EA really is there and looking out for us

[Mazulat]

I recently had one of the best surprises related to uo I've had in years. After returning to uo from an extended time out of game, I discovered someone had hijacked an account of mine while I was overseas. I didn't know it was gone until almost a year and half after it happened. I spoke to the standard customer service agent, explained my case, and was told there was nothing that could be done but that it would be up channeled to someone else. I'm thinking "standard ea response...hurry up and wait..".

On monday morning I recieved a call from EA letting me know that after investigating it and reviewing information, they were able to return my account to me. OMG.

It had been sold and resold a few times, skills moved around, chars moved to new shards, but it was there. I wish this happened to more folks that have had accounts hacked/stolen/scammed but I was really impressed with how it ended for me. I felt bad for the person that had been using the account; he had purchased it from a website and had no idea of the accounts history. Unfortunetly, that is one of the things ya need to consider when buying an account you're not involved with.

When I reactivated the account today there was alot of confusion and head scratching by his guild while they waited for him to log in on his main but everyone was really good about it. It was a horrible situation for all involved (minus myself of course) but they understood. Not gonna name names/shard/guild but if they read this, tyvm for being as helpful as you were getting contacts handled so I could return his house and items to him. And to Ea: TYVM for showing us once again that while probloms still exist, you are there and you are trying to make our gaming life better.

 

[Nok]

Nice testimonial.

 

[Sabbath]

Congrats to you, Maz - thanks for posting...it's nice to hear something positive once in a while.

 

[Slopp]

I'm wondering if you can still be able to get your account back if the person who purchased your stolen account used the EA account transfer service. I had thought of purchasing an account last year but have heard of nightmare stories even after using the account transfer service.

 

[Mazulat]

Slopp, thats a really good point. Accounts have traded hands over and over..who knows where they came from. Not sure what Ea's policy there would be. Honestly I didn't think I'd get my account returned. Hoped, but didn't have alot of faith. I was figuring best I could do was make sure it got closed so someone else couldn't enjoy the years of work I had put into building the toons.

Any pne use the transfer service before with some insight?

 

[Omnicron]

Actually I think its dope you gave him his items and house back. That shows allot of class. Kudos to you.

 

[Mazulat]

hehe just so no one thinks I'm a saint, there really were no items to speak of besides the house and its contents. Chars were wearing some basic training suits, ( 2 of the 3 were suits I made while I still had the toons) but "items" was stuff in the house. Only item I kept was soul stone for the account. He said he has the other stones in his mains house so hoping to have those in a day or two as he tracks them down.

 

[D'Amavir]

hehe just so no one thinks I'm a saint, there really were no items to speak of besides the house and its contents. Chars were wearing some basic training suits, ( 2 of the 3 were suits I made while I still had the toons) but "items" was stuff in the house. Only item I kept was soul stone for the account. He said he has the other stones in his mains house so hoping to have those in a day or two as he tracks them down.

Congrats on getting your account back and bravo on you for even making the effort to work things out with the person that ended up with it. As someone who has both given and gotten accounts for others, I know that sometimes you end up with something that you don't know 100% about its history. So I can fully believe that the person that had it last may not have known that anything was hokey at all.

Good luck on getting your stones as well.

I would like to hear something definitive about how this all would have been managed had someome in the ownership chain had used the official system for a trade. I don't really know anyway that EA could handle something like this without a lot of work. They could, I guess, toss out emails to each former owner of the acccount, starting with you, asking if the account was traded to the next person legitimately. And so on until they reached the current owner. But that would be a lot of work and a lot of time as people were tracked down. If they even could be. As you said, you didn't even know that it was lost for a year and a half. People change emails often at times, spam filters can delay contact and any number of things could pop up to make this situation a nightmare. Not to mention that someone of a less pleasant nature than yourself that had the account at the end could use this delay to go in and delete the characters out of spite if they knew that this investigation was taking place and that they would end up busted.

Overall, I applaud EA for taking care of this situation in the way they did. Its good to see that not all of them have given up on customer service or quality.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

why is this news?

you have always been able to call EA and steal any account back that you sold or if you were hacked.......

 

[D'Amavir]

why is this news?

you have always been able to call EA and steal any account back that you sold or if you were hacked.......

Considering the current performance level of EA in regards to UO, I would call anytime that they were able to do something right News. You have to admit that the negatives far outweigh the positives these days so to see them actually doing something right is refreshing.

 

[Sorcon Gartius]

If 30 days have passed, they won't transfer the account back if the credit card has changed. I think this was a special circumstance. Maybe the owner who took the account originally had been busted doing something else so they had other accounts flagged as hacked by him.

 

[Demonous]

its easy to get your account back when hacked, just provide credit card info, however i am surprised ea did this for you a year and a half later, that is a long time but i'm happy for you, at first i thought they tracked your items down and got them back to you when first reading this but they don't do that in uo...

 

[Demonous]

see the thing i have a problem with is i can understand a lot of items would be hard to track down cause theres multiples, but i told ea that i lost a one of a kind rare red mask called "enervate" but they still made no effort to find it, all they had to do was type it in their database and it should have come up

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Considering the current performance level of EA in regards to UO, I would call anytime that they were able to do something right News. You have to admit that the negatives far outweigh the positives these days so to see them actually doing something right is refreshing.

the billing department is the best part of UO. I have received comp'd time before and all calls result in a positive outcome. I'd say QA is the worst, GM's are second worst then the Live team.

the only problem people have with the billing department is that they are Indian. but that's just a cultural issue. some Americans just automatically get frustrated and rude when they hear an accent on the other end of the line.

 

[Lord Kynd]

where you paying for your account all this time ?

i agree 100%, glad to actually read/ hear about some good new's for a change. new's for some reason has this 'bad' thing tagged to it usually, guess 'most' people only want to hear the bad things in life ?

 

[D'Amavir]

the billing department is the best part of UO. I have received comp'd time before and all calls result in a positive outcome. I'd say QA is the worst, GM's are second worst then the Live team.

the only problem people have with the billing department is that they are Indian. but that's just a cultural issue. some Americans just automatically get frustrated and rude when they hear an accent on the other end of the line.

I agree completely. In all my 10+ years I have not had a single problem with the billing department. If the QA and Development team was 1/4 as good as the billing team, UO might have a couple more players.

I won't even get started on the whole Indian outsourcing thing. Its nothing more than corporate greed, pure and simple. I don't get rude about it if I hear an accent. But, odds are, the person on the other end of the phone won't be able to understand what I am trying to tell them nor will I be able to understand what they are trying to tell me.

 

[Ailish]

I don't get rude about it if I hear an accent. But, odds are, the person on the other end of the phone won't be able to understand what I am trying to tell them nor will I be able to understand what they are trying to tell me.

I think this is the biggest issue with outsourcing - language barrier. Most people assume that because the person on the other end obviously speaks English, and usually very well, that they understand it all. However, your average Indian English speaker does not speak American English (they veer more towards old Kings English). Alot of what we consider normal English does not "translate" well. If you speak in slang, they wont understand, so you really do have to approach it as what it is, a different language And slow it down a bit, too, ask them to talk a little slower. It helps

 

[Lady Aalia]

If 30 days have passed, they won't transfer the account back if the credit card has changed. I think this was a special circumstance. Maybe the owner who took the account originally had been busted doing something else so they had other accounts flagged as hacked by him.

thats exsactly what they told us when we contacted them about one of my hubbys accounts...

We where never able to recover that, luckily it wasnt one of his main accounts

 

[GarthGrey]

To the OP, all you've done is convince others that they can sell their accounts to someone, and then get the account back. An account of mine was stolen a longgggg time ago. I tried to get it back, but since I wasn't able to give Cust Ser the credit card currently on file, I was out of luck. I find it hard to believe that your account was passed around, and no one ever put it on a CC, yet you were able to get it back. You haven't made me feel better about this, you've made me feel worse, and anyone with their eyes wide open would see it that way too.

 

[GarthGrey]

Wow, that really applies to a phone conversation now doesn't it?