EA disabling accounts of those who have received refund via Amazon

Things are not be looking good for Electronics Arts, but after the following series of events it looks like EA is working hard to be a talk of the town/forums/chat rooms for the wrong reasons.

Sometime back it was highlighted that an end user was able to get a refund from Amazon after complaining about multiple server issue with SimCity. In one corner EA has been apologizing to its users, in another Maxis/EA claims that the game cannot be played offline while a gamer proves it wrong after which Maxis says that the game ‘could’ be played offline and in another corner threatening a ban on gamer’s origin account. Such was the case with Jeff who ordered the digital copy of SimCity via Amazon and decided to play the game now.

But when he tried to, he got an invalid key notification and noted that the code was already used. He decided to try it the next morning thinking that there’s some random glitch. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. When he contacted Amazon, they gave him a new product key. While SimCity did re-appear in his origin game library, his hassle had just begun!

He wrote to on Reddit :

Amazon was more than happy to provide me with a new product key. I put the key in, SimCity re-appeared in my Origin game library. All is good, right?

Wrong.

After yet another forced update, the game once again told me that the key is no good, that it had already been used. At this point, Amazon offered to refund me, which I declined because I want the game, I enjoy playing it, and I was one of the few that was patient enough to sit through the server issues, AND I’m one of the few that realize life is too short to worry about the always-on feature (although, I could totally live without it, but that’s an argument for another day).

So now, I contacted EA Origin through chat, and they said I need to call them. The problem is – I’m deaf, and a phone call is the only way to do this. EA Origin chat guy suggested I find someone to call on my behalf. What a jerk.

I used the relay (a service for the deaf where the middle-man relays the message in typed format). After an hour on hold, I was hung up on before I could answer. So here I am, sitting, waiting for someone to respond while being on hold for a second time. I realize that EA is backed up in the CR department due to the various gaming issues people might have. But this is ridiculous.

So I looked into the issue, and guess what? It’s happening across the board. Anyone who even remotely contacted Amazon about the game got their accounts cancelled – by EA. EA blames Amazon. EA claims that I (along with possibly thousands other users according to a thread) have been issued a chargeback. Except the thing is – I never asked for a refund, nor was I given one either. I had this confirmed by Amazon, which is why they were more than happy to provide me a new product key.

Jeff was finally able to have a word with the company, he confirmed that EA did ban him because (according to customer support), Amazon did a chargeback for his first game key. But he didn’t ask for a refund or a chargeback to amazon, rather just got a replacement key from Amazon. Amazon also went one step ahead by giving a $40 credit for the problems he faced with the invalid key, while EA offered a 15% discount for his next Origin purchased and blamed Amazon.

Its also been told that EA has been replacing its support number with an asterisk in SimCity forums, making it even more difficult to log customer’s complaints.

In ‘The Consumerist‘, EA was the winner of The Worst Company in America in 2012 and looks like EA is working very hard to make sure they can the same award this year as well.