I have submitted the following text to Origin. This has been talked about for at least 4 years but yep, still an issue:
The child/underage account relationship to the parent that sets up this account is absolutely brutal. Lots of others over the years have complained about this but the fact that EA determines, even when a customer/parent sets up this whole thing and ultimately pays Origin money, when any account changes can be made is asinine at the least.
My daughter is now 11 and I can't do anything with her * Origin account to enable me, her dad, to buy online copies (you do know that most game purchases are bought online, yes?) of add-ons or new games (no worries, with this experience I won't be looking for Origin titles anytime again soon) for her. I have to hope like hell that Amazon or a local retailer will somehow have a physical copy of the add-ons she wants FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS!!! ARE YOU REALLY SERIOUS???
You would have been better off using Steam or another game portal service and saving yourselves the embarrassment of such an absolute failure of UX.
After going through 2 years of blog posts on your HQ site, I realized that Origin must be tone deaf or in deep denial that you royally screwed the pooch.
My problem, if you couldn't decipher from above, is that I am not in control of my child's account, you are. I am unable to gift her games nor is her account able to purchase online games, even with a parental security key.
This also begs the question of why you ask for a parental email at all, considering it does nothing more than collect another email for, presumably, Origin to add to its "Account Growth" model. I can't even add my own daughter to my Friends list in order to play along with her.
If there is a fix, which I certainly have found no remedy for, please let me know and I will gladly recant my included statements.
If there is no fix, then plainly state I should have simply lied about my daughters age and set it up, including all her friends myself, rendering your phony policy acceptance clearly useless.
Seeing the previous posts, do yourselves a favor and fire the idiots who came up with this setup because it has not only frustrated myself and other users of other far better, or at least far better thought out, game portals, but has soured me on even considering, lot less purchasing, titles with Origin attached to them.
By the way, its pretty cute that you include no phone number for Origin support nor email address when creating a case. If you are using some third world country for phone support and they are unable to communicate in English, please save the time, tell me by email that you are just cash-grabbing until Origin is purchased by, or farms out support to, another company, and lets call this a day.
