what to do about spore?

Bedlam

So I bought spore some time ago. And after updating and installing everything I had a huge problem with trying to connect online. For simplicitys sake I took a picture:



I sent countless emails to EA support from the spore site and for awhile recived nothing but useless form letters and faqs that had nothing to do with my problem. Eventually they gave me the email that is registered to the account number already but since I cant log in from it as it belongs to someone else I still cant do anything about it.

They suggested via email that I try and exchange for another disk at the retailer, and of course since its been so long, Ive gone and lost the recipt. At this point Id really love to get a full refund and wash my hands of the situation, but I suspect even if I had the recipt they wouldnt do that for opened pc games.

Ive thought about selling it on ebay, but my guess is that I would be screwing the person who bought it from me just as bad. At this point Im not sure what I can do. It seems that Im stuck with a $50 game that wont work and a company that wont fix it.

Ritchmeister

Does a local newspaper or tv program have some sort of consumer help thing, like when a person has bought something has problems with it but the company isn't helping them they send a letter to the paper and as soon as the paper start asking questions of the company the person usually gets like a full refund and some extra goodies thrown in because they don't want the bad publicity.

wasted pixels

Why is this registered to someone else's email address -- particularly, someone who can't/won't help you out?

DarkPrimus

What you do is call them up on the help line and explain the situation. They can manually fix the problem and you can be playing within an hour or two.

EDIT: Wait, you bought it used? Well, since each copy of the game can be tied to one online account, you basically paid for a game you can't play online. That's different than my situation, where my account was getting the same error despite my game being new. If EA doesn't want to make an exception in their "one account per game" DRM for you because you didn't buy the game at retail, then you either bitch about it to some news media outlet (and sorry, but the Spore DRM grrr grr rarr thing has already run its course) or you talk to the person you got it from about either getting a refund or getting that email address.

EDIT 2: One last idea would be to say is that you registered an email that is now defunct, and could they please let you tie a new email account to the game.

PeregrineFalcon

wasted pixels wrote: »

Why is this registered to someone else's email address -- particularly, someone who can't/won't help you out?

Bedlam

wasted pixels wrote: »

Why is this registered to someone else's email address -- particularly, someone who can't/won't help you out?

I have no idea. I did not buy it used so I figured either EA had a printing error with their codes, or someone cracked it and had the coiencidence to guess the number ment for my disk exactly.

t primus: where can I find the support number? I looked on the website and there wasnt much I could find in that regard.

EDIT: Just to be clear I bought it from target but paid with cash. Definetly not used.