Electronic Arts - Origin $20 Cash Card
Model: EA ORIGIN CASH CARD $20
SKU: 5704019
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Perfect amount to buy sims 3 pets (not including tax)
Posted by jmalone9
So, I rated this 2 stars because the cards work (scratch the stuff off, enter the key, have money on account), and it has nothing to do with Best Buy or anything, but Electronic Arts (EA), which runs Origin, is a sorry, low-down company... I bought a $60 card, and easily added it to my EA/Origin account. Here's my issue (and the more I think about it, the more I want to rate this product 1 star)... I've used Steam for years if I'm buying a computer game. Steam also has pre-paid cards like this, in several different denominations. Most brand new AAA title games cost $59.99 (a few dollars over $60 after tax). On Steam, you can put a (for example) $50 card on your account, and if you want a $60+ game, when you check out you can apply that $50 to the total, and pay the remainder with a credit card or PayPal, or whatever. Simple. Until I dealt with this scenario with EA/Origin, I couldn't imagine any company doing it differently. Well, that thought was wrong. A game came out recently on Origin that I'd like to have. It's an EA game, so it hasn't made it to Steam yet. It's a new, major franchise game, so it currently costs $59.99 plus tax. So I grabbed a $60 Origin card and planned on getting the game from Origin as soon as I got back home. After adding the $60 to my account, I selected the game, and went to check out. Obviously I knew I'd have to still pay a few dollars on top of that to cover tax. The problem is that EA is such a greedy, sorry company, my plan of buying the game like that (like you'd buy anything ANYWHERE ELSE if you had a gift card to apply to the total) didn't work. If you buy a game from EA on Origin, and you use a pre-existing balance on your account (like you have when you add one of these cards to your account) to make a purchase, that's all you can use. To make it more clear, I put the $60 card on my account, tried to buy the game (which was approx. $62 after tax) by applying the $60, and then paying the balance with my already-on-file credit card... NOPE! I couldn't do it like that. On Origin, you can't use a gift card unless the card covers the ENTIRE amount of what you're buying. Since I was $2 short, my options were to just leave the $60 in my account and pay for the whole game with my credit card, or go buy another Origin card to add to my account, so the entire price would be covered by my account balance. This is a completely blatant and underhanded way to squeeze their customers out of every dollar they can. Think about it... they sell $60 cards (and a couple of other amounts) KNOWING that after tax their $59.99 games will cost just over $60. Then they won't let you use your gift card/account balance in conjunction with another form of payment, unlike literally every other company, online or not, that I can think of. It's an extremely pathetic tactic that I hope somehow costs them drastically in the long run. So now I sit, about 2 months after I bought the $60 card, and I still don't have the game I got it for. I've spent plenty of money on Steam since then, but not a single penny on Origin. I'm waiting on the price to drop on that game, then I'll buy it with my balance. I'll never add another card to Origin though, and honestly, this has turned me off so much toward EA, I'll avoid them as much as possible from now on. IF AN EA EXEC, OR WHATEVER, HAPPENS TO SOMEHOW SEE THIS... THAT "POLICY" I DESCRIBED ABOVE WILL COST YOU. EVEN IF I'M THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD THAT CARES, I'M ALREADY WAITING TO BUY THAT GAME FOR LESS, INSTEAD OF THE $60+ I WAS GOING TO SPEND, AND I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THE RANDOM GAMES I'VE BOUGHT IN THE PAST WITH THE 'EA' LOGO ON IT WILL GET PASSED BY FOR SOMETHING ELSE FROM NOW ON. I'VE ALWAYS SEEN PEOPLE SAYING EA IS GREEDY AND WORTHLESS, AND I ALWAYS ASSUMED IT WAS JUST TYPICAL HATERS. CONGRATS THOUGH EA, YOU JUST PROVED THEM RIGHT.
This review is from Electronic Arts - Origin $60 Cash Card
Posted by Dro104
My kid loves The Sims 4, and the only way to buy it or its expansions is online, through EA Origin. Since I don't want her playing on my Origin account (which means I can't play my games while she's playing The Sims), I got her a gift card so she could get The Sims. Everything worked smoothly, and she was able to play her game in no time.
This review is from Electronic Arts - Origin $60 Cash Card
Posted by TomXP411