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.]