Apologies, mods, if this is inappropriate, but I felt the need to share this experience, and to ask if anything like this has happened to someone here at MTS. I'll try not to snark too much, because I don't want this to become a rant.

Around the end of January/first week of February, I found that I could no longer log in to my account at thesims3.com. When I entered my information, the site whisked me off to a signup page, telling me that it recognized my information, and if I'd just fill out this page and enter a game serial number, it would give me an account for the site. Attempting to get to the Forums or Exchange made the site try, and fail, to redirect me to Signup, leading to a Firefox error message about accepting cookies. Now, I've had my Tasselcat account at the Sims 3 site for at least 2 years. I've posted on the forums and bought probably over $100's worth of Store stuff. I have all the EPs except Generations. I bought PETS through Origin.

Since the redirection page meant I couldn't access the Exchange, Store, or Forums, even from external links, I was rather peeved. So, after a week of this minor frustration, I took action and wrote a report to EA Customer Support. I could still log in to my Origin account, strangely.

This is what I sent to the support team, with the request that they answer via email, on February 16th:
"When I attempt to log in at thesims3.com, it redirects to a page informing me that the info I entered is associated with an existing EA account, and I must enter my Sims 3 serial code to Sign Up. I've had an active account at sims3.com for a couple years, including several games registered and items purchased at the Store. Additionally, every time I click an external link to a sims3.com forum post, or news feed, it attempts to redirect me to this sign-up page, and usually my browser gives me an error page with a message about my settings not accepting cookies (which is wrong)."

Two weeks later, on February 24th, this is what Customer Support responded with:
"Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts regarding Sims 3 login issue...
I have checked your account information and found that you have not created an account for Sims 3 website. So I would suggest you to first create a persona for Sims 3 website then go ahead to register your game. Please visit the below link to create your account. Please skip the Serial Code part (leave it blank) and fill the rest of the information to create a persona..."
Followed by instructions on signing up and game registration, clearing my browser cache, and using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer 8. I know they have no way of knowing I already use Firefox, so I'm not going to get irritated about that.

But, honestly? Did you not read my report at all? I had an account for 2 years. I understand that for some reason your files show no record of a current account, but I know that somewhere, there is a record of my past transactions. I would have appreciated it if one of the team could have dug a little deeper to see if there was a system glitch, or just written a message that made me feel less like they only read the byline of the report.

I'm really the most bothered because creating a new account means that I don't have access to any of my old Store purchases, unless I want to shell out more cash, which I am just not willing to do. I didn't have any uploads or stories going on my account, thankfully.

Thus far, the only good thing to come out of this interaction is a coupon for the Origin store. I'm thinking I'll see how long I can go without the Sims 3 site forums and Store content, which hopefully is a long time. The only thing I'll really miss is the good worlds on the Exchange.

Comments, questions, commiserations, discussion?

Sorry to hear that they burned you like that.
My feelings about EA are along the lines of Don't feed the vulture or you'll just get bird bites. I hope things work out for you, though.

Have you tried calling them or using the Live Chat?

I'd try the phone call. I found them to be highly frustrating recently in both email & live chat. Almost willfully ignorant, I'd say.

I've done the live chat and they have helped me. It's kind of like the Game Problem steps here on MTS where you have to go through a logic tree to rule things out. The live chat people have a similar script, and they will go through each step.
I had a problem once not being able to log into my Sims 3 account because Origin was updated but my game wasn't fully patched.

Thank you all for the advice and sympathy. I have considered pushing the ticket further and calling them, but for various reason that I won't go into here (they're all very boring), for now the simplest thing would be leaving it alone. I have backups of my backups for Sims content that I made over the last few days, so I'm good to go. If I find that I really can't go without the Exchange, I'll make a new persona and only use it for that.

Really, this was just meant as an experience sharing post. Like a warning, but much less dire, I suppose.

Hah. I have a similar problem accessing my account at the TS3 site. I can change my password but I can't log in with it And I can't use Live Chat, because to do that, you have to log in... so the other night I tried phoning, but after waiting 10 minutes on hold I decided it wasn't worth the trouble... I'll work on resolving it if I ever NEED to access that site, which I really don't right now :p

I couldn't log in but I changed my password and somehow I was finally able to. Don't rely on EA, I had bad experiences with The Sims Social, they're just money hungry.

They say you really don't know how good a company is until you try to use their customer support. *sigh*. Sorry that had to happen to you, especially since you spent all that money.

I am sorry you got a auto response email back, it sounds pretty lame for them to do that.

I had an actual positive experience with EA, I guess it's a rare thing. But when TS3 first came out I made my account/registered the game and so on. Then after that I couldn't access it because my email/user name was associated with Ultima Online, Spore and some other things. I basically had about 6 accounts all floating around with my name. I called them, told them what happened and they merged all of my games onto one account. I was very happy with that.