Hi there, @dcourtwreck
Unfortunately, we can't help with account issues through Answers HQ. An advisor can take you through the account recovery process to gain access to the account. To do that, open a case here. Thanks!
@EA_Aljo wrote:We can't unlink a gamertag without verifying ownership because it's very damaging. You lose all content and progress for EA games. This would be a big problem if we allowed anyone to contact us and unlink accounts without proving they are the owner. These threads are locked because there is nothing we can do about it through Answers HQ so they very frequently just go in a circle and often turn very toxic.
The trouble is there is often no way to prove my Xbox account is my own (ie the email EA has in account does not exist). What has been requested 1000 times is to give the account owners some other REASONABLE way to validate ownership (tell me an IP address from 10 years ago is not reasonable)
In the dozens of threads we've seen on this topic I have seen some cases where support will offer to send the user a message directly on Xbox live with a verification code. DO THIS. Make this standard escalation procedure.
Follow existing process until all other avenues are exhausted, but give users an out.
As someone that is TRYING to play EAs games, and has since NHL 94, it's very frustrating and sort of a slap in the face to be told the company is just locking threads instead of working towards a solution for a problem as common as this.
Community ManagerThreads get locked because there's nothing we can do about this and these conversations tend to become toxic.
As far as account verification goes, there are more questions than the IP address so it's not solely based on that. They ask you questions about the history of the account so the idea is that the actual owner will know those details.
@EA_AljoI'd just like to chime in here i've contacted your support 3 times and each time I get the same copy paste answer that I have to re-again access to the old account. The old account in my case and numerous others being decades old with no way of accessing the e-mail.
In my case, I have the outlook address that my gamertag is currently using. I have a screenshot showing that link.
I have created a new EA account alongside this one with that outlook address..... Can you not just take that as proof of ownership?
If you want me to verify one EA account with another EA account that shows the link between gamertag and Microsoft account i'll happily do that.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that not every account owner will be able to tell you this information. Like I said, I've had my gamertag for a LOOONG time - since day 1 of Xbox live.
So that means it could be any one of the dozen addresses I've lived at in the past 15+ years, any one of the credit card #s in the same period (could also be my mother's, since she paid for it when I was a kid), and I have only purchased physical copies of EA games in the past so I'm really clueless on how to look up my history there.
Is there simpler solution than asking a user to dig up decades old information that may or may not exist? Yes. Take 15 seconds to send a verification code to the account (the XBL/PSN account, not the EA email) you're verifying. Account owners will know the code.
Edit: I want to be clear, I am not trying to start a "toxic" discussion. I would however like to share the flaws and frustrations with EA's support and account verification policies. I understand EA community managers can not directly do anything to solve the issue here in this forum but this problem will not magically go away by locking threads. We would like to help EA find a solution that works within their policies as well.
Community ManagerIt's not an easy one to come up with a perfect solution for. The easier it is to recover your account, the easier it is for others to steal accounts. For example, if someone hacks your Xbox account and we sent a message there to verify, we've now handed over the account to the hacker. I definitely get how frustrating this is, but currently it's our only option for account recovery.
I'm really sorry, but there is absolutely nothing I can do to help with this. Unless the account recovery process changes, you'll need to be able to answer the questions the advisor asks.
@EA_Aljo wrote:For example, if someone hacks your Xbox account and we sent a message there to verify, we've now handed over the account to the hacker.
Alright, if we're talking hackers, what if a hacker had control of someone's Xbox account and linked their own (the hacker's) EA account to it. If the true owner of the gamer tag reclaimed their profile, would that Xbox account just be stuck with that hacker's EA account pairing forever? I'm not saying I was hacked, just a hypothetical. What would someone do in that situation? The actual account owner would have no information on the hacker's EA account to be able to verify and unpair it.
Bummer that you aren't getting the codes. How did you figure out what email was associated with the deleted account? I haven't even been able to get that far.
