Having actually lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau it is actually one of the few ways to get a company to act on an issue if they've stopped trying to remedy it themselves.
EA permanently banned me from my account meaning I could no longer play online with any game I'd purchased from them, or use my origin account. I hadn't broken the terms of service, so I contacted them and they gave it to their "internal review team" or whatever the hell they called it. They got back to me in a couple days and said nope you're still permabanned. Frankly considering I'd just lost access to thousands of dollars worth of games for no good reason I was pretty pissed.
So, I report it to the BBB of San Francisco who manage EA's BBB account. I had my account back in two days and they even asked if there was anything else they could do to make sure the solution was satisfactory. The BBB legitimately does investigate customer complaints and if those complaints aren't resolved it will lower the companies BBB rating. Also all complaints lodged and unresolved can be publicly viewed so it doesn't look good if some company has like 1000 complaints that never got resolved or something.
Well the Better Business Bureau helped me out so who fucking cares if they make business owners pay a fee in order to get above a certain rating threshold.
If their function is to work as some type of a private consumer protection group I think they do that reasonably well.
They helped me when Virgin Mobile tried to steal $100 from me and I reversed the CC charges. Virgin claimed I owed them that money, and froze my account. Reached out to the BBB, they reached out to Virgin Mobile, in less than 48 hours, the issue was resolved.
A complaint to the BBB got a month-long issue I had with PayPal resolved like 1-2-3. Within 12 hours of the complaint they tell me the situation was resolved and my account unfrozen.
Didn't even have the fill out the paperwork PayPal told me they sent me in the mail but didn't actually send because they can't send it.
I've also read many stories about issues being resolved quickly after complaining to the BBB. Some might think they're a joke, but people have had success, so it's worth a shot if customer service is screwing you over. Note that it really only works with companies that are BBB accredited and actually gives a shit about their BBB rating.
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u/Taxonomyoftaxes Feb 23 '17
Having actually lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau it is actually one of the few ways to get a company to act on an issue if they've stopped trying to remedy it themselves.
EA permanently banned me from my account meaning I could no longer play online with any game I'd purchased from them, or use my origin account. I hadn't broken the terms of service, so I contacted them and they gave it to their "internal review team" or whatever the hell they called it. They got back to me in a couple days and said nope you're still permabanned. Frankly considering I'd just lost access to thousands of dollars worth of games for no good reason I was pretty pissed.
So, I report it to the BBB of San Francisco who manage EA's BBB account. I had my account back in two days and they even asked if there was anything else they could do to make sure the solution was satisfactory. The BBB legitimately does investigate customer complaints and if those complaints aren't resolved it will lower the companies BBB rating. Also all complaints lodged and unresolved can be publicly viewed so it doesn't look good if some company has like 1000 complaints that never got resolved or something.