EA account linking to a new Xbox Account

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@Scrpzr wrote:

 

So I need to contact EA customer support to properly unlink my Xbox and EA accounts. So does Microsoft have false information?

Anyone?

 

 

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That's the thing, the unlinking isn't the issue, several people can do that without EA Support assistance. It's the relinking to another Xbox account that is the trouble. I don't think EA Support channels fully comprehend that part of it. 

Thanks @thekurse for pushing this along. You are better connected than me!

I see EAHelp on twitter answering other people's queries but so far I've not had a response. 

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@tmase83 wrote:

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@Scrpzr wrote:

 

So I need to contact EA customer support to properly unlink my Xbox and EA accounts. So does Microsoft have false information?

Anyone?

 

 

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That's the thing, the unlinking isn't the issue, several people can do that without EA Support assistance. It's the relinking to another Xbox account that is the trouble. I don't think EA Support channels fully comprehend that part of it. 

Thanks @thekurse for pushing this along. You are better connected than me!

I see EAHelp on twitter answering other people's queries but so far I've not had a response. 

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I was able to get a response from EAHelp, but the long and short of it is this:

"That restriction is not one I can override, but it's one we're looking into to see if any other options would be possible in the future. For now, you may not be able to link to the same account you prefer. We'll note your feedback and keep investigating any future solutions if possible."

Hopefully if we keep asking for a solution they can find one.

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@-6thAD-Bogard wrote:

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@tmase83 wrote:

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@Scrpzr wrote:

 

So I need to contact EA customer support to properly unlink my Xbox and EA accounts. So does Microsoft have false information?

Anyone?

 

 

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That's the thing, the unlinking isn't the issue, several people can do that without EA Support assistance. It's the relinking to another Xbox account that is the trouble. I don't think EA Support channels fully comprehend that part of it. 

Thanks @thekurse for pushing this along. You are better connected than me!

I see EAHelp on twitter answering other people's queries but so far I've not had a response. 

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I was able to get a response from EAHelp, but the long and short of it is this:

"That restriction is not one I can override, but it's one we're looking into to see if any other options would be possible in the future. For now, you may not be able to link to the same account you prefer. We'll note your feedback and keep investigating any future solutions if possible."

Hopefully if we keep asking for a solution they can find one.

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That sounds like the biggest cop out corporate speak response they could give you. I really really hate it when they say things like “we’ll take your feedback into consideration” and “we’ll investigate future solutions”. I mean, feel free to do that, but to the customers that you are currently leaving high and dry it sounds more like “Stop asking for this basic thing, go away, we don’t care”. 

There has to be someone in the company somewhere that can at least give us a straight answer of why this policy exists in the first place and why they are unwilling to help out their customers with this seemingly simple request.

I mean, is their database schema so convoluted that when you link accounts it creates some sort of wild foreign key constraints that require them to call Raul from a contracting company they haven’t used in years and have him sign in and untangle the data for $200 an hour? 

Or is it just that Dave from accounting was in a meeting 8 years ago and came up with a line graph that said users with multiple accounts spend more money and the board went “wow nice graph Dave, let’s make this policy and go grab a couple of vodka Red Bull’s after”? 

It sure does sound like that. Having worked in big companies half the battle is finding the right person among the many that can solve your issue, this twitter user might have struck the right person. I'm sure this can be resolved.

Pleased to see someone got a response from EA Help on twitter, I haven't heard a peep. I tweeted them again;

https://twitter.com/Tim20802273/status/1373910961355071488

I figure if they haven't replied to my original tweet after 24 hours then they aren't likely to!

Okay so Dan at EA Help on Twitter DM'd me almost immediately this time. He's been the most forthcoming EA rep I've been in contact with.

Long story short, there is a system limitation at the EA end that is stopping us from linking another Xbox account. The system is still being developed but there is no guarantee that our issue will be resolved. The unlinking accounts page on EA Help - https://help.ea.com/en/help/account/unlink-gaming-accounts-from-ea-account/ will be the best place to look out for any changes to the linking restrictions.

The best place to try to get someone at EA to look at this issue is the forums, so post here I guess.

My DM conversation is below;

DAN: Hello again, thanks for getting back to me. OK you mentioned that you unlinked an old unused Xbox Gamertag from your EA account. Are you now trying to link another Gamertag to that same EA account? If so, what error message are you getting when you try to do that? -Dan 

3rd attempt at trying to post this, so hopefully there aren't duplicate posts!

Okay so Dan at EA Help on Twitter DM'd me almost immediately this time. He's been the most forthcoming EA rep I've been in contact with.

Long story short, there is a system limitation at the EA end that is stopping us from linking another Xbox account. The system is still being developed but there is no guarantee that our issue will be resolved. The unlinking accounts page on EA Help - https://help.ea.com/en/help/account/unlink-gaming-accounts-from-ea-account/ will be the best place to look out for any changes to the linking restrictions.

The best place to try to get someone at EA to look at this issue is the forums, so post here I guess.

My DM conversation is below;

DAN: Hello again, thanks for getting back to me. OK you mentioned that you unlinked an old unused Xbox Gamertag from your EA account. Are you now trying to link another Gamertag to that same EA account? If so, what error message are you getting when you try to do that? -Dan 

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@Qrusher14242 wrote:
@-6thAD-Bogardi got the same kind of response, and they also said this, not sure if its true or not:

"Thanks for the DM! We've been seeing this reported a lot today, so we're having it looked into. You're able to link multiple Xbox accounts to one EA Account on a normal day, but we believe this is due to the recent addition of EA Play to Game Pass PC + Ultimate on the console. "

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That... doesn't make sense? It says in plain text on the account connections page that only one account per network per lifetime can be linked.

This has been EA policy, and wasn't introduced with Game Pass. Our headaches were introduced with Game Pass :D

I've been getting this response from email support (who are completely useless):

Please allow me to share that you cannot link the same account to EA Account once you unlinked. This is working as intended.

To know more about, please go through our help link:

https://help.ea.com/en-gb/help/account/link-your-console-accounts/

Hope you can understand the predicament. Had it been possible for me, I surely would've done something for you in this without a second thought. 

Which effectively boils down to "tough luck, we're not going to help you"

I believe it's possible that they can't fix it, and since this is a policy issue, I understand them being dismissive.

Thankfully, EAHelp gives us a little hope, but only a little. If we don't keep making noise this will just slip through the cracks.

It's clearly an illogical rule to make a new empty account just to be able to play with my current Xbox account.

I have subscribed to EA Play before, and I've leveled up a lot with Battlefield V and other original titles like Anthem, Star Wars battlefront 1 & 2 etc. 
Now because of this rule, I can throw away my achievements and start from scratch.

For now. I won't be using EA Play.

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@Scrpzr wrote:

It's clearly an illogical rule to make a new empty account just to be able to play with my current Xbox account.

I have subscribed to EA Play before, and I've leveled up a lot with Battlefield V and other original titles like Anthem, Star Wars battlefront 1 & 2 etc. 
Now because of this rule, I can throw away my achievements and start from scratch.

For now. I won't be using EA Play.

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Agree. It's a terrible solution to tell us to make and manage two EA accounts. I'm not losing all of my Battlefield soldiers and my Apex stats, so I'd have to actively use two accounts in order to access EA Play. That's a pretty terrible solution from the user's point of view, especially since it's a hassle to logout/in everytime you want to switch accounts. I really hope they work towards a solution for us. I don't know why this policy exists. If I had to guess, I'd say it's to prevent account sharing or selling, and probably was initiated to protect console-side content for games like FIFA. I don't even own an Xbox, but I'm an GP Ultimate customer because it was a fantastic value at the $1 conversion price.

I won't be using EA Play for now either, but that's also a poor result. We're already paying for it.

That's funny and sad at the same time.

I chatted with Microsoft support and they gave me this link: 

https://support.xbox.com/en-us/help/subscriptions-billing/manage-subscriptions/ea-play-with-xbox-game-pass-faq

What should I do if I linked the wrong Xbox and EA accounts and want to unlink accounts?

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@tmase83 wrote:

 

DAN: You're very welcome for the help & I appreciate the feedback. And yes if you think my response would be useful to those you've seen on the forum threads, you can share it with them. And yes the multiple Xbox Gamertags on one EA account scenario is an easier one to fix as you can just remove one & then keep going with your main one. We can do that from the Support side if everything works as intended. Regarding you appealing to anyone else that could help, there isn't really anyone or any avenue I would suggest other than the forums. We're aware of this issue & it's a technical limitation for now more than anything else. As far as I'm aware. There are so many scenarios that you have to factor in & we've tried to accommodate as many as possible for now. -Dan

 

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Dan seems like a nice guy but the whole technical limitation schtick doesn't fly with me for one reason:  There are reports of users with multiple XBox accounts attached to one EA account, and people are saying that the reps are able to quickly and easily unlink the old account for them.  Now, if this is actually a technical limitation it means that there should only be a one-to-one relationship between Xbox and EA accounts and those people experiencing the multiple accounts issue have found a major bug in the system that is allowing a many-to-one relationship of XBox-EA accounts.  So this makes me super curious... when EA unlinks the original account for them and their new account is linked, what happens if they happen to unlink their new account and attempt to re-link it?  Will the error with their original email pop up and say "You can only link this original account?" since the support staff says they are physically unable to unlink the original account and they are just running some sort of work around?  Or are they actually physically able to unlink old accounts, they just are absolutely adhering to their policy no matter what and giving us a line of bull about these technical limitations? 

Next question on my mind is this: if there is a major bug that allows people to link multiple accounts... what are the repro steps?  This seems to be the only route for us to actually get our accounts linked without going through hours and hours of chat, forum posts, and social media posts haha. 

It's all totally believable, but still an inconvenience that I hope they can work around. As for reproducing that issue, it could be something as obscure as linking an account with some old Xbox 360 game, or maybe even a long defunct form. It's a fringe case and probably not easy to reproduce.

Well my xbox game pass is going to expire next week, i think im not going to renew because this issue. There is a lot of other games that i can play in the meanwhile.

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@WacheMowe wrote:

Well my xbox game pass is going to expire next week, i think im not going to renew because this issue. There is a lot of other games that i can play in the meanwhile.

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Be sure to let Microsoft know that this is the reason you aren't re-upping.  EA more than likely already has a big chunk of cash MS gave them for this deal, so they couldn't care less that people are dropping off of the service Microsoft is providing.  But if MS gets enough reports that EA is treating Microsoft's customers like trash and they are dumping Microsoft's service, EA will hear about it from the people they care about: their investors.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that fixing this requires development, and that support lines really are helpless at this point. That doesn't mean I'm going to accept that result though, and hope that people keep pushing them on the issue, because it's the only hope we have for a positive outcome. If we stop complaining, they're just going to assume their two account solution is something we're happy with.

Another chat with EAHelp on Twitter.

"If you unlinked your Xbox Gamertag from your EA Account, then you won't be able to relink a Gamertag to your EA Account ever again, which isn't something we had in play in 2010, but as all things do, process and programs change. Now that you have unlinked a Gamertag from your EA Account you aren't going to be able to re-link it to that same EA Account again. What I would suggest is creating a new EA Account and linking your Gamertag to the new EA Account.

Same thing again. They want a surplus of empty accounts rather than change the policy.

The vague answer of "process and programs change" still makes no sense. We need a solution ASAP.

That's such a poor response. Process and programs change? Okay that means you CAN change this. And if this policy didn't exist in 2010 why am I subject to it for a dead account that I linked in 2008? It makes no sense.

Hi everyone,

This thread got quite some traction during my weekend and I've been reading through all your posts. 

First off, Dan seems like an absolute legend and got it spot on!

The main theme of this thread is that players like yourself linked an Xbox account to an EA account ages ago, but never really used it. You then created a new EA Account to play EA games on Origin, without knowing that you owned another EA account or that another Xbox Account was linked to the EA Account that you played Origin Games on. Now you can't link your Xbox Account to your active EA account and you'll have to manage 2 or 3 EA Accounts to make full use of EA Play through the Xbox Game pass on EA Desktop. From what I've seen here, you don't really think that's ideal. 

It's true that unlinking account is a recent feature. In the past you weren't able to unlink accounts. There was the possibility to go through support to remove the link, but that was only done in some of more extreme edge cases. With the new feature in place, you'll be able to remove the link between you Xbox and EA Account, but you can only the Xbox Account to a new EA account once every 6 months and only to an EA account that hasn't been linked to an Xbox account previously. 

You've also mentioned that some players have multiple Xbox Accounts linked to a single EA Account. That's also something that was possible in the distant past, but it hasn't been possible for quite some time now. This isn't a bug, but just an older functionality that's no longer possible. 

That being said, I've gathered all your feedback and I'll be sure to pass on your concerns and desire to link your active EA Account to your Xbox Account. I cannot make any promises that this will be changed, but I can promise that your feedback will be passed on to the relevant teams. 

That's... not the problem most of us are having at all. Most of us have our original EA accounts, but have a dead Xbox account linked to it. The six month limitation is not the issue, the issue is that you will only allow us to link one Xbox account to our EA account per lifetime of that account. That is a poor interpretation of the problem most of the people in this thread, and most of the people contacting support have. We KNOW there is a policy preventing you from fixing it, we're asking you why you can't make an exception to that policy for old customers that linked derelict Xbox accounts in 2008.