is gone. This is why I will never install Origin, granted Steam/Valve will do it too, from what I can gather they will not ban the entire account; just take the game back.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Losing your account because you do a chargeback when that's your only viable way to get your money back after being sold a defective product is wrong.
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not if a cc charge back violates ea's terms of service.
 
shifty68 said:
not if a cc charge back violates ea's terms of service.
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Just because they put it in their terms of service doesn't make it morally right to deny access to hundreds of dollars of lawfully owned software when a customer refuses payment for defective merchandise.
 
Steam would do the same thing. Call them and sort it out people do stuff like that when if you had called them and keep escalating it you may have gotten resolution.

I have had zero issues with origin, steam lately is a Bitch though why does it check for updates every boot up now?

Most people that played the beta could have told you this game sucks WORST beta I've participated in.
 
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HisSvt76 said:
Steam would do the same thing. Call them and sort it out people do stuff like that when if you had called them and keep escalating it you may have gotten resolution.

I have had zero issues with origin, steam lately is a Bitch though why does it check for updates every boot up now?

Most people that played the beta could have told you this game sucks most beta I've participated in.
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Steam locks your account until you contact them. After you tell them that you did a charge back they will allow you to play every game in your account except for the one you charged back. Then for 6 months, from what I'm told, you can't purchase games or add game codes to your account. After that time period you can go back to purchasing games.

Origin locks your account permanently if you do a charge back. Doesn't matter if you own 1 game or 500 games, you're SOL. Basically you need to take them to small claims court to get your money back for the rest of your games.

I haven't experienced either, but that's the gist of what I've read.
 
So what you're saying is that the people working for EA and banning people weren't following company protocol! Got ya! So when they banned people on the EA forums because another person said something nasty about them and quoted it, never happened either?

EA needs to get their shit together obviously as their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing.
 
Stiletto said:
Just because they put it in their terms of service doesn't make it morally right to deny access to hundreds of dollars of lawfully owned software when a customer refuses payment for defective merchandise.
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Yep, the other thing many people don't seem to understand is that just because they put it in their TOS doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually legal.
 
Agreed that this is wrong but yeah somehow EA stated it will ban user accounts for bank charge backs.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Losing your account because you do a chargeback when that's your only viable way to get your money back after being sold a defective product is wrong.
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That's not the only route, nor why it happened. As happens with Steam and every other digital retailer, chargebacks are an infringement of the T&C you sign when purchasing games. You violated the agreement and they said that this would result in the loss of your account. Happens with all of them.

There are other avenues of recourse than chargebacks in the case of Sim City.
 
For one EA has the server issue in check now .... granted it was annoying not being able to play for nearly a week after launch. However they are now offering free games to those of us who bought and register the game before March 25. Some of the games are pretty good too, ME3, BF3 and Dead Space 3 are included.

Charge backs are against digital ToS everywhere, who is to stop someone from buying hundreds of dollars worth of games downloading them then doing a charge back through the bank? All digital download sites warn people against charge backs ..... sucks but its clearly laid out that way for a reason.
 
They are extremely difficult and uncooperative sometimes. I had some confusion with my EA acct when I needed a new card issued because of some very small $, but fraudulent activity on my card. I had just ordered Arkham City and it got held up by the bank, I called them, they approved the charge and closed the account.

Two months later the digital rights for the game got revoked because I supposedly disputed the charge. The only reason I even knew was because it disappeared from my library screen. I opened up chat, they told me why, I told them what really happened but they just seem to go into this trance-like state of repeating themselves ... utterly immune to any facts or information they receive and unimpressed by the fact that they ultimately took the payment but revoked the rights.

After elevations, repeated emails, weird answers to my enquiries, they agreed to refund me. Then they claimed over and over that they tried and the bank declined, bank said no attempts were made. So between Chase and EA I chose to believe Chase, lol. Ultimately I accepted Bioware points because I was probably paying myself $1/hour to get my money back. I just did not want them to win and am not sure how much of a victory I would call it but I did end up using all of the points.

The whole time I am wondering if this is simple greed or epic incompetence.
 
Jellylesg said:
...As happens with Steam and every other digital retailer, chargebacks are an infringement of the T&C you sign when purchasing games. You violated the agreement and they said that this would result in the loss of your account. Happens with all of them...
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EnvymeRT said:
...Charge backs are against digital ToS everywhere, who is to stop someone from buying hundreds of dollars worth of games downloading them then doing a charge back through the bank? All digital download sites warn people against charge backs ..... sucks but its clearly laid out that way for a reason.
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Neither Valve nor EA have anything AT ALL regarding chargebacks in their respective ToS. I've checked.

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/

In short: You are allowed arbitration. If you cannot afford arbitration EA/Valve will pay your share of the costs. Valve specifically states they will not seek lawyer's fees or other costs if you lose (as long as the claim is determined not to be frivolous), EA does not. You are allowed to take them to small claims court without danger to your account. Chargebacks are not mentioned at all and therefore losing access to your account would not likely stand up to judicial scrutiny. Per Valve's latest policy, upon a chargeback, you are temporarily blocked from buying from the Steam store (60 days) and the card that was used for the charge-back will never be accepted as payment after the store ban lifts.

The reason they do not have draconian penalties for charge-backs is that it would certainly violate their merchant agreements with their card processors. They really don't want to lose the ability to accept credit card payments, nobody is going to buy a game online with a check or money order.
 
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