Cannot Link my Xbox Tag to EA Account that had a previously linked Xbox Tag
Hey all. Recently was excited that EA Play was included with Xbox Gamepass PC. Excitement quickly turned to frustration when I realized that I cannot link my current Xbox Tag / Account with my EA account because my EA account was already linked 10 years ago to an Xbox Tag that I no longer use. Unlinked that old Xbox Tag and attempted to link my current one only to see an error stating that you can have ONE Xbox Account linked for the LIFETIME of your EA account. It was a pretty big WTF moment for me.
My EA account is 13 years old and I have a decent amount of purchases on it (was an avid Battlefield player, my fiancé loves the Sims, I've enjoyed some of the latest Star Wars offerings as well as the occasional sports game). I understand that this restriction is in place for security reasons, but the inability to EVER change the linked account for the lifetime of the EA account for ANY reason is insane.
I went to EA support and waited a half hour for a chat agent to show up to hopefully help me remove the flag on my account and get set up with my "new" (i.e. 5 year old) Xbox account. Their response? The chat reiterated the policy then told me "You may try to link your new Gamertag with an another EA Account as there is no way to link it with the same EA Account." which is basically "Create a burner EA account so you can use EA Play". What good can this honestly do? If I do this it makes it so I will never spend a dime on DLC for any game in EA Play as I do not want to have to worry about security on yet another account (I already have to keep an eye on: EA, Ubisoft, Steam, EGS, Xbox, GOG, and Blizzard... now I add a SECOND EA account to that... no way). It also makes it so if I ever cancel EA Play I won't be able to carry over my progress to games that I may end up wanting to buy after my membership ends therefore... I won't buy games on the burner account.
This kind of policy makes me never want to spend another cent on an EA product. Googling this issue turns up stuff from as far back as 2016 so I'm not too hopeful this will ever change and that the "feedback" will always go to their "teams" (aka the recycle bin).
If anyone has been able to find an agent somewhere in the labyrinth of EA support that is actually willing and able to help them with this... please let me know.
Chat transcript for those that are curious (I didn't want to put the chat agent on blast or anything so I just replaced their name):