EA Bans Users for Asking for Refunds

[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.

 

[lapan]

Yay out-sourced CSR reading from a script. Just try to get another one to help you out, or better yet call.

Every time I see one of those it's better to call.

If issues like this keep happening it's maybe, just maybe, time to hire a new support team. EA keeps getting bad PR from their online support.

 

[Per Kaas]

And no one was suprised...

 

[Monsterfurby]

Way to misinterpret the entire thing, OP.

EA bans users for forcing refunds, i.e. requesting returns of billing made to their credit cards / accounts, which may not be exactly flexible business practice but not nearly as diabolical as you make it out to be. The system used is meant to prevent fraud, but people use it to circumvent EA's refund policy, which is quite clearly something any company would take action against. Chill.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Lol, all the EA hate which is completely unjustified.

Try running a chargeback on a steam game and see what Valve do to you.

 

[Cecilo]

You don't get a ban actually. You can't buy anything new until Valve and you work it out but they do not ban you.

 

[TallanKhan]

Adrian: I am sorry for any inconvenience that this has caused. I can offer you a 15% off coupon from Origin with your next purchase.
Adrian: I am sorry, but I can not offer you a refund.
you: Why can't you offer me a refund?
you: Your product is defective
Adrian: Return Policy
you: I can call my bank and have the refund done that way.
Adrian: I can offer to assist you with any trouble shooting issues.
you: Why can Amazon users get refunds but I can't?
Adrian: That is understandable, but I must inform you that if you choose to dispute it, your account will be banned.
Adrian: I am sorry, but I can not speak on another company's policy.
Adrian: Now this just released.
you: I am at a loss of words
Adrian: So the servers are having issues, with more servers opening up as other countries release then we will show these issues resolving themselves.
you: Yes, but it is not capacity demand I am debating
Adrian: I can understand this causing frustrations and I do apologize for this.
you: Your servers are not the issue
you: The game/back end is
you: "Game updates" are not an excuse to hide behind
Adrian: I am sorry, but I am not able to process a refund.
Adrian: Is there anything else that I can assist you with?
you: You were offering refunds according to your press release!!!!
you: In response to the launch day trouble Hatam said " If you regrettably feel that we left you down, you can of course request a refund for your order at http://help.origin.com/contact-us , though we are currently still in the process of resolving this issue. "
you: Why lie??
you: I have done nothing wrong in expecting what is quoted.
Adrian: That is correct, that this is where you can request a refund, but as our policy is stating it is also the our discretion to process a refund.
you: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/210/9330019.page#top
you: Process a refund.
Adrian: As I stated before, we are not able to offer a refund.
Adrian: Is there anything else that I can assist you with?
you: This chat text goes viral.
you: Thanks

At the end of the day EA announced that they were offering refunds and directing people to the taxt chat, a route the customer went down, only to be told something contradictory. The service rep then refused to process the refund. To start with that customer service rep broke the law, because anyone refusing a refund has to give a valid reason (their policy that refunds are discretionary is superceeded by consumer rights law) or, where they are not able to offer a refund or give a reason, refer the person asking for a refund to someone who does have that authority. Its all very well saying don't blame the CSR but "Adrian" was at least as much at fault as EA in that instance.