July 2020 - last edited July 2020
I too am now a victim of this false duplicates glitch.
A couple of days ago I was browsing through My Heirloom Collection, and noticed a couple with the "2" icon badge indicating I had duplicates of Pumpkin Spice Lovers and Study Buddies. For a moment I thought it odd, since I couldn't recall getting duplicates of them, but I had no reason to second-guess the game, so I promptly sold them (the only thing duplicates are good for).
I then happened to click the Info of one of them, and was surprised to see the lock icon appear, even though it appears unlocked in the My Heirloom Collection list. Also it had the strange new text "Requires 1 Pumpkin Spice Storybook" which made no sense; I already had it, otherwise how would the game have allowed me to sell a duplicate?
I keep all my heirlooms in storage, which I then ransacked - and to my horror I realized the associated heirlooms (Pumpkin Spice Storybook and Besties Study Stack) were nowhere to be found. I pulled up the All Stories -> Relationship menu on a random sim...the stories were gone. As a final desperate act I tried starting new relationships with an NPC (one romantic and one friendly to check for both); when the lists of accessible stories appeared, neither of these stories were in the lists.
I started a support ticket via the Settings -> Help menu in-game, and attached relevant screenshots of everything. I got in contact with an EA support agent via webchat, who just gave me the boilerplate, overly-general, very-unhelpful canned troubleshooting steps at https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/mobile/troubleshooting-steps-for-ios-apps/ which I nevertheless followed, even so far as to uninstall/reinstall the entire game, and surprise surprise - the heirlooms were not magically back.
Since those steps included rebooting my device (as if that could possibly have helped), I lost contact with that support agent. So I went back to the EA support site, pulled up my "case", clicked Resume, and got a second support agent. After allegedly discussing with the "game experts team", I got brushed off with the following eloquent reply:
I am afraid would like to inform you that manually we d not have option to validate the missing heirloom content and it might be some sorts of bug so I will request you to please post this issue bug on our EA forums.
As if to add insult to injury, today the featured heirloom is none other than the Pumpkin Spice Lovers. It's as if the game stole something from me and immediately wants to sell it back to me.
Here are the relevant screenshots proving I had these heirlooms.
Pumpkin Spice Lovers unlocked:
...but suddenly locked when looking at its Info panel (this screenshot is particularly telling because you can see it still obviously unlocked in the background):
Same thing with Study Buddies. Here it's obviously already unlocked:
"Hah just kidding, no study buddy for you":
I have the Harvestfest Pie Rack, which was a quest reward alongside the Pumpkin Spice Storybook so if I have one I should have both:
And if you need any more proof, this ought to do: I still have Large Leaf Pile, Pumpkin Spice Scented Candles, and Table of Plenty which are the story rewards from Pumpkin Spice Lovers:
As for Study Buddies, I never finished that particular story, but I still have Rival Debaters Binders (Debasing Debaters story) and Romance Book Collection (Romancing the Tomes story); all three heirlooms were rewards from a questline, in which the Besties Study Stack (Study Buddies) was the first earned reward, so it is impossible to have the other two and not have the first one:
I attached all of this evidence in my EA support case, and said I would gladly pay back the 4 Super Life Tickets I got by selling these "duplicates"...but I got relegated to the forums anyway. I guess I could bite the bullet and re-buy the Pumpkin Spice Lovers (for 100 dang Life Tickets), but I won't have any way to buy back Study Buddies until the next time the Back to School event runs (and it just ran a few weeks ago for the first time in 2 years ).
What a nasty bug, and what a crappy way for a business to treat its paying customers (I've spent way more real money on this mobile game over the past 2 years than I'd like to admit).
July 2020
I have this problem as well but with the study buddies story. I contacted ea and they responded back that it must be a syncing issue and I should reload, this was not at all helpful which I also told them and they again responded that it sounded like a syncing problem... anyway, it looks unlocked in my heirloom collection but not when it’s clicked on.
November 2020
I'm also having this issue. I just contacted EA Help about it...
I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't happened to the Pumpkin Spice Story Heirloom, but after it did I noticed I'm missing several Heirlooms/ Charms;
Here's a table of everything I should have, the heirlooms in my Inventory, and the Missing Heirlooms.
Owned | in Inventory | Missing |
Study Buddies | Besties Study Stack | |
Debasing Debaters | Rival Debaters Binders | |
Pumpkin Spice Lover | Pumpkin Spice Storybook | |
Mysterious Benefactor | Medical Injector | |
More than Friends with Benefits | More than Friends Storybook | |
Athletic I | Roger's Athletic Charm | |
Artistic I | Aesthetically Artistic Charm | |
Attuned I | Llamaste Attuned Charm | |
Magnetic I | Beebee's Magnetic Charm | |
Kind of a Big Deal I | Goth Boys Groove Charm | |
Pickpocket I | Morbicus Pickpocket Charm | |
Pickpocket II | Morbicus' Silver Pickpocket Charm | |
Genius I | Dr. F's Genius Charm | |
Genius II | Dr F's Silver Genius Charm | |
Party Animal I | Buddy's Party Charm | |
Party Animal II | Buddy's Silver Party Charm | |
Party Animal III | Buddy's Gold Party Charm | |
Alluring I | Yuki's Allure Charm | |
Alluring II | Yuki's Silver Allure Charm | |
Raincheck Please | Raincheck Please Storybook | |
Creative I | Violet's Creativity Charm | |
Mean I | Carl's Mean Charm | |
Good II | Elmira's Silver Benevolence Charm | |
Good III | Elmira's Gold Benevolence Charm | |
Generous II | Poppy's Silver Generosity Charm | |
Generous III | Poppy's Gold Generosity Charm | |
Ambitious II | Gabby's Silver Ambition Charm | |
Ambitious III | Gabby's Gold Ambition Charm | |
Artisan I | Trevor's Artisan Charm | |
Artisan II | Trevor's Silver Artisan Charm |
I can confirm that I should have several of these - for example the Charms for First Level Traits (e.g. Artisan I) When I have Second Level Traits (e.g. Artisan II)
I just crafted the Pumpkin Spice Storybook in the Eco Workshop recently- The week of October 19. I took a screenshot of it in the Eco Workshop because I was so excited it showed up. I didn't take a picture of it when I completed the project because I didn't think this would happen. It still shows in the "My Heirloom Collection" Screen, but is missing from inventory.
I've attached images of my House Inventory (None of my Heirlooms are displayed in my house, they should all be in Storage)
I've also attached the screen that shows my Relationship Stories - the two stories in the table above are no longer available to my Sims.
I've also attached the screen that shows My Heirloom Collection - it shows the missing traits as there, unlike traits and stories I have never unlocked, which are just greyed out.
This post will only allow me to attach 3 files so I'll be replying with more.
November 2020
Here is the image of when I got the Pumpkin Spice Storybook in the Eco Workshop.
I didn't take a picture after I had already crafted it. That was the week of October 19th 2020.
After I successfully crafted the Pumpkin Spice Storybook, I wanted to craft the Cool at the Pool Cover-Up, but I didn't think I'd be able to get enough materials from Workshop Shifts before deadline. So I crafted the Tropical Chinos in Slot 1 instead, even though I thought they were ugly.
Hopefully Ea advisors get back to me.
November 2020
@nidoran1234 That's a lot of data that should help us investigate the issue. Could you PM me your Player ID so I can take a look?
November 2020 - last edited November 2020
I have the same issue. I Lost there herlooms, they are missing from my storage: study buddies, debasing debates and romancing the tomes and pumpkin lovers. Please fix it!
April 2021 - last edited April 2021
EA is a piece of crap company that couldn't care less about their customers once you buy their products. They will claim either to be unaware of an issue in spite of being contacted by many users either by phone or on their forum or they will claim they can't do anything about it, as with the heirlooms, in spite of the fact that's it obviously a bug.
I just discovered the bug today when I logged on for the 1st time in months and discovered and deleted the duplicates. It's April 2021 and people have been posting and calling since at least November 2020. No wonder I stopped playing, I was sick of being cheated and told they couldn't or rather wouldn't fix the issues.
It wouldn't surprise me if this was an intentional move on their part to generate money for a dead end game filled with ridiculously priced items (both rl $ and in game cash/simoleans) by claiming they can't do anything ("we d not have option to validate the missing heirloom content"), claiming they'll submitt a bug report (how long ago was that?), then making us pay in-game to replace them.
Way to go EA, your still the worst U.S. company.
September 2021
Hi Phantom and folks, I'm a newbie who starts binging Sims Mobile due to pandemic lockdown a couple months ago.
Boi! This bug has been reported since April 2020 and EA has not bother to fix it.
I have always sold duplicate right away when I got one. And then this Sep 10th, I noticed that after I have sold my Flirty III, I still have the duplicate heirloom and it still showing there are 2 in the Collection. I was hoping it will go away but no it still there... 8 days later, I got a duplicate for Generous II and also promptly sold it. Minutes later, I checked the storage and lo and behold there are still 2 heirlooms. Now I'm stuck with 2 of "duplicates" that I actually regularly got duplicates of, lol.
So although thanks to everyone's warning on this thread, I know not to sell these non existent heirlooms. But I'm worry the next time around when I got another Flirty III or Generous II, I will not be able to sell it without risking losing all. I've tried to use the Contact Us - Report a bug (since nothing is missing yet, I do not want to choose "missing content" ) to have EA remove the faux duplicates before that can happen. But they only give me the option to "Visit EA Answers HQ" - which means this thread... Is there other options for me to contact EA Help and get this fix? I will gladly give my sims ID and more info if contacted.
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.