I have been playing Ultima Online for 91 months, since the game began. In case you are not aware of what Ultima Online is, it is an ongoing role playing game that people get involved with which is owned by EA Games. People spend thousands of hours a year building characters skill, gaining property like houses and pay a monthly fee. My account was a complete advanced account and I have spent thousands of hours per year and time building the characters and their skills.

My whole family plays the game and I have referred a lot of players to EA games. The nature of my issue and complaint: I played a shard, called Baja which is a server, the company has numerous servers serving players from all over the world. I never had a problem in Baja, with the Game Masters or account issues. Recently I transferred my entire account over to Legends which is another server. I did this because the connection speed with my new adelphia cable connection (4.5 megs) plus the ping time (packet loss which caused lag when too high on Baja) was unbelievably better on the legends Shard.

Making my game time experience much more enjoyable. I have been on the Legends shard for maybe 3 months at most and have had nothing but problems with the Game Master's on the shard. They have already banned me once for 72 hours, claiming that I was using a 3rd party program. In this game there are guild wars, and guilds get frustrated when they cannot kill another player or catch up with them, well this isn't my fault that they have dial up or a slower connection. These players in retaliation and out of pure pettiness call a Game Master and report people for using a 3rd party program. You can imagine if these people/guilds have friends that are Game Masters who have the power to ban someone, especially if that game master happens to be a member of the same guild located on another shard.

I have already attempted to explain to them with the first bann that my adelphia cable connection was new previously and it more than doubled my connection speed, they refused to reply and banned my account. I took the ban, and 72 hours I was back up and playing- but this is a highly unfair business practice and poor customer service for not even giving a reason or have the ability to tell someone what program they are being banned for. If you ban an account, you better make sure you have a good reason for it and better have the proof to back you up. This time, the same issue happened, but my account is apparently permanently banned for using a apparent 3rd party program. Which means my 91 months of playing and my possessions which in real money would be about $2,000.00 within the account are to be deleted not including the 7.5 years worth of payments I made to EA games for Ultima Online.

This apparently is how they treat a person who has been playing for 91 months. To add insult to injury, they even sent me an email stating that I have no right to call or email for any information or proof of to what 3rd party program they are referring to.

How can EA Games accuse someone of using a 3rd party program, without actually hacking into the persons computer and finding it?

Please under stand that I am not nieve and I certainly have computer experience behind me. If they decided to take it upon themselves hack my gaming computer, then I certainly would like to know this as I will proceed to file criminal charges with my attorney. If they cannot bring proof upfront of the 3rd party program they accuse me of, then I believe I am innocent until proven guilty and my account should be reinstated with an apology. My 91 month old account should be immediately reinstated with an apology in writing. Or they should send me a reimbursement of my money for the 7.5 years of billing that I have given to EA games.

I will also mention that There is no way to even to speak with anyone in EA games in regards to this issue. I feel I have been completely discriminated over this matter.

Email received from EA below:

----- Original Message -----

From: UO Account Admin 2 To: [email protected]

Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 1:39 AM

Subject: Service Terminated for Ultima Online Account - shadowmaster1 Service Terminated for Ultima Online Account - shadowmaster1 Your Ultima Online account has been permanently closed... Legends As the decision in this matter is final, please know that it is possible and quite likely that no further correspondence regarding this account will be acknowledged. We respectfully ask that you please do not phone or email Electronic Arts regarding this matter from this point forward.

Sincerely, Ultima Online Account Administration Electronic Arts, Inc.

I am not the only one that they have banned just for an alleged 3rd party program. I am like one of the people that will speak out and I know there is alot of others that hasn't pushed this issue as they should have.So I am taking my rights of speech and expression in advising people how EA games has treated a dedicated 91 month account. They have threatened not to contact them in these regards because they cannot back their reasoning up without actually hacking into a persons computer and physically finding the program.

I AM UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THEY THINK THE 3RD PARTY PROGRAM IS A SPEED HACK WHEN I AM ACTUALLY USING HIGH SPEED CABLE MODEM FROM ADELPHIA WHICH IS ADVERTISED AS 4 MEGS BUT I GET 4.5 MEGS--THANK YOU ADELPHIA

I only can think that this so called 3rd program is being mistaken for my lightening fast connection speed of 4.5 megs. This is outrageous and ridiculous!!

Robert

West Palm Beach, Florida
U.S.A.

Click Here to read other Ripoff Reports on Electronic Arts

7 Updates & Rebuttals

Andrew

New Port Richey,
Florida,
U.S.A.

What ever you do, stay clear of Sony and EQ.

#2Consumer Comment

Fri, July 29, 2005

I have been playing for almost 5 years and I tried to do a character transfer with items, a $75 service, Sony charged the credit card but did not do the character move. According to them, they have no record of the card ever being charged and can not help me with that problem. I have the credit card statement in hand and they still deny that they charged the card. They "searched" their records but that credit card was NEVER used in any transaction. It was used it at least 4 transactions in the past. The card that was being used is a prepaid credit card. I put $80 on the card to do this $75 transaction. After they charged the card the first time, they have tried to charge me 5 more times. How can a $75 transaction turn into a $450 transaction with no service provided. According to Sony they do not know how this happened.

Scott

Sanbruno,
California,
U.S.A.

Ultima Online EA horrable customer service.

#3Consumer Suggestion

Sun, March 20, 2005

Reading the above brings back memories. (Bad ones) I never got banned, never got myself to that point. Use to use their service for almost 7 years since beta. I had falled victom of a rouge GM which was cought and basically given 1% back. By the way, when they say they wont respond, they wont. I learned when I had problems, they stick to their TOS, despite it breaking many state consumer laws. Only time they do otherwise, is when court is involved. Anything from small claims to district subpoena. Once they get that, their eyes open. Which sadly, is what I had to do in order to get reimbursed for their own employees crime. As much as BBB is consearned, it might help to contact them with this, EA does reply to them and are not membors, least last time I looked. Id say do big time charge back, but wait a little just in case this gets solved, becasue once you do the chargeback thing, theyll never budge. Final fix, if they reopen it, sell the account and things off on Ebay like I did. I got so sick of their cusomter service, buying additions with promises of what the addition will have but never released, and then their rate increase for (Better customer service? "Laughs") Not long after, quite a few got laid off. I no longer blame Origion Systems. Its Electronic Arts. Like all those other great gaming companies, EA steals the companies right out from its owners, and ever since Richard Garriott left, UO was never the same, nor the last game they made and I really do wish the author and ex owner the best.

Michelle

West Palm Beach,
Florida,
U.S.A.

Thank you for suggestion

#4Consumer Comment

Thu, March 10, 2005

Ben , Thank you for your input. Certainly under the circumstances at hand, I learned that you surely need to look at the company before you sink your time and money into their service. My main point of mentioning Everquest is to prove a point that Electronic Arts is not the only RPG out there and we surely can take our business elsewhere to one of Electronic Arts competitors. if this is the way they want to treat a 7.5 yr old customer, then quite frankly i wouldn't want to do business with them anyways. As Robert mentioned, we have amongst a good amount of our guildmembers have pre-ordered GuildWars, it new and the previews look phenomenal. We are planning on getting our friends to move to this game and hopefully we can resume our enjoyment of online entertainment once again.

Robert

West Palm Beach,
Florida,
U.S.A.

EA GAME YOU DON'T NEED TO BAN US WE WILL BAN YOU FOR LIFE.

#5Author of original report

Thu, March 10, 2005

I just reserved a copy of GuildWars. I know I will not buy a EA Game in my life time. If this is what they do to a 91 month old account think what they will do to you..Its your $$$$... Trust me buy GuildWars. It will be out soon you can play bete 3/18/2005 to 3/20/2005. It will be out 4/18/2005. EA Game will make you feel like a VIP trust me on this. So go play UO and feel like a VIP lol . EA GAME YOU DON'T NEED TO BAN US WE WILL BAN YOU FOR LIFE. From one of your oldest players shadowmaster1

Ben

Martinez,
California,
U.S.A.

Well DONT do Everquest......

#6Consumer Suggestion

Wed, March 09, 2005

I have never played UO, but I do know quite a bit about MMORPG's. I've played Everquest, Planetside, Anarchy Online, WW2 Online, City of Heroes, and now World of Warcraft. One thing I can assure you of is that Sony is NO BETTER than EA. I have played EQ for over 4 years, and to be honest now that Warcraft is out, Im dropping them like a rock. The GM's in EQ are never around, and when they do show up, its only for punishment, never to fix a problem, never to make up for well known bugs etc. They are more concerned that someone is using a name from a book (such as Gandalf or Merlin) than actually making the game fun anymore for anyone. Most of the time they will just pass on reports to "assistant" GM's. These are nothing but regular players that have cozied up to the GM at some point and are given near god-like powers in the game. It goes to their head and it shows. Then there are the zillions of other reasons, such as..... Never fixing long standing bugs that impact experience, money, etc. Only catering to high level characters and never paying any attention to anyone starting out the game. Very long periods of down time that are never reimbursed. Constant bugs in patches that completely hose your ability to even log on....when you call tech support.....it mysteriously becomes "something wrong with YOUR hardware"....then mysteriously fixes itself in the NEXT patch. I can go on and on. Both Sony and EA have been at this with their two games for the longest. I really think that their policy is very simple....Forget customer service, customers will put up with anything horrible done at this point because they dont want to lose all the time and effort put into it now. I'm sure there are some EQ diehards out there that will be all upset at these comments. Most likely people with very high characters and a GM under thier finger. Go with Warcraft. Its a million times better game-wise. Blizzard is too new at this to tolerate poor customer service. Of course....that could change as well. I think its the nature of the beast.

Michelle

West Palm Beach,
Florida,
U.S.A.

Unfair Banning Practices-Poor Customer Service Tactics

#7Consumer Comment

Wed, March 09, 2005

In all my 29 years of life and dealings with companies and consumers as a Director of a Customer Service Department for a national company, I have never experienced such ignorant customer service personnel as the ones that work for Electronic Arts. BUYER BEWARE, It is ashame that a company as large as this treats dedicated customers that have been with them in this manner. Being related to the person owning the banned account above, having an active account for 14 months in good standing that has never been banned,I have in the passed experienced the lousy service offered by this company.in 14 months I have paged a Game Master maybe twice for assistance and was ignored and sent to some useless weblink. I took it upon myself to try and receive assistance on this matter and not to my surprise my request for assistance was left unanswered and marked as "solved." SOLVED? How can the issue be solved if you receive no reply? Apparently this is how this company runs day to day business. This bann was nothing more than a Game Master on a power trip who apparently had it in for the referenced account above. They choose to continuously blame the bann on the usage of a "3rd party program". Okay, Electronic Arts, what 3rd party program are you refering to? You need top specify what you are talking about. Other account players that we have known for years have been banned 6x for the same accusation "3rd party program". Their account s are still active. Apparently the Game Master that night didn't have an issue with their character. It is funny and quite interesting how one account can be banned for the same issue temporarily and the account referenced above can be disciplined once for the same accusation and permanently banned the second time. There is no policies, offered by the company stating the amount of times an account needs to be banned for this reason. Apparently it is up to the discretion of the Game Master and whatever they decide "goes" for the account they are deciding to bann. How is this not discrimination? This company hides behind their email service, refuses to reply and offers no alternative to escalate the issue to a higher authority. The Better Business Bureau has already been contacted and they replied with the same accusation "termination was due to the usage of a 3rd party program" yet they refuse to specify what they are talking about by specifically naming the program they bann a 91 month old account for. Ashame that a comapny as large as Electronic Arts can stoop to a level in allowing their Game Masters to become dictators rather than problem solvers. I cancelled my account due to this issue: Customer 03/08/2005 07:48 AM Customer 03/07/2005 08:46 PM Hello KaileiXXXX, This email was sent to confirm your subscription cancellation for Ultima Online -- subscriber play will be suspended immediately. We're sorry to see you go! To View/Change Account Information: Visit https://www.ultima-registration.com/ at any time to review your subscription information and make changes to your account. We've enjoyed having you as a subscribing member of UO! If you have questions or need EA Customer Support, please reply to this email with your question included. Or if you prefer, simply go to the Help link at http://eamembers Everquest anyone? In my experience, Sony has awesome customer service and support.

Robert

West Palm Beach,
Florida,
U.S.A.

Prepaid Speed Test Log Results On my Connection Speed

#8Author of original report

Sun, March 06, 2005

I am including a copy of the test history file for my Speed Test Service that I pay for to keep up with my connection speed. This proves and shows the increased speed difference that I am receiving. Robert Hill select { width: 40%; } Tests this month: 1 All time: 300 Date IP address Type Region Provider Kbit/s Monday, February 21, 7:42PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 4,458.05 Sunday, March 6, 9:46AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 4,458.05 Monday, February 14, 7:21AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 4,037.73 Monday, February 21, 7:43PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 4,007.77 Monday, February 14, 1:34AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,963.18 Monday, February 14, 1:36AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,963.18 Monday, February 14, 7:15AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,963.18 Saturday, February 12, 10:47PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,949.16 Saturday, February 12, 10:46PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,948.23 Saturday, February 12, 10:48PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,948.23 Tuesday, February 15, 8:05PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,948.23 Monday, February 14, 9:41PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,934.32 Monday, February 14, 7:21AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,919.58 Monday, February 14, 1:34AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,905.87 Wednesday, February 16, 5:30PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,863.51 Monday, February 21, 7:42PM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,849.30 Monday, February 14, 7:15AM xx.xxx.xxx.xxx Cable Florida 3,781.49 Monday, January 24, 3:22AM 69.167.237.183 Other DSL Florida 3,565.19 Sunday, January 23, 7:16PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,538.11 Sunday, January 23, 8:43PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,538.11 Sunday, January 23, 9:08PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,538.11 Sunday, January 23, 9:10PM 69.167.237.183 Other DSL Florida 3,538.11 Monday, January 24, 3:23AM 69.167.237.183 Other DSL Florida 3,538.11 Monday, January 24, 3:24AM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,538.11 Monday, January 24, 6:02PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,538.11 Monday, January 24, 10:28PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,538.11 Saturday, January 29, 1:05PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,538.11 Sunday, January 23, 8:42PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,511.45 Sunday, January 23, 9:10PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,511.45 Friday, February 4, 5:13PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,509.68 Sunday, January 23, 8:44PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,481.70 Saturday, January 29, 12:58AM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 3,455.87 Sunday, January 23, 7:02PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,379.00 Sunday, January 23, 9:08PM 69.167.237.183 ADSL Florida 3,303.91 Saturday, February 12, 10:47PM 69.167.237.183 Cable Florida 2,956.82 Saturday, July 24, 11:02AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, July 24, 11:02AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, July 24, 11:04AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Friday, July 30, 7:23AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, August 14, 7:42PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, August 14, 7:42PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, August 14, 11:07PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, August 14, 11:07PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Saturday, August 14, 11:12PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Sunday, August 15, 12:17AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Sunday, August 15, 1:50AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Wednesday, August 18, 3:36AM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Wednesday, August 18, 6:04PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Tuesday, August 24, 11:36PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 Tuesday, August 24, 11:37PM 65.13.67.48 Other DSL Florida American Registry for Internet Numbers 2,451.85 First Prev Page 1 of 6 Next Last

Reports & Rebuttal

Complaint Review: Electronic Arts - Redwood City California

Electronic Arts EA Games Ulitma Online Ripoff 91 Month Old Account Banned For No Reason Redwood City California

*Author of original report: Prepaid Speed Test Log Results On my Connection Speed

*Consumer Comment: Unfair Banning Practices-Poor Customer Service Tactics

*Consumer Suggestion: Well DONT do Everquest......

*Author of original report: EA GAME YOU DON'T NEED TO BAN US WE WILL BAN YOU FOR LIFE.

*Consumer Comment: Thank you for suggestion

*Consumer Suggestion: Ultima Online EA horrable customer service.

*Consumer Comment: What ever you do, stay clear of Sony and EQ.

7 Updates & Rebuttals

What ever you do, stay clear of Sony and EQ.

Ultima Online EA horrable customer service.

Thank you for suggestion

EA GAME YOU DON'T NEED TO BAN US WE WILL BAN YOU FOR LIFE.

Well DONT do Everquest......

Unfair Banning Practices-Poor Customer Service Tactics

Prepaid Speed Test Log Results On my Connection Speed

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