Smiley's Life

A week ago, I finished playing Mass Effect. I liked the game very much, and tried the demo for Mass Effect 2 afterwards. I couldn’t wait to play Mass Effect 2, and looked it up on Steam. “Still at $49.99?” - A month or two ago, Mass Effect 2 was dropped to $39.99, but not in Steam’s Israeli region, and it annoyed me. But this time, I checked again, and what do you know - it’s now $29.99 in Steam’s US region!

I decided to do something about it, so I started a live chat with EA Support. In it I explained the situation, and they said they would bring my issue to someone higher to look into. During that time, they claimed Steam was a retail store (lie - I left a URL and stated Steam is a digital distribution platform by Valve), that they are not in charge or prices (lie - I stated Steam Support has redirected people to publishers when they complained about prices), that they don’t know what I’m talking about, and even tried to “bribe” me (in a way) with a $20 coupon for the EA Store. Why yes, EA: I’ll take your coupon for a store I never use! Games downloaded from the EA Store contain SecuROM, and on top of that, Steam’s download network is more reliable, so why not buy on Steam? In addition: the coupon does not work. And they’ve yet to activate it yet. (The coupon was sent nearly a week ago.)  [EDIT: A live chat support rep was kind enough to create a new coupon, so at least I have that. Yay!]

Over 12 emails (in total - 6 by EA) later, they quietly admit that they are in charge of the prices, but screw me over by saying EA Support can’t do anything about it:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately this is outside of the realm of customer support, so I won’t be able to give you the specific answer you’re desiring. However, I’ve sent a request for information regarding this, and if I do get word back, I can relay that to you. Thanks!

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or visit our extensive knowledge base online at http://support.ea.com.

Thank you,

Danny K
EA Online Support

That’s it? I paid EA thousands of shekels, or maybe even over a thousand dollars, over the past 10 years and they treat me this bad? I bought every The Sims expansion pack, all but two expansions for The Sims 2, pre-ordered The Sims 3 and stood in line on the morning of release day and bought The Sims 2 for the full retail price at a pre-release event, and this is the treatment I get?

Some of you might think they will eventually resolve this, since the rep said he sent a request. Well, that’s bullshit. After over 8 different issues with EA Support didn’t get resolved and were treated just as bad, I can guarantee you they will not try to resolve the issue. Even if that request was sent, the executive recipient will not give a damn. The fact the “compensation coupon” didn’t work and wasn’t fixed yet as of this writing is additional proof that EA Support are not going to help me.

[Electronic Arts logo used according to fair use under United States copyright law.]

About a month after I got my new PC I noticed something: the power supplier was acting odd. Sometimes, out-of-the-blue it would just restart (no Windows BSOD pun intended). About 2 months later (I couldn’t find the time earlier - go figure!) I went to my PC parts supplier and assembler and asked them to replace the power supplier. They did, but then it was another odd-acting one. This time? Whenever a component needed massive power (mainly the graphics card), it would just crash electrically and will not turn back on until I switched off the power supplier, took out the power cable, put it back in, switched it on again and pressed the power button. So I went over there again. On the spot, they replaced it with another weird one. That one would not supply enough power, so whenever I tried to play a game it would run amazingly slow. And they forgot to plug the DVD drive back in when switching the cables all over the place. So this time they sent a tech to me to make it up to me and he installed a new power supplier, this time a GOOD one, (Good as in not faulty, not as in the scale: “bad-ok-good-perfect”.) and connected the drive again. Then it was all good.

Until now.

So, guess what just happened? I’m betting you’re now thinking “Is the power supplier broken again?”. Well, no. But close enough: My DVD drive just broke. It still works electrically but will not read any CDs or DVDs. (Yes, it’s a hardware problem. I ran some tests.)

So now, I have to go all the way to their nearest store, wait in line, give them the PC and do it all over a few days later when it’s replaced. Why? Because they “have to check everything” before they replace something! Right, if you would’ve done that properly, I wouldn’t be here bitching.

If one more thing breaks, I will seriously consider suing them and getting a branded PC (E.g.: HP) or a Mac. Paying more for a computer is a lot better in the long run if I don’t have to take it in for repair every few months!

(P.S.: I had the same problems as with the power supplier but with the motherboard on my previous PC (at the start), which was also from them. It fried in 3 days, then was replaced but with one that wasn’t my previous model, then replaced with a good one that was the correct model.)