Okay, this EA support thing is getting ridiculous...

[Deleted]

this has a lengthy timeline, so i'll try to condense it.

20 october. I receive a mail from Battleforge announcing the new Auction house. i did download the client for this game, but in the end never even launched the game itself. I recently uninstalled the client because I have never played it.

so because I wasn't interested in this, I clicked the unsubscribe button. this brought me to a broken link. no biggie, I thought, so I made a support request on the EA help page about the broken link and asking to unsubscribe, asking to contact via mail.

A week later, 27 october. i receive my first of many replies from EA customer support, with an apology for the delay and a request for my date of birth. I reply with my date of birth, having all but forgotten about the support request.

3 days later, 30 october. I receive a link from another EA customer support agent, again apologising for the delay, thanking me for my reply and giving me a link to http://preferences.ea.com/newsletter...ther-franchise. I enter my address into that field, check both boxes and click on submit. "Error: no subscriptions found for this address", which I know wasn't true, because I had 3 EA subscriptions running at the time, and I could see they were active on my contact preferences list. I send a reply stating this error and asking if this method would unsub me from all EA communications.

after some back and forth about the opt-out and contact preference pages, I discover myself that having both boxes checked on the opt-out form at the same time, or only the first one, would only pass the first box, so I need to only have the second one marked. however, this does not "Remove me from all EA communications", as it states, because it doesn't change my contact preferences on the contact preferences page. I double checked this, and it tells me it removes me, but it doesn't remove me at all. so I pass this on to the CS agent as a bug, asking how to pass this on.

2 days later, 1 november. A third ask me to provide screenshots using the web interface. I do this on tuesday, and get a response on Sunday that if I don't reply soon, my case will be considered resolved. but I did reply... so I send a reply to the request for screenshots.

the next day (last monday), i receive an answer from another customer support agent, asking me for my Battleforge screen name and my address. I reply to this, mentioning that I don't know the casing of my screen name for certain, but that it would be either with a small or a capital N.

then, Yesterday, tuesday, I receive an answer from YET ANOTHER CS agent. that's the 5th one so far. he clarified that he checked my account and didn't find any Battleforge soldier name attached to the account. I then tried to log in to the Battleforge website, and i couldn't enter there either. so apparently, I didn't have an account for the game at all! then why did I receive that message?

I asked the above to the CS, sending an addendum that i've installed the game once, and since most clients require an account to download, didn't this mean that I somehow had an account?

then, today, I receive the most recent message, from the very first agent again. apparently, now my case is important enough that they are allowed to escalate it to the senior level support staff. they mention it could take a while. I interpret that as "don't expect an answer in the next few days". A moment ago, I sent a reply to mention (for the first time) that i've never entered the game and thus never made a soldier, concluding with the following:

This doesn’t change the ticket, however. Somehow, I received a message for a game I never played, to an account that doesn’t have a subscription to that mailing list, an account that's not even registered as a playable account. How can this be? And does this mean I might receive more of these messages later, even though I’m supposedly unsubscribed?

Honestly, i think this is getting ridiculous. i've already been through 5 different CS agents, sent 9 different mails, received 8 different mails, and learned that, apparently, I'm receiving mails for a game i've never played, on an email account that isn't even registered to the game. and it has just been elevated to senior staff. I don't know how much longer this will last, and i'm starting to feel apathy about the thing. but I will drudge on, determined to make sure the case is closed and the mysterious reason why i'm receiving this is found and fixed.

[Toccs]

Hello nzall,

Could the e-mail be a fake? are you 100% sure that it came from EA and not somewhere else?

[Tradewind]

What a load of hassle for something you could easily make a mail filter for...

[Skippy88]

If I was in your shoes I wouldn't waste any more time on this unless you get another e-mail. EA I think got too big so I find a lot of things like this fall through the cracks so to speak. You are right you should only be talking to 1 Customer Service Rep and they should easily be able to find you just with your e-mail address.

[Deleted]

Hello nzall,

Could the e-mail be a fake? are you 100% sure that it came from EA and not somewhere else?

e-mail headers are below, they seem legit:

Return-Path: bo-b7rdshvbgwmbfsauvvsubkmj5ve290@b.em.ea.comReceived: from pierre.telenet-ops.be (LHLO pierre.telenet-ops.be)
 (195.130.132.34) by zcshobo21.telenet-ops.be with LMTP; Sat, 20 Oct 2012
 16:12:10 +0200 (CEST)
Received: from mta905.em.ea.com ([63.211.90.189])
    by pierre.telenet-ops.be with bizsmtp
    id DSC11k00U457dFj01SC9Px; Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:12:09 +0200
Delivered-To: myadress
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=em.ea.com;
    s=20111006; t=1350742329; x=1366467129;
    bh=ETeFGZd8amdhjXT62l9oQj5tcp390Bw+JjVyR+BPhNo=; h=From:Reply-To;
    b=snVo7RPUVcm9NLi9jXSBjuqoyEL8rSL5yxBcJMaQuq36OW923Nal5msxhtLQVZ02C
     xbcMhpXlADr2u+welW22Futa4CZ57MWFtTLFrGXGnVzgokg5PwK1pcaC9lIJkmuZ9B
     tgfCLOQNdDzSYWBNVBBPdxFdP4W+z78mWxO9JK2w=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
  s=200505; d=em.ea.com;
  b=us7rGCOUw/0Fvlg22Z2lqd3tedlIsOvjMbiGoetARf5X8oMobLrfITI1mwgfU+RzQDTGZJBQGzec93/yMZBSjaC6XLD7H4uXf+rPcfMYr+36oREXl3faQu8G9IgXDV/SdHQW+vvGQLfutgIz898nz6R0PkET79T+CxFhp4Ox3yM=;
 h=Date:Message-ID:List-Unsubscribe:From:To:Subject:MIME-Version:Reply-To:Content-type;
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:12:09 -0000
Message-ID: <b7rdshvbgwmbfsauvvsubkmj5ve290.9603406407.1975@mta905.em.ea.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:rm-0b7rdshvbgwmbfsauvvsubkmj5ve290@em.ea.com>
From: "Battle Forge" <Battleforge@em.ea.com>
To: myaddress
Subject: =?UTF-8?B?QmVraWprIGhldCBuaWV1d2UgdmVpbGluZ2h1aXMgLyBEw6ljb3U=?=
 =?UTF-8?B?dnJleiBsZSBub3V2LiBow7R0ZWwgZGVzIHZlbnRlcw==?=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: "Battle Forge" <support-b7rdshvbgwmbfsauvvsubkmj5ve290@em.ea.com>
Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=b7rdshvbgwmbfsauvvsubkmj5ve290"

also, i'm not making a mail filter for this and i'm not giving it up. if you become complacent and allow giant companies to continue such horrendous business practices, they will only get worse. I may only be one man but that doesn't mean that I need to let them just walk over me, or ignore my issue.