Belchfire Search Engine Marketing

I cannot believe the utter incompetence of EA in the creation of their purchase and download system for Battlefield 2 Euro Force and whatever other games or addons they offer through that system.

First, their inept web programmers crafted some sort of OS check, and so upon clicking the ‘Buy Now’ button, I got an error saying I was not running Windows XP, which of course I am. I use the Opera web browser and have it set to identify itself as an Opera user-agent. I suspected it was this that caused their silly script to error out. I switched to IE and was allowed to proceed. Jesus EA, fire your programmers or if you’re going to do browser checking, correctly identify the issue as being browser related and not OS related.

Once I got past that, now I have to register an account on their site in order to make a purchase. Like trying to find an available hotmail address, the whole process is tedious. After trying to find an available username for 15 minutes, I finally gave up and just typed 16 characters of gibberish just to get past this additional hurdle.

After entering all of my contact info, I’m now told that I must have and enter my GameSpy username. WTF is this? I don’t use and will never use GameSpy and it should not be a requirement to purchase an addon pack for a game that I already own and have also purchased the Special Forces addon for. So now I’m forced to leave the EA site and go to GameSpy to create an account.

Next hurdle - NO WHERE ON GAMESPY.COM IS THERE AN OBVIOUS LINK TO CREATE A GAMESPY ACCOUNT. So now what? Okay since I’m not a moron I know I have to download GameSpy and create an account within the GameSpy program after install. But, as I previously stated, I don’t want it nor will I ever use it. So at this point I have no choice but to abandon my purchase.

But guess what? I get an email from EA thanking me for my purchase. WTF? No where on the EA site was I told that my card would be charged, or at least, it was not clear (to me), than my card had been charged. Anyways, no problem, I’ll give it one more go since EA now has my money.

So here I am downloading the EA Downloader so I can download the Euro Force addon for Battlefield 2. Well guess what, it installed fine on my Windows XP SP2 box but gives me a tiny little error window and when I click the solitary ‘OK’ button (no error on the screen or any indication as to what the error was or how to correct it), the EA Downloader opens to a blank, black screen with no text or buttons or anything.

Since EA does not publish ANY contact information to contact them anywhere on any of their sites, not even their Store (for which the Contact Us link does NOTHING), I have no way of contacting them for help. Their Support site was useless, with the only useful information I found about getting a refund stating I cannot get a refund after I have downloaded the game/mod/addon. Well since I have not even been able to do that due to the error when I attempt to run the EA Downloader, I will expect a refund of my money. However, since EA does not publish any contact information anywhere, I cannot contact them to get a refund. So EA has given me no option other than to simply call my credit card company and have the charge reversed.

So EA, if you’re out there and give a damn at all, which I doubt very much, my question to you and your marketing folks is simply this… Why do you make it so excruciatingly difficult for people to do business with you, specifically, buying software from you online? Do you want to sell software online? Because after I used your system I can only assume that you don’t actually want to generate any online revenues as you have the most cumbersome, restrictive, tedious and problematic online order systems that I have ever used.

Now before you dismiss this out of hand as some schmuck that can’t use a computer, know that I am the product manager for web hosting at Canada’s second largest Telco and am intimately familiar with hosting, ecommerce, web applications development and design, online marketing, etc., having over 10 years experience in this field managing a portfolio in the millions with hundreds of thousands of customers. I KNOW what I’m talking about.

I suggest that you re-develop your online order system to eliminate the need for user accounts. User accounts should be elective, suggested only if a customer wishes to make future purchases easier. Second, develop your order system to be standards compliant and supported by all major browsers, including IE, gecko-based browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape) and Opera, and be cross-platform. Come on you must have some talented programmers somewhere. And if you must develop a system that can only be supported by certain browsers or uses specific scripting languages, publish those requirements at the beginning of the order process. If you must then do checking to ensure compliance/compatibility, accurately reflect any non-compliance in your error message.

Next, publish easily identifiably and accessible contact info on all pages in the order process and in any and all confirmation messages so your customers can contact you in the few cases a customer might have problems or questions. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t at least some info in your TWO automated confirmation emails.

I don’t know what the deal is with GameSpy, but ditch it. I know you probably tied it into the EA Downloader electronic distribution system or map authentication and likely get a kick-back from GameSpy for promoting their software, and from the look of it, REQUIRING use of their software to even use the downloaded mod after installation. To this I can only say this was implemented very poorly and would love to have been in attendance at your project team meetings to try to understand the logic of the whole thing. Someone should have cried out DON’T TO IT! Obviously no one did. Perhaps you have to many ‘yes’ men in your employ who don’t want to rock the boat. Whatever the case, it was just a bad idea and you’ll realize this soon enough when your financials come in and are far below your projected targets for online orders though this new system. Consider this, if you are reading this, think about how many other people abandoned the online order system when they couldn’t find an available username, didn’t have a GameSpy account, etc. From my own experience, surveys and market research I can tell you it’s around 100:1. So for every one person that contacts you with problems due to online order systems, one hundred just left. But in your case even if that one in one hundred, such as me, did want to contact you to make you aware or ask for assistance, they could not because of the aforementioned lack of contact info for your organization.

Great game Battlefield 2, and I happily paid the retail price for Special Forces at my local computer store, but until you acknowledge and correct the issues with your online order system, this customer will not be purchasing any further software from your organization online, nor anything that requires use of your EA Downloader or GameSpy. Sure, I understand that you want to curb piracy and trap more of that revenue leakage, but your current system just doesn’t cut it. Can you say Steam? There is a system that works and works well. I suggest you take a closer look at your competitors and emulate what they do right and do well.

Too bad, I was rather looking forward to playing a few rounds on China Wall but instead wasted a half-hour of my time writing this not even knowing if anyone in your organization even reads it. Perhaps I’ll forward on to obvious contact emails and grab a few addresses from your domain registrations and IP blocks. If I’m lucky maybe someone will forward this on to someone who cares…

Customer service is a lost art and EA exemplifies this. I could use them as a prime example in a case study.