Customer Support Recourse

[DoofenshmirtzH]

Is there any way to escalate support issues beyond the live customer support? I left feedback after my support session this morning, but I'm not satisfied with EA support telling me there's nothing they can do about over $20 worth of SimPoints that I lost because their site malfunctioned when I was trying to make a Make Me An Offer purchase.

I tried to make the purchase, and got an error message that said to try again. So I did try again, multiple times because I kept getting the same error message. It wasn't until I got fed up with trying and switched to a different screen on the site that I noticed I was missing over 3,500 SimPoints that I had before trying to make the purchase. I checked my purchase history and saw the transaction actually had gone through; four times! Live support said it's an in-game purchase so it can't be refunded.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience, but there's nothing we can do about it," is not an acceptable resolution. I paid real money for those SimPoints. Because of a technical error on their site, I was billed four times for things you can't actually purchase more than one of. Now they're refusing to reimburse me for the three additional transactions that never should have been able to be processed if the site was functioning properly. That's not an inconvenience, that's bordering on theft. There has to be someone at EA who understands this is not acceptable, and who can actually do something about it.

[DoofenshmirtzH · Accepted solution]

I decided to give live chat one more try, and this time it worked out. I got someone who plays The Sims, understood the problem, and got everything taken care of. This session I had gotten so used to it I had the answers for the questions ready before they even asked them. XD

[puzzlezaddict]

@DoofenshmirtzH  You should in fact be able to get your points back, whatever the customer support agent told you.  When people have initially been denied a points refund, it's usually been because they selected the "wrong" category when opening their case with support.

The Refund category covers refunds of purchases made with real money, and your purchase of the points themselves isn't covered under EA's refund policy.  So support reps often think they can't do anything to help, or the system tells them your purchase isn't eligible for that kind of refund.  Yes, it's annoying, but apparently that's how the system is built.

Instead of requesting a refund, try selecting "payment error"; people have had better luck with that category.  If you still can't get your points back, let me know, and I'll escalate this.  It might take a day or two though, depending on who's around tomorrow.

[DoofenshmirtzH]

No dice. What I got was, "Also, I have checked it with our team and found that there is no option to issue refund for in game purchase." A similar canned response to what I got the last time. They said they looked at my account and see four purchases, and all four went through successfully.  I've run out of ways to explain that three of them should have never been successful.

So I guess it needs to be elevated.

[DoofenshmirtzH · Accepted solution]

I decided to give live chat one more try, and this time it worked out. I got someone who plays The Sims, understood the problem, and got everything taken care of. This session I had gotten so used to it I had the answers for the questions ready before they even asked them. XD

[puzzlezaddict]

@DoofenshmirtzH  I'm glad to hear you finally found someone who could help.  I'd forwarded your thread, but things can't always get fixed right away.

[DoofenshmirtzH]

Thanks for trying. I do appreciate it.