EA seem to be contradicting themselves regarding the free copy of Battlefield 3 with Origin Mass Effect 3 preorders.
As posted on SavyGamer yesterday, Bioware announced the following over twitter:
Good news for anyone who preorders (or has preordered) #ME3 on Origin: You’ll receive a free copy of Battlefield 3!
They didn’t say “anyone from North America who preorders”, they said this was an offer for “anyone”, not just the 8% of the population of planet earth that happen to live in North America.
Then EA have been posting repeatedly on their Origin twitter feed that this offer would in fact only be for North Americans, and there is no such offer visible on the UK version of the Origin website.
I contacted Origin email support to get them to clarify the situation, to see whether whether they were going to discriminate between their customers based on location with this arbitrary regional restriction. Here’s the conversation we had:
It kind of seems that they ignored the specifics of my questions doesn’t it? It also contradicts other information EA have put out. Here on twitter, they said:
When you receive your code for your bonus version, you can do whatever you please with it!
Whereas in the email to me they said that this would not be possible.
They repeat the claim that this offer is available for “everyone”, not mentioning anything to do with regional availability.
They also only mention the free copy of Battlefield 3 with the N7 Digital Deluxe Edition, which is nearly twice as expensive as the regular edition.
Get it the fuck together please, EA. I’m trying to send you business, and you’re making it very difficult. This must be very confusing for your customers.
If you read the @masseffect twitter feed, you can see them replying individually to people saying it’s NA only.
Example: https://twitter.com/#!/masseffect/status/169749875469193216 (and the conversation between them)
and https://twitter.com/#!/masseffect/status/169719890561867776
Woah there pickle. They’ve made it quite clear in several places, this is NA only.
It only takes two minutes to find out. I don’t see why you’re so confused.
He’s trying to make things clear to us by pointing out the contradictions. It’s not fair to announce on twitter that “Everyone” who preorders gets BF3.
Also, the support call confuses matters further by implying it’s only the deluxe edition that gets you a free copy of BF3.
No, he’s bitching at EA because one social media admin didn’t point out on a Facebook post that the deal was NA/Canada only, and rather than simply explain to us (now that it’s confirmed) that this deal is NA/CA only, he’s making a big deal out of a CS response that wasn’t as clear as he wanted.
It takes two minutes to check. It’s not available on the UK. Let’s move on.
All right yes, it’s NA only. Let’s move on then.
Actually, there are contradicting messages so Lewie directly asked EA to clarify. He was checking at source because everything else seems to not be trust worthy.
The source came back with a crap response.
This is the point of this post. He’s bitching at EA because he cannot get a straight answer out of them. This isn’t helped by the fact that the answer isn’t very consumer-friendly.
Side note/bitch: PLEASE, people, stop putting North America and Canada separately. Canada is in NA. NA is not the US. Technically, NA also includes Mexico and the rest of ‘Central America’.
And they should be clear, it’s as simple as that. Any sales gained through deceiving customers are, quite frankly, illegal.
If he wants to bitch he can, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Speak to someone in charge, not some poor customer-services drone.
I’ve never successfully been able to get anyone in charge at EA to talk to me.
They should all be giving out the same information.
If you’re doing customer service properly, speaking to a “drone” should be exactly the same as speaking to someone at the top. EA quite clearly do not do customer service properly.
EA seriously need to get their shit together. Hey, Lewie, maybe you could be the pioneer for the “EA: Get Real or GTFO” campaign, eh?
And this is yet another reason why EA doesn’t get my money anymore.
I own a Spanish website about videogames offers and my users are very interested in knowing if a particular game in its PAL UK edition (in most cases the cheapest you can find around) included Spanish.
In some cases my users or myself, use EA SAT to ask about the languages included in their new games. Their answers are similar to the one they gave to you, clear as mud.
Seems they omit some information to their customers to increase its sales, or perhaps their SAT workers have no idea of what they are talking about and doesn’t want you to realize it.
Whatever happened to No Oceans?
Have they bothered coming up with any justification for why the bonus is only available in some markets? After all, it’s bits down a pipe to them, why are they leaving international consumers in the cold?
I asked them, and they declined to comment beyond “It is decided by our concerned department.”
Frankly they could offer me 10 free copies of BF3 I still wouldn’t spend a penny supporting Origin. The sooner that idea dies a death and fades away the better imo.
I don’t see it as any different from Steam, really. The only thing that bugs me about it is that they’re a lot more stingy with discounts, and they’re the only (download) source for recent EA games. Now that they sell other publishers’ games, it’s at least some competition for Steam. Even if it is the shittier of the two.
USA=world, at least in their minds
There are people outside of USA? Oh wow!
All companies advertisng their products have a legal responsibility to make clear what they are offering. EA like the majority of software companies gave up doing this years ago.
if people want to abandon the legal principles behind company responsibility then they need to state that openly because promoting it indirectly like writing ‘move-on’ as if their personal opinion has any vaildity at all in relation to what the written law requires is bollocks pure and simple.Trolling more like but this form of abuseperpetuates this crap.
Mr. proctor is highlighting the way in which EA deliberately falsely advertise in a global manner, and it is in America they face the greatest legal threat hence their focus there on compliance – and the biggest market of course!
It’s amazing that EA still can’t sort out an online store properly. Tried to buy Shift 2 this morning from the origin client as it’s part of some ‘Classic games for £5’ deal but when adding it to cart it just comes up as £35.