There's been an overload of criticism of EA over the past few years, and I thought I'd pass on a positive experience I recently had with them. EA still has negatives - mainly their website is unable to cope and it's very slow loading pages. I've also had Apache errors come up. Their payment processing system is also very buggy, which was the reason why I originally contacted them.
Last month, EA's Store had a sale of various games including Mass Effect, Dead Space and Burnout Paradise, each for £4.99. I successfully bought Mass Effect and Dead Space, then a week later tried to buy Burnout. I couldn't. Every time, I was told the payment process had failed, both with directly inputting card details as well as trying via Paypal.
I emailed EA, and received a not very helpful reply from their first tier support. I replied to that, also mentioning I'd seen people on forums posting they'd had the same problem. A period of time passed, and I received a questionnaire from EA asking me to rate my recent experience. Naturally, my ratings were pretty negative.
Another period of time passed. Just over a week after my initial email, I decided to buy Burnout from another store.
Then, out of the blue, I received an email from an EA rep higher up the tier of support. He apologised for my problems, and told me he'd added Burnout Paradise FREE to my EA downloader account.
A day later though, I got a problem with Burnout where I was unable to login to my Burnout online profile. I thought it could be server related, but maybe I was having a problem because now two Burnout serials were associated with my account.
I shot this EA rep another email, asking if he could disassociate the paid-for serial from my account so it could be used by someone else. He replied the next day, saying he'd done that, and that he could also generate a new serial for that serial if any problems arose again. That hadn't fixed the login problem when I first checked, but a few hours later it was working again, so might have been to do with servers or something he did.
That is in itself fantastic service. Sure, the first response was unhelpful, but their system helps weed out users who might have temporary problems etc, but in the end I got a superb level of service where someone listened to my problem and gave me a customised solution.
But there's more! I just started up my EA downloader and noticed to my surprise that another FREE game had been added: Need For Speed Undercover. Discovering this made me giggle like a schoolgirl.
All I wanted to do was to be able to pay £4.99 to buy a game. EA added Burnout FREE when the price had reverted to £29.99, and then added another FREE game when I had a problem with that first FREE game.
I've already expressed positive opinions of EA's current DRM approach, which is still restrictive DRM but results in something easier to cope with as an end user than games like Bioshock and Grand Theft Auto IV (internet activation is needed, but after that no disk checks). It seems like the huge amount of negative publicity generated by Spore and Mass Effect DRMs has changed them for the better.
Anyway, well done EA, you've given me fantastic service (though I know this is just my own experience and may not be the same for everyone) and have ensured I will be a very happy paying customer in the future. Also, your recent sale of Mass Effect made me play a game I wouldn't have done, and piqued my interest for Mass Effect 2.
Nothing is better than GOG and DRM free of course, but just thought I'd throw this out there. Anyone else received ridiculously good support from game publishers?

Now that is a class act, you should write to the EA CEO and tell them to promote that guy to head of customer relations or something. That sort of dedication to service in this disposable culture deserves a reward.
Heh while you're doing it, can you ask them how I can link my bioware forum, bioware social & ea accounts so I can upload the stats of my dragon age characters?
Probably the best non-gog customer service I've had is from Microsoft when my 360 broke down. They estimated 6-8 weeks and it was done in 2 and they threw in a free month of live gold as an apology

That is rather exceptional support. I think EA are trying to improve their EADM service as a genuine alternative to DRM like SecuROM and im my experience it certainly is.
A friend of mine just recently bought a new PC and asked me for recommendations for any Cyberpunk games to which I said naturally Deus Ex. He bought it from Gamersgate but couldn't get it to run properly on his 64bit Windows 7 and e-mailed GG support about it. GG e-mailed back saying that Deus Ex might not work on 64bit OS and issued him a refund. In the meantime he managed to get it running and e-mailed them back telling them to cancel the refund to which they replied Merry Christmas. So Gamersgate effectively gave him a free copy of Deus Ex. Needless to say he will be a returning customer.

Couldn't agree more. The tendency with many companies these days is to to take the money and run. I emailed Take2 just to see if they'd consider releasing a no disk patch for Bioshock as it's been doing my head in, and finally got this very short response a month later: "You can purchase download versions of the games from places like Steam." Ok, thanks...that's really going to make me want to buy Bioshock 2.
Edit: coincidentally, literally just got another response from Take2, in response to a month old follow-up I wrote pointing out it had been more than 3 days (their stated response time) since my original message. They must have an incredibly long backlog! Better reply this time, saying Civilization 4 Complete was a DRM free release and that they're looking into better implementations of DRM. Good to see they're considering it, anyway. Hopefully Civ 4 had good enough sales to give them something to think about.
You should ask on the Bioware forums if that's possible. If it is, I'm sure they'd do that for you!
That's pretty damn good. I think if you're honest, karma does a cartwheel and returns the favour :)

EA still use SecuROM activation limits for their EA Store titles. But it's a lot more logical than it used to be and refunds any unused activations pretty seamlessly (seemingly).
I have also had excellent customer support from Gamersgate. I'd certainly recommend them over other (nonGOG) DD sites. Impulse technical support is also good, but then the problem is there that it needs to be good.

Just an experience at a local ice cream shop...
So, one of my friends ordered a small chocolate ice cream. Somehow they got the order wrong and gave her a large one instead.
When she said that they had made a mistake, they gave her the small ice cream she originally ordered AND let her keep the large ice cream.
Now that's what you call customer service.

True but they also provide the software to de-activate your computer as well.

Someone at ea did all that?Holy......They should give that worker a big fat bonus or a bigger pay check each week/promote to some job with a higher salary.

Instead, he'll probably be kicked out within a week.

Shame. It's the sad truth.
In any case, to op: I think you should email EA about this chap, and commend him for his efforts. Even if an individual works at a crappy company, it pays to have one know he is doing a good job.

Nice to see EA support getting it right for once, but I still refuse to waste my time with them. I've had enough of the people working in their support department (or most likely in a sub contracted support center somewhere in India -- going by the usual names of representatives) trying to steal my identity by asking questions that have nothing to do with the support I was trying to seek.

Lets face it, EA's time as being the Evil Empire is pretty much over. They where whithout a doubt a pile of shit company but have of late seem to be doing alot to reverse that image.
Credit where credit is due etc. etc.

Agree.

Yeah, Evil Empire goes to ActiBlizzard. EA's practically saint-like compared to them.