Account linking deletes progress

About 6 months ago, when playing another EA game, it required me to link my Steam and xbox to the same EA profile for some benefit. Merged an old EA account into my new one, ran into an issue, so i got with support and they helped me merge the accounts. Little did i realize that i was deleting an apex profile with 50 days playtime, since i hadn't played in years. I also had no idea progress was linked in this way in general, hell i even forgot Apex was EA. So to lose all of that over some silly other game that i don't even remember the name of, without warning from a support member beforehand, is insulting. then i see that its supposed to put the higher level Apex account on when you merge accounts anyways. SO..... i guess that's not true either. Be Very Careful when merging.