Thank you Jason for your suggestion.
I need to be careful with my response due to an EA Community Rule:
"The forums aren't the ideal place for legal discussions and posts including legal chat will be removed"
So I will reply instead with basic guidelines on what is needed to get this issue resolved, so that all the other people who have their accounts linked by EA to other people are hopefully able to resolve it.
I was able to log in to the other person's EA account using my own personal Xbox credentials, which let me view all the personal information on the other users EA account. I could also see that EA had linked four other XBox user's accounts to this one person's EA Account.
I was able to then initiate a chat with an EA Help desk rep from the other person's EA account, I was able to use the personal info I could see in that other account to satisfy the EA reps verification requests and then ask them to unlink the accounts.
They agreed to do this because I had satisfied their verification requirements, even though I wasn't the EA Account Holder.
This whole process did take a total of nine different communications attempts with EA Helpdesk staff through four different methods (forums, phone, Facebook messenger and chat) before I worked out the exact details of what needed to be done and found a rep willing to do it.
So when this happens to others, use the above method to resolve it and just keep trying until you get someone willing to fix it for you.
Hopefully, this description is vague enough to not upset the forum rules but contains enough information to allow others to resolve the issue when it happens to them.
I had the exact same issue, except I too had someone else's Xbox account tied to my EA account.
When I first initiated EA Desktop through Xbox Game Pass, it had automatically logged into someone else's EA Account and linked my Xbox profile to theirs. Yada-yada-yada, I go through 3 different support lines to eventually unlink both the random Xbox account in my EA account, and unlinked my Xbox account from the random EA account. However, because my EA account now already had an Xbox account linked to it, I cannot link any other Xbox account to it, permanently.
In EA's terms and conditions when it comes to unlinking an Xbox account, "Only one Xbox account may be linked within the lifetime of the EA account". So I'm SOL.
"Only one Xbox account may be linked within the lifetime of the EA account"
Really?
Because I have a screenshot of this other person's account (names and data redacted)that shows 5 different XBox accounts linked to this one person's EA Account? I've attached a copy with everyone's name redacted so no personal information is visible but you can see that this one account had five XBox accounts linked all at the same time. This is pretty clear evidence that not only can multiple accounts be linked, but that EA's systems are so broken that one account can mistakenly get 5 different accounts linked to it without the account holder's permission.
It's pretty obvious that a lot of EA's policies are just arbitrary and not functionally or technically limited in any way.
And from the way most of the EA Help reps responded it's pretty clear that EA enforces these arbitrary restrictions really tightly on their staff. All the staff pushed back really strongly on any hint that EA was responsible for the data breach and several of them outright blamed me and stated plainly that I must have linked my account to someone else's. Ignoring the fact that if it's that easy for me to llink my account to someone else, without having a password, username email etc then there's a fundamental flaw in their process. And for me to then be able to access all that other person's information from my own account? Crazy.
Worst of all is that, while talking to these EA Help reps, I know that they all had access to see this other persons account, they could see that the names and DOB and email didn't match my XBox account, they could see 5 different accounts all linked to this one EA account at the same time... Any one with an ounce of common sense or integrity would be able to tell immediately that a mistake has occurred...and still none of them was willing to even acknowledge that there might have been a problem or offer any hint of a solution or even to consent to escalate the problem to someone else.
As for your experience with them refusing to link your XBox account, all I can suggest is to try to show them the above screenshot, and force them to admit that there is nothing technically stopping them from linking a new account. You have evidence that their system can do it. Refer them to your own account and chat history logs where you proved that it wasn't your account that had been linked and that it was EA who was responsible for screwing it up. Make it clear that you are not asking for them to do something unorthodox you are asking them to undo the mistake that they made. I don't expect it will work but that's about the only shot you have. Try multiple cases with multiple Help Desk people and see if you can evenually find one that will help you.
Otherwise, I guess you can just do what I've now decided to do. Recognise that EA is a garbage company with terrible customer support who don't care about their customers, and just don't buy or install any of their games, move on to other developers. I'm entitled to a bunch of EA games for free through XBox Game Pass, but I'm not really interested in putting my personal information at risk by signing up to their systems anymore. I'll probably be closing this EA account eventually as well, though I doubt that would make a difference, given their IT and Data security clearly leaks like a sieve.
When my account got linked to the someone else's account, I was able to log into their account via logging in through Xbox Live, and within THEIR account I had seen something similar - 3 different Xbox Live accounts hooked up to their EA account, with one of those accounts being mine. I can't explain how, or why, and I should've honestly taken a screenshot of that.
However, any time I try to re-link my Xbox account to my EA Account, I get this message:
Having the same issue, except slightly different: the original linked account was not some random's account, it was MY account, the same one I use now, prior to an XBOX gamertag name change.
EA Account's system seemingly lost track of my account and became dissociated when the name was changed. I never 'unlinked' the account, never even had the option, because it doesn't show up in my Connections page at all and never did. I always just assumed it was still linked and then found out it wasn't anymore. Try to link with the new name and get the message others have posted here and in 1000 other threads on these forums - can only link to one account in an EA Account's lifetime.
It's totally ridiculous this is an issue at all and EA Support seems totally worthless. Agents on the forums tell you to go talk to the chat support, chat support tells you there's nothing they can do and close the ticket despite you telling them not to. Ask to be put in contact with anybody knowledgeable about the accounts system and they refuse and send you copy + pasted responses.
At this point I really don't see the point in buying EA products anymore because their account system is flat-out broken. There's only two ways to view this:
I only hope that with XBOX + Game Pass connecting to EA Account on PC, thousands and thousands more people are going to run into this problem and be vocal about it - because right now EA doesn't seem to care at all.
