March 2020
So at the beginning of the System Override event I bought some Apex Coins. I was super excited about the new items in game and wanted my shot at obtaining some of the new skins. I bought $20 worth of Apex Coins and unfortunately did not get what I was hoping to get (Oh well. Thats RNG).
The next morning I try to log into the game to keep grinding for the free rewards available. To my surprise, I was unable to log in. At first, I just thought the servers were down. I checked online to see if this was the case but it was not. I went on Twitch and saw people were still live streaming Apex Legends. I was so confused. I eventually tried to log into Origin from the website itself. TO MY SURPRISE, a pop up appeared that stated that I was banned for abusing the rules. I was shocked. I knew I never cheated... never even thought of cheating. I knew I did not break any rules so I was just stunned. Did someone hack my account? Was this a mistake? What the hell is going on?
The next day I received an email stating that a refund was issued for the purchase of the Apex coins. At this point, I'm thinking to myself, "What the hell is going on?".
So I went through the avenue of appealing my ban. I really just wanted to get some information on what exactly happened and of course, get my account active again. I submitted the appeal on 03/07/2020. After submitting my request I received a brief phrase that stated that someone would reach out to me within 72 hours.
Four days passed by. Nothing. I started to get a little frustrated (The system override event was only ongoing for 2 weeks! I'm missing out!!). I reached out to EA support on Twitter asking for information/help. They were useless. Told me to go through the appeal route.
A few more days pass. Still nothing. No response. No update. Nothing. I didn't even get an email confirming that they got my appeal. So I had no clue whether it went through or not.
I ended up submitting another appeal with my case number from my previous submission.
on 3/26/2020 I finally get an email... IN THE WRONG LANGUAGE... telling me that I could contact support via chat or set up an appointment to speak (I had to translate the email. I'm not kidding). So I chose to do chat because I wanted this resolved ASAP. After spending 30 minutes on chat verifying XYZ.. changing passwords, etc. I was told that my account was locked because "there was suspicious activity on the account because of which there was a sanction on the account as your paypal was linked and we never wanted you to loose your money".
(I will attach the screenshot I took of the representative posting that response)
Take another second, reread that quote.. and then.. I dont even know.. but like.... WHAT? Besides the fact that the English is terrible.. what in the hell does that even mean?
So, I asked for some sort of compensation for this mistake and was denied. The representative that reactivated my account couldn't do anything in terms of compensating me. He could only apologize (of course).
In my view, I paid $20 for Apex Coins for an event I was REALLY EXCITED for. I really wanted to participate in the event and completely missed it due to EA/Origin making this big mistake and banning my account for complete nonsense. Not only that, but I also spent $10 at the beginning of this season for the battle pass and was stripped of 19 days worth of grinding. I'm not a person who plays endless hours a day to finish the battle pass in a week or two weeks. I play a few hours a week. I'm not even half way through the battle pass and we're more than half way done with the season. So losing 19 days makes it more than certain that I wont make it to the end of the battle pass. Not only that, but I have lost all motivation to even play anymore after this terrible experience. Apex Legends is such a great game and its so sad that this experience has made me not want to play.
I feel like I deserve something from EA/Origin for this experience. Some Apex Coins, an advance on my Battle Pass. SOMETHING. But nope, nothing. That is just a terrible way to treat your community.
End of story.