EA just approved my refund for SimCity

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Holythirteen

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I think everybody they are up against is worse.

Not that it matters, since the group doing the voting is basically all the random knee-jerks of the internet. But its hard to blame them when this is one of the few ways they could vent their frustrations towards this company and feel like their opinions are actually making a dent in EA's stubborn corporate facade.

Who here honestly needs to see the results of an internet poll anyway? 9 times out of 10 I can guess what is going to have the most votes just looking at the options.

Also, EA are the publishers of the game, not the developers. Maxis are the ones that are responsible for the bugs being there. Although, I s'pose it's possible that EA rushed the game to completion so the developers didn't have time to fix it.
Ehhh that's hard to swallow, EA owns maxis, they might not do the grunt-work but you can be sure that the big decisions are made by them.

But I don't think its fair that EA will 'win' this award going up against fucking bank of america(who fucked a whole country) and even Ticketmaster(who basically runs a monopoly and fucks every concert-goer every year for going on 20 years now), who probably couldn't care less if it was given to them. But whiney gamers on the internet will once again triumph, caring about nothing else.
 

MPerce

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Congratulations. Enjoy spending that money on Bioshock Infinite or whatever other good shit is out right now.

I've had a few friends who got the refund, also. While EA's customer support has been really uneven in handling things, just pestering the crap outta them seems to consistently work.
 

ResonanceSD

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MPerce said:
Congratulations. Enjoy spending that money on Bioshock Infinite or whatever other good shit is out right now.

I've had a few friends who got the refund, also. While EA's customer support has been really uneven in handling things, just pestering the crap outta them seems to consistently work.

Already got it and finished it, Bioshock Infinite is bloody amazing.
 

ResonanceSD

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madster11 said:
Best part is that EA can't even try to dodge the small claims because they're a 'service' - our 'services' are under the same shit, anyway.

ResonanceSD said:
Although EA tried their best to bend me over for the phone call.

http://www.ea.com/au/1/australian-support
"Electronic Arts Support Hotline: 1902 261 600*
*8-bit calls charged at $2.48 per minute, GST inc. Calls from Mobile and Public phones higher "

When you call, you listen to a 40 second advert for EA + instructions which you can't skip.

^ for this alone, they deserve to diaf.
When the bill comes, call telstra or whoever you're with and tell them you were never told about the addition charges for that phone call. Chances are they'll try to pursue it, so simply ask to speak with somebody who can cancel your phone service. Almost always they'll figure out a way to reduce or get rid of the charge.

If you were on the phone for long enough, you could always now go down to the small claims office and tell them about it. Good chance they'll just send through a letter telling EA to cancel the charge.
Eh fuck it, with the refund, even after buying Bioshock Infinite, I'm still up. I managed to speak remarkably quickly with the assistant "Winston".
 

Darks63

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MeChaNiZ3D said:
And if they had just done that from the start, with everyone, maybe they'd have salvaged a bit of reputation from it.
Unlikely EA was damned if they did and damned if they didnt.

To OP I'm wondering why after all the news about Simcity leading up to its release on the escapist and the Diablo fiasco did you still buy the game in the first place?
 

bug_of_war

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ResonanceSD said:
Lol to the two of you yelling at me for voting.

1) The consumerist poll means fuck all

2) The other guy in the poll won't even pretend to give a shit about the result

3) EA released a bad product, I'm giving them an appropriate grade with my poll vote



They charged me full price for a product and service, neither of which have worked to date. Hence I got a refund.


EA have appalling practices and products, hence I'm voting for them.
Yes the consumerist poll means fuck all, but the fact that you are so geared towards taking time out of your life to put down a negative vote for a company that whilst published a poorly made game, still gave you back your money in full is fucking stupid. If you don't like the game, vote the game down, that's fine, but to be all like, "EA published a game that was buggy and then when I requested my money be given back they gave it to me...they're such assholes and deserve hellfire to rain down apon them" is a sign that you are a terrible consumer. You want to know something, the customer is not always right, the customer can be dead wrong or a total jackass and you are being a bad customer. You exploit their good gesture by taking back your money but still bad mouth them, and whilst the consumerist poll is basically insignificant you are still showing how much of an immoral person you are appearing to be because (even though it'll take 5 seconds) you are sanctioning of a moment of your life out of some unwarranted spite against a company that has so far done little to nothing wrong.
 

ResonanceSD

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Darks63 said:
MeChaNiZ3D said:
And if they had just done that from the start, with everyone, maybe they'd have salvaged a bit of reputation from it.
Unlikely EA was damned if they did and damned if they didnt.

To OP I'm wondering why after all the news about Simcity leading up to its release on the escapist and the Diablo fiasco did you still buy the game in the first place?
One of the editors of IGN recommended it to me.
 

ResonanceSD

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SpunkeyMonkey said:
ResonanceSD said:
NO mods, just rush hour.

I don't like the game enough to spend time patching it by myself. That's why i got the refund, either provide something that works, or someone else is getting my money.
After 10-15 years only flirting with games I've started playing them more recently due to a change in my job and social situation, and I honestly can't believe how broken a lot of games are, and how much of a given it is that the products released are acceptable.

The "fix via patches/mods/dlc" arguement I find quite bemusing too - why on earth after buying something would you want to spend hours trying to get it to work properly?
Precisely, now that I work full time, I expect stuff that I've paid for to actually work as advertised. My PC cost upwards of $3K, it works fine. If a new product (bugger SC4) is broken out the gate, why is that just an accepted scenario?
 

SecondPrize

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Internet high-five brother. I didn't buy simcity but I had a similar victory against Blactivision when I got a refund for Diablo 3. It's good that for Aussie customers at least you have a chance to get your money back, and it's good for EA in the end because people who do get a refund for this may be a little more willing to buy another of their products in the future.
 

ResonanceSD

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SecondPrize said:
Internet high-five brother. I didn't buy simcity but I had a similar victory against Blactivision when I got a refund for Diablo 3. It's good that for Aussie customers at least you have a chance to get your money back, and it's good for EA in the end because people who do get a refund for this may be a little more willing to buy another of their products in the future.
Oh god no, never giving them money again.
 

Loonyyy

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Good on you. I'm still waiting for their goddamn support team to fix my Origin account, which is linked to all my stuff. I have the credit card used on it, and the payment information, and just to show them, I could undo all my transfers to them, but the dumbshits still haven't fixed it. Two months. It's more an issue of completeness at this point than actually caring about my stuff, or I'd be really pissed.

Their customer support is dreadful. The team that answers your call isn't even in the same building as the people with any power, and those who can do something are seemingly perpetually overloaded, and they charge you to use their shitty phone support. Oh, and their online support requires an Origin account. Really useful if you just lost yours.

Fixing the problem afterwards, after you've wasted time, and effort, and been screwed around by them (Including a charged phone support system), getting back to "No Money Lost" on the purchase is hardly recompense. It's shitty. Hence, he's still got something worth complaining about, because giving a refund should really be the least they do for a non-functional product.
 

shrekfan246

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SpunkeyMonkey said:
Yep. It's bang out of order, and I'm genuinely gobsmacked at how widely accepted it is.

My first experience with a "broken" game was Far Cry 2 - I've played through it 4 times now and never been able to finish it due to a bug which prevents me from loading saved games about 2/3s of the way through. When I read the reviews I was ASTOUNDED there was no mention of this bug, and the high ratings for a game - albeit an excellent one - which was essentially broken.
Part of the issue is that while bugs in the code are pretty much accepted (and they've always been there, even going back to the NES days), it's not a foregone conclusion that people are actually going to run across the bugs. For instance, the first time I ever loaded up Fallout New Vegas, I walked about a hundred feet to the north before my character's legs suddenly fused with the ground. Restarting a new game, nothing happened when I went to the same location again.

Obviously there are different levels of severity for bugs, but it's pretty much widely accepted because there's no appreciable way for a completely bug-less product to actually be released. The simplest errant piece of code could mess everything up, and games contain a large amount of code. I mean, even practically every website has a bug somewhere, as do programs like Windows Media Player, Skype Messenger, video editors, word suites, etc.

Sure, something like being unable to reload saves is severe enough that it should have been caught, but there is still the chance that the reason none of the reviewers mentioned it was simply because they never experienced it for one reason or another.

OT: Got a refund and used the money on Bioshock Infinite instead? Good for you, and good on EA. Oh, wait, this is an EA hate thread disguised by what appears at first glance to be a positive thread title? I'll just show myself out...
 

shrekfan246

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SpunkeyMonkey said:
Whilst I can appreciate bugs to a certain degree, I think that not being able to finish a game once despite 4 playthroughs is just unacceptable. It's a known issue too, so I'm not an isolated case and think the fact that barely any reviewer mentioned it shows that they either review games way before they've finished them (and thus, IMO, pass an unqualified opinion), or that they choose to ignore such an issue for whatever reason.

I just wish the gaming's society wouldn't be as accepting at being delivered substandard out of the box products. If that means release dates are delayed then that's fair enough, but the mentality nowadays seems to be that glitchy games are acceptable - which isn't right IMO.
I don't think it's so much "acceptable" as it is "begrudgingly lived with". You'd better believe that I get pissed right the hell off if I get a new game and discover that it stops writing saves after a certain point in the game, or randomly deletes my save after I've put in a good four hours or more, or fall through the level geometry and need to reload to continue. I also haven't actually encountered many serious bugs in a long time, though. Apart from animation or graphical glitches, some of which can really be quite amusing, I can't say I've seen a serious bug in a recent game since Skyrim. Everyone gets slightly different experiences.
 

bug_of_war

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the hidden eagle said:
While I agree that sometimes the customer is'nt always right and that some of them are dicks(trust I've had a few who I wanted to kick in the face)I don't think it's good business to be dicks towards all your customers.As for the consumerist poll it really does'nt matter but I question people's priorities when they vote a game company over companies that robbed people of their life savings or killed people and the enviroment because of their practices.But I'm not going to insult or berate them because like I said it's pointless and that energy is better served elsewhere.
But that's the thing, this guy got his money back and yet still goes on to bash EA. Okay, yes they have done some questionable things recently, but in this individual case they have done everything right towards the consumer and the consumer is acting like a massive jackass. Should I really be wasting my energy getting so mad at 1 persons opinion...I don't know. On one hand I am on a website where in which a majority of people have a death wish for EA, but at the same time I see people wasting energy yelling at EA on a forum that EA likely never visits.
 

ResonanceSD

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bug_of_war said:
the hidden eagle said:
While I agree that sometimes the customer is'nt always right and that some of them are dicks(trust I've had a few who I wanted to kick in the face)I don't think it's good business to be dicks towards all your customers.As for the consumerist poll it really does'nt matter but I question people's priorities when they vote a game company over companies that robbed people of their life savings or killed people and the enviroment because of their practices.But I'm not going to insult or berate them because like I said it's pointless and that energy is better served elsewhere.
But that's the thing, this guy got his money back and yet still goes on to bash EA. Okay, yes they have done some questionable things recently, but in this individual case they have done everything right towards the consumer and the consumer is acting like a massive jackass. Should I really be wasting my energy getting so mad at 1 persons opinion...I don't know. On one hand I am on a website where in which a majority of people have a death wish for EA, but at the same time I see people wasting energy yelling at EA on a forum that EA likely never visits.
Oh, as a jackass, let me just say that the vote had very little to do with sim city. It was to do, however, with all the other shit things they've done which has fucked gaming over.

Nice to clear that up.
 

bug_of_war

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ResonanceSD said:
Oh, as a jackass, let me just say that the vote had very little to do with sim city. It was to do, however, with all the other shit things they've done which has fucked gaming over.

Nice to clear that up.
Name the things they have done. Please, tell me all the things that EA has done that have effected you so much that even going against policy and giving you back you money in a kind gesture made you say, "I'ma still vote them as worse than a company that has taken away peoples entire savings". My language was harsh, you're not a jackass, I shouldn't have said that, it devalues my point and was uncalled for.