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I had a question about account transfer. I bought an account back in Nov of 99 before they even had account transfers. I payed for the account non stop for 9 years and have bought every upgrade for it. Can the original owner use the first code and claim the account?
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From my own personal experience, I would say no, your purchased account you've paid for 9 years is safely yours.
Here's the low-down on my experience.
My best friend in real life at the time used to play on one of my extra accounts. I had like 4 active at that time, plus the 5th I let him use. He used that account and his own personal account he owned.
We had known a trusted friend for years in game. My buddy also was my house-mate during most of the years we spent playing Ultima Online.
Finances changed, and I could no longer afford to live where I was living. So he moved back in with his parents across country and was going to be unable to keep his houses refreshed (this was when we had to refresh our houses even on active accounts). He gave his account information for his account and the account I let him use (without my knowledge) to this trusted friend of ours. He didn't ask me, because we had a falling out in our friendship and we were seriously pissed off at each other at the time.
Anyway, not long after this "trusted friend" gained access to both those accounts, they sold them off, illegally. Neither of us knew it for some time.
Well one day, about 3-5 months later (time-memory is foggy, I loose track of time a lot), I was going through and trying to locate all my account names, by then I had probably around 15 or so accounts. I then remembered that I was letting him use one of my accounts and knew that he had stopped playing. So I wanted to reactivate it (thought he deactivate it when he moved out) and found out that the password wasn't being accepted.
I called him up and asked him if he had changed the password or if he was playing again. He told me no he hasn't been able to have Internet for a while that this "trusted friend" was keeping his houses from collapsing. I told him that the password wasn't working. He said it should work. So I asked him if he changed his main accounts password, and he told me that no they both should still be the same. I asked him if I could try logging in it to see what's up and he said yeah.
So, I tried and failed. Neither account was accessible.
I called up EA and spoke to a representative for 45 minutes explaining everything in great detail. The EA rep located the account of mine and told me that it has being paid on for well over 3 months now and that because it has been paid for so long that the person paying it now rightfully owns the account by their Standards of Payment. However, they said that they are allowed to give me the user's home phone and name so that I may contact them and see if I could work out a way to get the account back whether civilly or legally by a lawyer.
I called the new "owner" up, thinking it was going to be this "trusted friend's" spouse or lover or something and just ask for the account back and offer to pay the them the time they spend paying the account. Well, come to find out this is someone who bought the account from our "trusted friend".
It turns out, this "trusted friend" sold off both our accounts. Some friend, huh?
Anyway, you can read about my late best friend in the Player Memorial Forum, here:
In Remembrance of the LukatisSkywalker
Mind you, I have no ill will to the current owner of those account. He was taken advantage us just like us. The only reason I didn't pursue it legally, was because of 2 reasons: 1) EA said they new owner rightfully owned it. 2) The new owner explained to me just how much money he put into the account since he purchased it.
I am just glad that someone was able to have fun with the characters James made in his time in this world, playing a game he loved so much.
So, I would say no, after 9 years of you paying for it, you rightfully own that account now and the old owner doesn't have a chance in the Nine Hells of getting it back.
