Are EA representatives on drugs?

[Thrakkar]

I've got an issue with my account age. Back in the days as I quit my account, it was 56 months old. Now I paid 3 months in 2007 and 2 months in 2009. Still, my account shows only 58 months.
Now I read several articles in the knowledge base. Since they don't help me, I wrote a ticket, providing all the information, the KB-article suggested.

Here's what I got as response:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Ultima Online support.

If you feel your account age is incorrect, and you are aware of how account age is determined, then please follow the steps below.

First, check your account creation date in the Account Management section of our web site. Be sure to follow the guidelines for determining account age when calculating what you feel your correct age is.

Your account may appear to be up to 2 months older than it really is - this is normal and intended.

If you are certain your account age is not correct then please submit the following information by using the Contact Us link. Leaving out the information listed below will mean your request will not be able to be processed.

Account name (not password!)
Account creation date
How old you believe the account should be.
Problem character
Problem shard

You can review this Knowledge Base article at the following URL:

My Notification Requests

I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Regards,

EA Rep (Nr.1)
Player Relations
Electronic Arts

Wow, what a help! He quote the article I read and responded in the first place. Well, so I replied in a polite way. Told him, that I actually read that article, repeated all the information, etc. Then I got this one:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Ultima Online support.

Although we appreciate your email, you will need to contact our billing department for further assistance and information regarding account, billing, or code issues. They can be reached via our web based support by following the steps provided below.

1) Go to the following URL Support Home Page
2) Use our Search Assistant
a) Step 1 - Choose “PC(includes Pogo)”
b) Step 2 - Choose “Ultima Online” for a Product and “UO Non-Version Specific” for a sub-product
c) Step 3 - Use the Search Text "billing".
Review the supplied answers. Choose the answer that best fits your issue. If you still need further assistance with your account, billing, or code, click on the "Ask a Question" tab to submit a question.

I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Regards,

EA Rep (Nr. 2)
Player Relations
Electronic Arts

That was the point, where I started to get a little upset. That was exactly, what I was doing! WTF?
Still I wrote another ticket, where I stated, that I already read all those articles. Here we go for number three:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

Sorry for the delay. Essentially, the account age on accounts is never wrong. The discrepancies in age is likely due to a lapse in subscription or some variant similar. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or visit our extensive knowledge base online at Support Home Page.

Thank you,


(Nr. 3)
EA Online Support

OMG, he is my hero! The account age is never wrong! That is what I wanted to hear!

Honestly, I didn't know what to say. So I decided to wait a few weeks and try it again, when my account should be older one more month. After well over 5 weeks, I started another attempt. I wrote, that I read all articles, that my account age was wrong almost 6 weeks ago and even when it showed 58 months it should have turned to 59, if everything would work as intended.

Here's what I got:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Ultima Online support.

For more information on account and billing issues, you may wish to visit the following Game Knowledge base article.

My Notification Requests would be a good place for you to start.

In addition, when attempting to contact the billing team, please click on the Email Us link under the support links.

Choose your platform: PC in most cases. After doing this, choose your game platform. I suggest you use Ultima Online for the first box, and UO: The Stygian Abyss for the 2nd.

For the category, please choose the My Account /Billing and Code Purchase for the 2nd box.

You will then be provided a box to provide your question, and even a link to add files. You may then click on the finish and save button to send this message.

I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Regards,

EA Rep (Nr. 4)
Player Relations
Electronic Arts

What the hell did he think, I did?

Does EA hire just a bunch of complete idiots?
Are these guys totally intoxicated?
Do they mock people for their personal amusement?

Is there anything I can do, so I have the slightest chance of ever getting some help with this issue?

 

[Babble]

Keep sending in requests, one day someone who knows what they are supposed to do will help

And account age is bugged anyway, I doubt anyone will do anything

 

[Merion]

It seems the only way people ever get helped is by sending a pm to Cal Crowner.

Which sucks, because as cool it is for the individual guys to get help, it wasted the time of the producer who surely has more important things to do.

But yeah, thats the only advise I can give you.

 

[canary]

'Account ages are never wrong'?

Really?

They must then not be aware of the several times that the system wouldn't update things. I recall years ago I was ready to hit the big three-six to finally ride an ethy. And had to wait an additional three months due to the system not updating.

There is a big issue with people working on or with UO that have no idea of their product.

 

[MalagAste]

My accounts all age pretty screwy.... I don't know what the heck they are talking about. They likely have Zero clue about bugs or anything else.

I have 3 accounts that are each 2 months apart and sometimes they are all even. Sometimes they get one to three months apart though they really shouldn't since they all bill at the same time. And NEVER should they be all even. Yet sometimes they are.... and sometimes depending on what character I've been on the characters themselves sometimes would have different ages all in the same account.

So whatever crack they are smoking over in that office... it must affect the entire crew. Perhaps they are all in sharing the same Hookah.

 

[Pinco]

try with the ea live chat, maybe you get someone who know what game are you talking about

 

[popps]

It seems the only way people ever get helped is by sending a pm to Cal Crowner.

Which sucks, because as cool it is for the individual guys to get help, it wasted the time of the producer who surely has more important things to do.

But yeah, thats the only advise I can give you.

My personal experience was that I had some issues with codes that I had bought not working. I tried to deal it with support through an incident ticket which dragged me for 2 weeks without an actual solution. Yes, they re-issued new codes to replace the bad ones but they did not work either.

So I contacted Cal.

He was kind, listening and very helpfull. In a few days I was able to solve my problem as I was re-issued new codes, this time working ones, finally.
They did come through support, though, but this time it was conclusive helping support.

 

[cdavbar]

Well with the scenerio you posted reguarding your account its actual age should be 61 months....accounts dont accure age anymore if it isnt an active account

 

[miniciti]

I have also noticed that some of my characters show different ages on the same account by a month or two! So, one char will hit the time for a veteran reward, but it won't be available on another character of the same account!!

 

[AesSedai]

- I'm wondering if the account age only does +1 to the age, when it is working properly.
I am reluctant to believe it adds the start and stop time for each pay period in order to figure account age without ever missing one day... meaning that perhaps after one month your age is saved as +1 and that is the only detail regarding account age that is kept on the server...

If that is true and taken along with the fact that we know the account age has gone months in the past without counting our age...
maybe the time you played in 2007 for 3 months coincided with one of those times the account age counting hamster was truly broken.. thus why you got credit for the 2 months in 2009 to get to 58 months and are not at the 61 month age that you feel you should be at. Or maybe, just maybe, you got some account age dates screwed up (two options here: user error or program error).

The game is not perfect; many have lost much more work/effort/money than 3 months of account age.. sorry (it would be admitting a mistake for EA to reply in that manner, but it seems more accurate than to throw in a blanket statement that 'essentially the account age is never wrong' - when we know that in actuality it has been admittedly wrong by months, at times & I have wondered if the fix involved 'manually' pushing the account age up by a few months when it would break or if the code was fixed in such a way that it would count the time it had forgotten to.. possibly a 'manual' fix of adding a few months only affected currently active accounts at the time of the fix.. I write long to try to explain quickly rather than spend the time to make it more short and succinct).

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

In short, you lost the *free* time you were given when you started the account. As did everyone...

Everyone initially started off with a 90 day old account, but somehow this was lost in translation...and now it is gone again. For instance, in game the account I am on now says it is 52 mo...started in july of 2006. It should read 55 months considering actual age + bonus 3 months.

I gave up on even bothering with it, used to complain along with the rest. Seems this is an issue for everyone with an older account...whether they remember or not.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

They aren't on drugs, they just fail the Turing Test....repeatedly.

 

[Nyses]

Nah, not Drugs, just a massive and severe case of appathy. They DO NOT CARE!!! The "GM's" and "Customer service" folks have absolutly no care for you or me or EA, they are there to get paid, with as little hassle (read helping players) as humanly possible.

 

[Atlantic Smith]

What ever happened to the cool gm's like sparkles? That would actually come out even if it was something small.

This is the kind of stuff that drives people to other games.

 

[canary]

What ever happened to the cool gm's like sparkles? That would actually come out even if it was something small.

This is the kind of stuff that drives people to other games.

You probably don't want to know without it cementing how bad UO policy is.

 

[Thrakkar]

I gave it another try and wrote a new ticket. This time I included all the stuff, I already heard and do not want to hear again.

Next will be live chat. But I don't seem to be able to make this live chat button spawn...

Finally I'll try the PM here if everything else fails.

 

[Thrakkar]

This time I included all the stuff, I already heard and do not want to hear again.

Now that did work (to some degree). As response I got this:

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Support.

I have reviewed your e-mail and I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. I would like to inform you that your issue can be resolved by our Phone Support Department, as in EA Customer Support we only deal with gameplay related technical issues. For account and billing related issues please contact our Phone Support Department for further assistance.

You can call to 650-628-1001, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST, seven days a week.

If there is anything else we can help you with please let us know.

Kind Regards,

(Nr. 4)
EA Customer Support.

After explaining to him, that I would rather like to call a german/austrian number (just because it's way more expensive and also there are issues with the time zone) or alternatively use the live chat, which I cannot get to work either, this came as answer:

Thank you for contacting EA games support.

Due to the nature of your issue, more time is required for investigation. I apologize for any prolonged delays this might cause, but please rest assured that we are trying to handle your issue in a timely manner. During this time, you may still update your incident with additional information that might help us resolve your issue without causing any additional delay. To update your incident click the link that says, “To view or update your question from our support site, click here."

We appreciate the opportunity to assist you and look forward to getting you back in the game!

Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at Support Home Page or do let us know or you can chat on Support Home Page

Sincerely,

EA Rep (Nr. 5)
Electronic Arts

Finally, without any interaction a few hours later I recieved this:

Hello Fellow Gamer,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Support. I do apologize for any delay in my response. I have been assigned to your issue, and would be happy to assist you in this matter. As a fellow gamer, I can completely understand your frustration with your account age on Ultima Online. Unfortunately, we are unable to adjust the accounts age, and it should be known that the account age is calculated by how long the owner has maintained a paid subscription, not by how long the account itself has existed.

Feel free to contact us again if you have any other questions regarding this issue. You can update your support request by clicking on the My Questions link on Support Home Page.

Thank You,

(Nr. 6)
Tier 3 Customer Support
Electronic Arts

Looks like my request has been escalated to tier 3 support. The answer looked promising first, but in the end I find it rather incompetent, just because it looks like, this guy never read the original request.

Now the problem is, that I can't reply to this, as suggested in the last paragraph. Every time, I try to update my question, I get:

This incident cannot be reopened or updated. If you need further assistance, please submit a new question by clicking the Ask A Question tab.

Now that I finally reached tier 3 support, I don't want this request to become closed. Is there any way, I can reply to this? (Yesterday I already tried to open another ticket and tell them, that I can't reply to ticket XY and I also replied directly to the mail I got, so far I have not recieved any answer).

Update:

Looks like a direct reply via email also gets the request updated.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Incredible...

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Don't bother contacting EA customer (dis)service about this, they won't be able to help you with this issue. Ever.

The problem is with the server, and it has plagued UO for years now. The Dev Team has unsucessfully tried to fix this problem multiple times. The server OS upgrades they did earlier this year would allegedly help as well, another failure.

 

[Vyal]

I am not sure what your not understanding....
It doesn't go by when you activated your account but how many months you have played while it was active.

There is only one exception to that rule. For instance if you have an account activated before I think 99 then it ages even if it is not active.

 

[lols]

My account has shown 118 months since August.

I keep waiting for it to start aging again (usually around December I get my missing months it seems)

I want to ride an ethy cu!