EA = Bad

And now I'm going to rant about Electronic Arts! (yep it's rant time again!)

It's notable how the negatives drive me to blog way more often than the positives. This time it about customer service at the hands of Electronics Arts (EA). I'd heard alot of horror stories about how terrible EA are, I've never really had an issue with them until now however!

Recently I purchased All Points Bullitin (APB) which I suspect everyone interested in the MMO arena knows went out of business not very long after lunch (the fastest close down in MMO history according to MMORPG.com)

[Un]Fortunately for me I never got around to breaking the factory seal before APB got switched off and I thought that was the end of it until I stumbled upon a post saying that EA were offering an alternative game to people who had purchased APB after a certain date (who would not have got their moneys worth online) and who's retailers would not take it back (as in my case).

I send in an email not really expecting much (there was also talk of EA tightening the eligibility screws due to attempted scams) but got a reply back saying that if I could send in photos of the game, manual (presumably to prevent mutiple uses of the same game key) and receipt I could choose an alternative game from the EA online store (I wasn't thrilled about this because, as you may know, I've had bad experiences with digital games distribution in the past but it's better than a kick in the knackers).

If you've been paying attention you'll already have worked out that I can't provide a photo of the manual as the game is still sealed and, to make matters worse, I'd binned the receipt pretty much as soon as I got home from the shops - "Never fear" I thought, "The receipt will only be needed to prove purchase date and since mine is still sealed it's obvious I haven't 'got my moneys worth' or that it's a duplicate key" oh how wrong I was!

The lack of receipt was an immediate problem with the first line EA rep unable to deviate from policy stating the receipt was required. I don't have a problem with this as the guy is just doing his job so I just asked for the request to be escalated to someone with the authority to deviate from policy as surely the application of some common sense would see me through right? Nope!

The next line support (3rd tier apparently, no idea what happened to 2nd?) is where the real fun started.

It begins with the usual sympathetic opening and then launches right into the fact that the replacement policy had changed (no one appears to have told first line support!) and the forum post I am quoting is wrong (what the hell? I never quoted or even mentioned a forum post!) as they are now only offering an alternative to people who purchased APB from specific digital partners. It then closes with the predictable policy stuff which is why we're not giving you anything.

At this point I'm past caring about the game, what really gets me is crappy customer service. I really struggle to understand how the US, who in my experience typically have exceptional retail customer service, fail so utterly the minute you put the internet between the them and the customer.

So I reply pointing out the sudden U-turn and the fact that, as I made no reference to a forum post, it's pretty obvious I've been sent a stock reply and he hasn't even bothered to read the request and the fact the policy stuff came up again the new rep. doesnt have the authority to deviate from policy either so I request another escalation.

Another reply from the same guy, no apology or explanation for the U turn or not reading my issue, just a statement that he's as far as the escalation path goes but he does have the authority to deviate from the policy, only he's not going to.

Which of course just makes me more motivated to upset this apple cart!

At this point I realise it's pointless discussing the replacement game (which is a secondary cause now anyway) and just reply back pointing out the lack of apology or explanation and asking for the HR and complaints departments email addresses (as I'm not paying to send postal mail to the US).

His next reply just keeps on giving, I get a generic postal address (didn't see that coming) and a feeble explanation that the policy changed during the communication*. He did also mention that the issue would be passed on (as per my request) as an example of how not to deal with customers issues (which of course I believed /sarcasm). For good measure he added I'd still have needed the receipt anyway (because common sense isn't so common around EA but they obviously like to get in a parting shot when they can!)

*full disclosure: my original request was about 3 weeks ago but it turns out EA have a policy of closing an incident after 6 days of no reply, unfortunately I never got around to replying in time so had to start again 3 weeks later. However the first line rep never mentioned the policy had been changed since my previous request at any point during the second request so the U-turn stands!

So as it stands right now I've just gone back asking again for the email addresses and not bothered to engage him on any other points as it's obvious he's not going to be of any help. Unfortunately he's sticking to his guns that this is the only line of communication open to me. I've not given up exploring other ways to crack that particular nut open yet.....

My iPad

I might have mentioned that I won an iPad thanks to the guys over at www.bitterwallet.co.uk. Now I've been using it for a few weeks I figured it was time for my thoughts.

I have to say I've been very impressed with it, it's very polished and, unlike the iPhone, the battery life is really good.

In fact my only real gripes are that ios4 still isn't available for iPad (the multitasking would be useful), apps that haven't been written to use the larger screen look blocky when zoomed 2x (not really the iPad's fault) and that I've either got to buy any books I already own again in digital form or spend along time with scanner!

/joke - that wouldn't be remotely practical in addition to the fact that, unless you scan using OCR (and then proof read every page!), it's not going to work as an ebook.

I also discovered that alot of the books I looked for don't exists as ebooks yet and that those that do exist were not significantly cheaper than a physical copy which I find difficult to swallow although I can imagine what the publishing industry's justification for this would be!

Obviously the publishing industry have an advantage over the music industry with regards to digital since it's trivial for home users to convert their existing physical media to digital.

iPhone 4

Daddy's got the new iPhone!

I'll get the interesting bits out the way first so most of you don't doze off during my subsequent diatribe :-)

So what's the iPhone 4 like?

I have to say I'm been a bit underwhelmed, don't get me wrong I'm not disapointed but it's just not the groundbreaking experience your first iPhone was.

The high resolution screen is very nice and, compared to the 3G, its very fast to use with a much better camera. It's a bit early to make a call on battery life as I've literally only been using it for 24 hours now (which it's been connected to the PC for a significant portion of) and it got pretty hammered setting all the apps up but I'm at almost 50% in 5 hours so it appears that it might be better but not by a huge amount than the 3G.

I was pleased to see Apple have removed the cap on how many Exchange server accounts you can sync with (previously only 1) which is one less reason for me to jailbreak but I'm already missing SBSettings.....

The other new bits are pretty much just gimmicks:

Facetime isn't going to see much use if both of you need iPhone 4 _AND_ a wifi connection (I wonder how many people bothered with Skype voice calling on iPhone while it was only over wifi?)

The front facing camera is probably going to see little use because of the limitations of Facetime unless other app developers (Skype, Stickam) make use of it (and Skype voice over 3G isn't going to be free forever nevermind video!)

I have to say my biggest problem with the phone so far has been iTunes v9. This may sound odd until I give you a bit of background. Because I hate myself and have a tendancy to early adopt I've been running XP 64bit edition for the last few years, one of the downsides to this is that iTunes doesn't officially support XP 64.

I say 'officially' because, until version 8, you could simply take the Vista 64 version of iTunes, remove the launch condition on the executables using Orca and then install eveything piecemeal.

Unfortunately iTunes v8 prevented you from getting a 100% working install under XP64 as the iPod helper service refused to run, which was fine if you only have an iPhone (I probably ought to mention I have a 3rd gen iPod about now) so I stayed on v7. To round things off my old G4 mac (OSX 10.4) can only run an even older version of iTunes that won't even talk to my iPhone 3G so that wasn't an option either!

The new iPhone requires iTunes 9 (as does the iPad I have arriving any day now) so something had to give, I've been promising myself a new PC (on which I won't run XP 64) but that wasn't going to happen before I needed to sync my stuff to iPhone. Fortunately I have an XP 32 dual boot installed that I used before I got 'everything' working under XP 64 so I booted that up, installed iTunes 9, copied over my library (the music and video are already on my file server) and then ran out of disk space due to having multiple copies of all my apps (which insist on living under 'My Music' and in the previous iTunes library folder).

My second biggest problem was the lack of mechanism to copy app settings (not the apps themselves) from the old iPhone to the new (can it really be that hard Apple?), I did some searching but then only thing I could find was trying to restore an backup of my old iPhone to my new one. I doubt this would have worked even in the best of cases, it certainly wasn't likely to work for me considering:

a. My 3G is not running OS4
b. My 3G is jailbroken

So after all the apps had been sync'd I got to run each of them and enter all the usernames and passwords again, joy!

So how did I get one?

Well quite by accident I found myself queuing outside an O2 shop last Sunday morning that the O2 website claimed had some stock of the new iPhone 4 - I was considering going Saturday afternoon as the website had said it had stock at 8:45 that morning, but then the update around 13:00 reporting the stock level from 9:00 so I wasn't going to risk a wasted trip.

I say by accident as I failed to check what time the O2 shop opens on a Sunday so, rather than lose my whole morning to Star Wars lego with my son (as I had done the previous day), I dragged the pair of us into town 45 minutes before they opened........... and there were already 5 people in front of me!

The purchase of the iPhone 4 was relatively uneventful save for the store assistant telling me the SIM number porting was handled entirely by iTunes, which it isn't (I had my doubts but I wasnt about to waste even more time in the shop debating it with someone who obviously didn't know)