So my story starts on Monday afternoon. Some members of my guild convinced me to subscribe for a couple months to get all of the expansions and features. I tried to do so after lunch and the order kept failing. I ended up contacting phone support and they said my account was fine and it was probably my bank blocking it because it's an online order. I checked with my bank and no authorization was ever even attempted. The SWTOR support guy had me try several times with different variables in method and eventually said he would escalate it for more thorough account review.
After this I discovered that there was a special bundle on Origin that had bonus cartel coins and there was an option to pay with EA wallet. I then saw that Best Buy sold EA Origin gift cards. I decided to go to best Buy and buy two $20 gift cards. I took those cards home, put them in my EA wallet, and purchased the bundle. It went through without issue and I was able to apply it to my account. As far as I was concerned, I was done with support at that point.
Well, the next morning, I get an email that the account review was finished and the reason the orders were failing was because I had a "throwaway" (masked) email on my account. Okay, fine, I'll change the email for any future orders. But then two hours later, I got an email saying that my account was banned for TOS violations and because of the nature of the violation it would be permanent. It did not mention what that violation supposedly was. I responded to that email saying it must be in error as I've never cheated or anything.
Wednesday morning, I get a reply back that the reason for the ban was that I had a blocked transaction on my account. They said that they have unbanned the account but removed the entitlements and I will not be charged. Well I look on the account and the subscription is gone. EA Wallet is still deducted the $32 or so the bundle cost me. Bundle key says it's been used. Mind you all of the "entitlements" came from gift cards I purchased in person at Best Buy, not any blocked transaction. You'd think the first clue would be that the transaction was *blocked*, right?
Well I responded to that email right away and even included the EA order #s for the bundle and gift cards. And now here it is late Thursday night and I've not heard one peep back. My SWTOR account has no sub. My EA Wallet is sitting at like $7 out of the $40 in gift cards I bought. I've essentially had EA and SWTOR steal $32+ from me. And I've wasted my free time this week trying to fix it when all I wanted was to be playing SWTOR on a premium account.
I work in a customer service contact center, and if I treated customers the way I've been treated here I wouldn't have a job.
