Loving Account Management

[RaDian FlGith]

After all of the rigamarole of going through the whole account management merge stuff ages ago, I would have hoped by now that things had settled down a bit. Last month, I created a brand new account, bought a New SA code for it and everything. Put my credit card on it for when it expired... all the usual stuff.

Had to put it under a new email address though, because apparently you can't build a new account under an existing email that already has accounts under it (no idea why... made no sense to me at the time... and if there's a way, it's not one that makes sense) -- as a side note, you also can't apply a retail code to a trial account either, which I thought was just beautiful, since one would think the idea of making a trial account would be to hopefully put a retail code on it; but I'm guessing at that point I needed an upgrade code not a new account code, but I before E except after C and in neighbor and weigh, I'll be wrong no matter what I say...

Anyway, so I'm trying to log into that account tonight, and whammo, it's been suspended. WTF, I think. I know my credit card is and was capable of accepting the charge. So what in the world is going on? So I go over to account management to check the account to find out when it got turned off so I can compare notes with my bank. Can't get in. Wait, I'm certain I know the password to the account management (which is different than the actual account itself). WTF again, I think. Fine, maybe I didn't use the right password. No idea how that happened, but whatever. Let's change the password. Fire up the old "I forgot my password" thingy... the link ends up in my email box... so far, so good. At least I know I'm using the right email address. Click the link, change my password to what I think it should have been already, and whammo... "Error. There was an error processing your request. Return to the homepage." Now I'm really thinking, WTF?!?!?! Try again just to be sure.

I mean, come on. This isn't rocket science. It's VERY hard to be forgiving about stuff like this. Companies have been doing internet based account management since, well, you know, long before 1997, but we know since at least 1997 in EA's case, right? How in the world does a business run like this? This isn't aimed at the development team, mind you, because I know they have absolutely nothing to do with the billing department, and that they got weaseled into this by EA corporate. But seriously... when you make it difficult for me to GIVE YOU MONEY... I might just decide it's not worth giving you my money.

So, I'll wait until Monday, and try to contact customer support to find out what stupid hair got up the billing system's ass... in the meantime, le sigh. Le freaking sigh.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

*chuckles* Thankfully, it's typically only government agencies and schools that celebrate President's Day. Most corporations have axed most holidays like that. Of course, with my luck, EA will be one still celebrating.

You're right though, it does seem to be a weekend thing, now that I think about it. Of course, that doesn't really excuse it, because I used to have a program set up to ping my webserver when I worked as a webmaster... if it went down, I knew about it within 5 minutes. And on scripting things, any error page generated an email to me (at least the first time... I actually had it set up to email me once every 10 minutes for errors until it was no longer generating them). There's ways of keeping the webfolk informed of silly stuff like this... as long as its implemented. hehe

 

[Leilyn]

Wow I just posted a few mins ago about not being able to get into my mythic master account either. I thought I knew what the password was but had to have it reset. Got the same error message. I'm locked out of my account now. I received an email this morning saying my cc was declined when I know for a fact the card is still good. This is just stupid. I wish they would get their act together.

 

[Victim of Siege]

i can get into my account, but i was wanting to change the password on it (already changed the game passwords) and it kept saying i had to "have at least one upper, one lowercase and a numeral" in the password. (i had all three) and wouldn't let me change it.

 

[cdavbar]

Maybe their account maintenance on the 14th is lasting longer than expected?

 

[MalagAste]

Maybe I should check mine...... *wanders off to the UO website*


checked and nope mine works fine.

 

[Lady Storm]

Oh you want trouble??? Try to turn on more then one account on a CC..... I changed CC's on a few accounts back a hand full of months ago only to find the CC was not working and I got that Error bit................
Turned out the system locked out that CC cause I paid for more then 3 account in a row and used it at the EA/UO Store ............................ Took 3 hours on a phone and in chat on line to clear it up ... they had to "white" the card. I guess that means clear all the tags telling the system it was over used and fraudulent. It flagged my card for the CC company too to lock it up!!!! that took more time to fix.... are you getting the feeling EA dont want your $?
I can understand progress and all that ............. but when it dont work.. and puts on the user so much hell that you feel like throwing a book through the screen.... its gone too far.

Why cant I have 1 e mail for all my accounts to have messages sent to?
Why cant I buy more then 1 item from the EA/store at 1 sitting?
Why does it flag my CC that when I pay for more then 3 accounts in a row...?
Why am I in this day and age having to ask for help in a button pushing era?

EA picked this billing system out of their *** and put to vex the whole of their paying public...
One would think they would have made it so simple a deaf and blind monkey could use it......

This system is a failure in my opinion, it lacks so much of what the old billing had that was ecential to the subscriber... I knew if i put down x amount of dollars on an account time it told me so.
EA find a better system and fix the store so you can get more then 1 thing when shopping.... per visit.

 

[Berethrain]

Oh you want trouble??? Try to turn on more then one account on a CC..... I changed CC's on a few accounts back a hand full of months ago only to find the CC was not working and I got that Error bit................
Turned out the system locked out that CC cause I paid for more then 3 account in a row and used it at the EA/UO Store ............................ Took 3 hours on a phone and in chat on line to clear it up ... they had to "white" the card. I guess that means clear all the tags telling the system it was over used and fraudulent. It flagged my card for the CC company too to lock it up!!!! that took more time to fix.... are you getting the feeling EA dont want your $?
I can understand progress and all that ............. but when it dont work.. and puts on the user so much hell that you feel like throwing a book through the screen.... its gone too far.

Why cant I have 1 e mail for all my accounts to have messages sent to?
Why cant I buy more then 1 item from the EA/store at 1 sitting?
Why does it flag my CC that when I pay for more then 3 accounts in a row...?
Why am I in this day and age having to ask for help in a button pushing era?

EA picked this billing system out of their *** and put to vex the whole of their paying public...
One would think they would have made it so simple a deaf and blind monkey could use it......

This system is a failure in my opinion, it lacks so much of what the old billing had that was ecential to the subscriber... I knew if i put down x amount of dollars on an account time it told me so.
EA find a better system and fix the store so you can get more then 1 thing when shopping.... per visit.

It's not likely it's EA flagging your card. A lot of credit/debit cards will flag multiple billings from the same place. Nothing new, it's happened to me before. I just pull out a different card.

 

[MalagAste]

My Bank decided that "Games" carried TOO much Fraud..... and therefore they were not going to allow charges to "known" gaming sites. ie.... EA. So one day I started getting log in errors and my accounts saying something was "wrong" and I was like WTF???????? I have money in my account..... my CC isn't expired..... So I called them.... and they told me what was going on.....

I said Now see here!!!!! I been paying and playing for my 8 UO accounts for the last 12 ****** years..... Now either you allow me to pay for my D*** game or I'm about to find a new F****** bank!

2 days later they called me and appologized for the inconvenience and swore it would not happen again. Thankfully they got that out of their system.

 

[Snakeman]

Wow I just posted a few mins ago about not being able to get into my mythic master account either. I thought I knew what the password was but had to have it reset. Got the same error message. I'm locked out of my account now. I received an email this morning saying my cc was declined when I know for a fact the card is still good. This is just stupid. I wish they would get their act together.

Get the same message ( CC declined) every 3 & 6 mos on mine also, I know for a fact the CC's good. So I go in re put it in again & no issues. It gets old because all 6 accounts use the same card & 1 acct never has an issue, but every time the others pop up for renewal, they give me the CC declined bs.

 

[DJAd]

I've had my fair share of issues with the account managemnt page, credit cards etc.

If I get a problem I just buy game time from another 3rd party website. It might be a bit more expensive but worth it for piece of mind that my UO house and account can live on!

 

[RaDian FlGith]

So I reached out via email support on Monday evening because I haven't had the time to even think about attempting phone support (which may or may not exist, depending on who picks up the phone, I guess), and the only response I've gotten was the automated "Here's your case #, someone will get back to you within 72 hours."

Unsurprisingly, I still can't access the master account, which means I can't even begin to think about the UO account... it's definitely been more than 72 hours, and yeah...

To say that customer service is lacking on this game would be being unnecessarily kind. Part of me wants to be more forgiving, but another part of me says, "Hey, you just spent $30 on a brand new account, it should have renewed on its own, and now you can't even get into the master account to find out what's up." Like, okay, I've got other accounts, and so I'm not in a hurry for gameplay reasons, but on the other hand, like, I don't know... it would be nice to be able to use the account.

Customer service should not be this difficult. Automated password retrieval systems shouldn't provide generic errors, and should actually work. And when something says "... you should expect a response from the Technical Team within 72 hours," I shouldn't be sitting around nearly a week later wondering how many hours are presently in a day.

Come on, guys. I've been playing since October 1997. I guess I expect this kind of silliness. But any new player would quickly become an ex-player.

 

[Prince Erik]

This system is a failure in my opinion, it lacks so much of what the old billing had that was ecential to the subscriber... I knew if i put down x amount of dollars on an account time it told me so.
EA find a better system and fix the store so you can get more then 1 thing when shopping.... per visit.

Tonight I had a similar problem. My CC which has worked "on and off" for months was once again denied. I have two accounts and the my first account dried up (same credit card as my other one) and I was locked out until I logged in to my master account and re added my credit card (the same one that pays for my OTHER ACCOUNT). I have to do this about every 3 or 4 months on either account.

I mean, cmon, if my card was expired or something I'd understand, but it's valid, one account takes it and yet I get locked out on one or the other account every few months for no apparent reason. Seriously, I have 13 programmers who work for me and if they EVER released a system like this I'd be signing pink slips left and right. Neither I nor my employer would accept shoddy coding when it came to BILLING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD yet here we are...

Whatever, I guess, it's the price we pay to stick with this 1980's game ... I really wish, however, that UO's billing systems would at least be up to par.

Bah.

-P.E.

 

[kongomongo]

i can get into my account, but i was wanting to change the password on it (already changed the game passwords) and it kept saying i had to "have at least one upper, one lowercase and a numeral" in the password. (i had all three) and wouldn't let me change it.

I've had that before. Working workaround: login to your account using the EA.com site and change it there. Worked for me.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

So... nearly two weeks later, they FINALLY get back to me via email... Of course, before they can assist me, they need to verify my ownership of the account. I mean, it's not like if their password retrieval system actually worked that I would have been able to take care of this all on my own... because, you know, the link was sent to the email address THEY HAVE ON FILE. But fine, whatever, I'll play along.

But seriously... why didn't they ask me for my blood type, sexual preference, and the names of every pet I've ever had in my life, along with the name, date of birth, and location of every elementary school teacher whose class I sat in. Seriously, they need all of THIS to verify ownership of my account:

Secret Word:
First and Last Name on Account:
Email on Account:
Date of Birth on Account:
Any Character Names Found on the Account (name and shard):
Phone Number on the Account:
Date When Account was Opened and Closed:
Country and/or State of Residency:
Last Four Digits of Credit Card on Account:
Date of Last Login to Account:

I mean, serioulsy, isn't the Secret Word supposed to be the catch-all for this garbage? And let's pretend that you need more information on top of that. Why the bloody hell isn't First/Last Name, Email, and Last Four Digits of CC enough. Let's be honest... if someone has all of that information already, including my secret word, something much more than my UO account has been compromised. Date of Birth, Phone Number, City/State, okay, fine, I might even play along with that begrudgingly.

DATE THE ACCOUNT WAS OPENED AND CLOSED?

I mean, come on. I know my first account was opened on October 23, 1997 (no, I'm not worried someone might steal my account). And I know the date the last one was opened because I still had the welcome email. Sure, I can guess the date it was closed, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be correct. But this one actually bothers me less than:

DATE OF LAST LOGIN TO ACCOUNT.

Seriously. I mean, ****ing seriously? The date I last logged in. Oh, please... show of hands, how many of you keep track of the last day you logged into your alternate account. Hell, how many of you keep track of the day you last logged into your primary account.

Two flipping weeks to get back to me, and I have to partake in the Spanish Inquisition JUST SO I CAN CONTINUE TO PAY FOR A BRAND NEW ACCOUNT?!?!?!?!?!

I mean, this kind of stuff really makes me wonder why the **** I continue to play this game. And like I say, this particular venom isn't directed at the Dev Team. I know they're completely out of this loop, and truly, it's their work that keeps me playing along with the friends I have in game. But wow... could EA be any less accomodating when it comes to ACCEPTING money?

 

[LordDrago]

I have a couple of years before my credit card expiration date and I will be forced to enter Satans Domain...also known as ES account management. I dread this day and have a gnawing fear that it may spell the end of my UO days.

 

[MalagAste]

Oh trust me when I've filled out their survey for EA on my experience with their customer service or lack there of ...... I've mentioned the completely tragic account management system and asked straight up "Are you TRYING to keep customers away?" "Is it true you are TRYING to close down UO?" Of course they never respond but I am totally blown away by the mismanagement of EA's customer service. Honestly even cheap phone app games have better customer service.