I don’t know if you’ve ever owned any EA games, and I don’t know if you’ve ever needed their support with them - but trust me, don’t bother because you are going to get nowhere fast with the support team.

I have been a long time owner of EA Sports and Electronic Arts games generally for many years. I have the Battlefield series (apart from 2142) and I’ve enjoyed the Need for Speed games (the older ones more, I must admit.) I have had problems with games in the past, but never had to use EA’s support - and I’m counting my blessings now.

I have friends and family who told me in the past that EA were really bad supporting their products, but I’ve never had first-hand experience until now. I always thought that the reports on the internet, or by my friends were blown out of proportion - to make a much juicier story. However, I now have first-hand knowledge of how bad it really is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if the problem is a very simple one the support staff would be absolutely perfect at sorting it all out - however if the problem actually requires any amount of thought then you can rule out an intelligent answer. Let me outline my problem:

I recently won a key for the Battlefield Heroes beta. When you win the key, you have to set up a security layer username and password, and attach the key to an EA account. The security layer username and password allow you to log into the beta website and the forums on that website. The beta website allows you to download the latest build and play, and the forums are a place to discuss bugs and enhancements for the game. This is when everything went wrong (for me).

The username and password are the same for the main site and the forums. However, I was unable to log into the forums when I initially signed up. The main site was fine - and I could play the beta without problems. However, when I went to report a bug to the team, the forums were not available. Entering the username and password correctly 50 times in a row did not help matters. I knew the problem had to be a setup issue - the forum wasn’t accepting my username and password because it had no record of me - I could have typed in the same username and password 500 times and the result would be the same (and in total I probably have by now). So I decide to contact EA support for “help” - Of course I would have used the forums if I was able, but I had no other choice..

So I send, what I think, is a nice email, basically asking for help but letting them know, there’s probably not a lot they can do, so if they could forward the email on. Below is the factual part from the support email, which doesn’t contain usernames and things!

I got a reply 2 days later asking me for the information I had given in my first email - which lead me to think that I was perhaps talking to the wrong people, straight away. So I provided the information for a second time, and repeated what I had said in the first email, but I finish with (because I’m starting to get a feeling for the support staff’s ability to solve these kinds of problems):

Now I’m thinking, right I’ve made that clear, this should be a simple matter of forwarding an email to another department in the huge EA empire so they can sort it out - I was genuinely not expecting any more contact from the EA support staff, but perhaps something directly from DICE (the creators of Battlefield Heroes). Instead, no, I receive another email back from the staff at EA. They suggest that I should use a different login. A login that I hadn’t created. I tried this of course (I was getting desperate at this point) and surprise surprise it didn’t work. Funnily enough, the username they asked me to try was actually one of the character names I had created on the Beta site - so again I was thinking, maybe just maybe, I’m getting closer to a solution - this was of course a stupid thought.

So I reply back that it didn’t work, I tried all combinations of usernames and passwords I could think of, with and without their suggestion. I’m in IT support, so I’m used to blitzing a problem from all angles until I get an answer! 3 days go by and I hear nothing. So I decide to write an email to express my opinion on the matter - as I felt the support was starting to trail off..

I receive no reply. For a week. And then an email pops into my inbox, asking me to fill out a survey about my “experience” with EA’s support department. Big mistake. I filled it out, and in the any-other-info box at the end they were subjected to a large essay by me about how simple the problem was, their bad reputation and their inability to support people. A day later I receive an update on the support ticket:

Wow - these generic answers are great aren’t they? Especially that “getting you back in the game” bit - good place to push your company tag-line, eh?. This is obviously some follow-up to the bad support questionnaire I filled out - is it supposed to make everything better though? I don’t care about assurances at this point, I just want it fixed. So I think, well I’ll leave it at that for the time being, if somebody is on the case, it might take a few more days (see I still haven’t given up the faith completely, although I’m pretty damn close).

And then I open my email this morning.. My jaw dropped, I go speechless for a minute. I blink once - twice. Then a tiny laugh starts to creep out of my throat. It grows and grows until I’m laughing like a maniac. And then I say to myself “WTF!!!??” Here is the final response to my problem, which tidies everything up nice and neatly:

Thank-you Sean M - That’s that fixed then, eh?

This just goes to show the ridiculous place EA support finds themselves in. And sure I know the game is a beta, Sean, but that’s not the point is it? The point is that I told you people over and over again that you can’t help me, just forward the email on. But this seemed too difficult. Also if Sean had bothered to read the previous emails he wouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake. Maybe the infrastructure and communication isn’t there for the support staff - maybe they don’t know how to forward emails - maybe they’re told at all costs to only do what it says on the piece of paper in front of them - don’t use any initiative, and God forbid thinking, “Hmm, maybe my Manager should help me with this one.” Or maybe they did and their Manager is still trying to figure out where the send button is in Outlook. Whatever the reasons. This problem which would take 5 minutes to solve, from my own personal experience - if I had the correct contacts, has taken EA 2 weeks to go around in circles and get nowhere. Outstanding.

But does this effect me buying their games? Of course it does - if EA are attached to anything now, the first feeling I get is that of incompetence. And after this subsides, I’m left with an overwhelming desire to avoid the game. If I ever need to contact EA’s support department again about anything more complicated than inserting a CD into my PC, I think I will be disappointed with the results.