Okey update, I think i've found a possible solution for this. If you have someone that's not showing up for you, simply delete them and ask them to add you again. This worked out for me anyways, only tried it with one friend so far though.
I have 64 friends on Origin who appear to never ever come online. They all have NFS:MW in common with me and yet the only impact they have in-game is in assigning me a place on the Most Wanted list. Autolog in-game and on the NFS website shows nothing they have done and I do not get friend recommendations. I did have Origin automatically update to Beta version but since I uninstalled the Origin client in the hope that this might fix the issue, I now cannot update back to beta even despite being opted in. I have talked to an advisor online and they say this is a NFS issue that needs to be addressed on a non-existant forum. They did, however give me three recommendations, one of which caused me to temporarily lose the ability to connect to autolog at all, with only one of these three recommendations being reversable. They also provided me a ticket and asked me to call an 0870 number which I drained a full battery listening to some irritating music on and the issue is still persisting.
I'm really not sure I want to continue wasting my money on EA I'm afraid.
