It takes two - other player has left the session

It takes two - i am unable to play this game with my friend. 
I keep having connection issues, i invite my friend and it says "joining" for a while and then says "The other player has left the session". 
Sometimes it also says "Unable to connect to EA Servers". 
We have tried everything that has been suggested in previous threads -- clearing the cache, synchronizing date and time etc.

This is beyond ridiculous that we pay for a service and it just doesn't work at all! Please provide a solution or get this fixed.