Winter Offensive Path Purchase Takes Coins but Unlocks Nothing (Update 1.1.3.0)

I'm in a similar position. I paid for this 3 times because nothing was happening, and I thought it was yet another of their network glitches, until I noticed every attempt was taking coins from my account. 

Now I see an EA account here saying this feature was known to be broken and was disabled 3 days ago? Then why did this happen to me last night? The game finally unlocked the path after 14 hours, but I still have ~$30 worth of coins gone. I contacted support as soon as it hapenned last night, and again today, and they say they know about the problem and there is nothing they can do. And to make everything worse, they said about the devs working on this:

Team might not be able to contact you directly but any updates or changes will be communicated through our official social media channels, including Twitter. Please keep an eye on these channels for the latest information or you can also contact us anytime to check for updates on this.

So am I expected to check Twitter for updates on my support inquiries? I'm not looking for a refund back to my CC. I want those coins back.

Who was in charge of the design of this charge-and-pray architeture for what effectively is an online store? Our industry has been doing online commerce for more than 30 years now, how can you get something so basic wrong? These architectural designs are what kids see in 3rd years of college these days.

I was buying stuff in-game to show support to the developers, but I really have no confidence they did a good job architecting this store. They did a really good job at taking the money though. I hope they at least have records so they can refund it.