How To Get A Refund For Faulty Origin Games In Australia

Bought a game from EA’s Origin store in the past two years and had issues with it being faulty? It should be a lot easier to get a refund following an intervention by consumer regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Here’s what you need to do.

The ACCC today announced that it had accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from EA to make sure it followed Australian laws regarding refunds. Put simply, this amounts to: if you are sold goods that are faulty — that is, a game that won’t run — you are entitled to a refund.

You can’t create a policy that says “no refunds” and not get into trouble. Apple made a similar undertaking back in 2013. EA has agreed to handle complaints about faulty games dating back to 1 January 2012, including people who have previously asked for a refund and been rejected.

EA has agreed that it will create a 1800 number, an email address and a PO Box that consumers with faulty games will be able to contact seeking a refund. Those details will be promoted on the Origin web site. These are the key elements:

It will also update its terms and conditions to remove any suggestions that refunds are never available.

Note that this relates to games which don’t work, as opposed to games which you have simply changed your mind about. EA’s Origin offers a “great game guarantee” which lets you return digitally purchased games in the first 24 hours after you have purchased them. That’s an additional right which EA doesn’t have to offer — but it can’t restrict your rights to a refund if the title simply doesn’t work.

The other thing to bear in mind is that you do need to check the platform requirements before seeking a refund. You can’t ask for a refund for something that doesn’t work on Linux if the platform requirements don’t list Linux, for instance.


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