Exclusive: Battlefield 3 Premium Refunds Promised After Price Gouging Admitted

June 12th, 2012 at 8:34 am

A representative of EA Game’s Battlefield 3 has told us that Australian PlayStation 3 owners who purchased the new “Premium” service before the embarrassing price drop will have the difference refunded.

EA listed the price of the Premium service, which grants the user early access to DLC and other features, as AU$49.99 on their websites, but proceeded to charge PlayStation 3 users AU$79.95. Likewise, Xbox 360 users were charged 4,000 Microsoft Points; the equivalent of AU$66.

Thousands of complaints poured into the Battlefield forums and forced EA to drop the price of the PlayStation 3 version to a more reasonable AU$64.95 but in doing so has put Xbox 360 users at a disadvantage. To even be able to buy the Premium service on Battlefield 3, Xbox 360 users need to purchase an “Xbox Live Gold” subscription, which costs around AU$79.95 per year.

PlayStation 3 users who bought the Premium service at Au$79.95 should be recieving a refund of the difference. That is to say, those users will be credited AU$14.99 into their PlayStation Wallets.

The more pressing matter is that EA Games’ website continues to advertise the cost of the service to be AU$49.99 which is misleading and confusing to customers. PC users are still the only users who will actually pay AU$49.99 for the Premium upgrade.

We’ve been pressing EA for comment over the weekend and will update as news comes to hand.

Source: Twitter

Tynan Muddle

Tynan is the founder, Editor-in-Chief and nice guy of Aussie-Gamer.com. The first console Ty owned as a kid was the Sega Master System II which he used to enjoy games like Alex Kidd, Sonic the Hedgehog and Mickey Mouse. Since the early days, Ty's hobby became an obsession and over the years he has amassed a huge collection of video games from all manufacturers. You can read Tynan Muddle's weekly opinion column here, and follow him on Twitter.

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f_m

This only confirms that Aussie’s play the objective and don’t quit till the team wins.
Congrats guys!
Rippenharra

I’m still not purchasing until justice is done.Advertised price for all. Can we put more pressure MS aswell about their points pricing. I agree it should have been priced on xbox for 3030 points we are all still paying way to much.And if Sony or MS are doing it to take a cut im dissapointed,as im sure EA payed both companies a fee to have the download on their storefronts.I pay for live so dont try and gouge me more!
Kabiti

you should state the NZ is being charged $80 now $10 less which is pretty steep
Sam

In India It’s the cheapest
only 1899 INR
which is equivalent to 39 USD
Renato84

Man, if I had a son and he came to me asking for money to buy this… I’d teach him a lesson. Like explaining to him why he’s being ripped off, and giving the same amount of money to buy a game that deserves to be bought. Really, the wallet rape violence is a much worse offense than the graphical violence depicted within the game…
Isamael

We swedes pay the equivalent of AU$70 even on PC, and the bloody game is Swedish to begin with. The price-hike is atrocious.
dieger

note to self…never move to AU