Electronic Arts Named Consumerist's 'Worst Company in America'

The Consumerist's infamous 'Golden Poo' award, given each year to their 'Worst Company in America' winner

The picture you see above is a physical manifestation of the collective contempt for publishing giant Electronic Arts shared by hundreds of thousands of their customers. It's The Consumerist's 'Golden Poo' award and it only honors a select breed of scumbag companies - this year, EA triumphed over them all.

Between the launch of Origin, EA's new digital distro service (see: drunkenly stumbling PR disaster), day-one DLC that uses assets already in the release code and the Star Wars: The Old Republic fallout, distressed fans have plenty to fling gilded feces over.

A look back at the best and worst (... mostly worst) of EA's customer "service" after the jump...

If it was an audio chat, you'd hear Ravit run outside, start his car and squeal away, the engine noise trailing off.

Each year, The Consumerist pits a gallery of the year's most reviled companies against each other in a tourney-style bracket. Readers vote for each match-up and the winner gets a gold trophy of poop delivered on a red velvet pillow.

This year, with a quarter million votes cast in the contest, EA met with Bank of America in the finals and pulled out a 64% landslide. From The Consumerist:

"... Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank."

EA customer service reps are frequently known for slipping into interdimensional stasis by way of temporal rifts curiously found in the hallway to the vending machine room.

Among the other 30 WCIA 2012 combatants: Walmart, GameStop, Sony, Facebook, Apple, Verizon, Netflix, DirectTV, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Ticketmaster.

The Consumerist says that while EA is a "non-essential" company, its behavior in the last year must be met with proper reprisal:

"It’s that exact kind of attitude that allows people to ignore the complaints as companies like EA to nickel and dime consumers to death."

Since the king was crowned earlier today, EA has responded to The Consumerist with some quick wit: "We’re sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco, and weapons companies are all relieved they weren’t on the list this year. We’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."

There's a thinly veiled message in there - can you see it? "More than 300 million people worldwide." Sounds like: "we may be the 'Worst Company in America' but you're still going to pay us. Multiple times."

*Facepalm*

Which raises the interesting quandary of anyone who complains about EA/Origin on Reddit (which is where the photos of EA customer service fails came from): if you continue to pay premiums (and pay often) for EA products, will anything truly change?

How do you feel about EA? Love them? Hate them? Want to strangle their support staff with headset wire? What EA franchise do you pay for religiously (yearly installments, DLC, etc.)? 

Thanks to Aroundthe.net for collecting the Reddit EA support fails and making my job easier. Plenty more in the Aroundthe.net post so check it out!

VIA: EGMNOW

SOURCE: The Consumerist | Aroundthe.net

Here's one more OMNIpixel dug up: a Redditor who claims to be an outed EA customer service rep. It's fairly long, so click on the pic to read the original Imgur post.

"Truth about EA from former support rep"