now here's something that is really going to blow everyone's minds

today i just received a little thank you for signing up to the VIP Newsletter,

all very well and great, but....

as a little thank you for joining i was awarded a gift of 100 simpoints to spend in the store,

ok so.. big deal you lot are probably thinking right now, right?

well the instructions they have set out state to redeem these points go into your My Account where you buy your points and select Redeem A Code and type in the 16 digit code and hit Redeem

simple enough to do as i have done this numerous times before,

but the problem is they have given me a 20 digit code which clearly won't work

so how would you guy's play this one?

contact support or write them off as experience?

i appear to have the same problem and been given a 20 digit code can anyone shed some light on this

Same issue, and for me the code in the newsletter was not in the box in the body that seemed made for it but instead was underneath the "Sims Points Balance" section underneath "Account Info" on the right.

If I didn't know better from checking the source and the links I'd have thought it was a very well designed phishing exercise.

Apparently the code actually gets you a game on the origin website, which isn't related to The Sims at all.

O.o ye gods you're right. O.o

Dragon Age or Battlefield Bad Company 2 for me. What a weird thing. This has to be a mistake.

* And indeed it might be, the code would not actually redeem in the origin client but it did give me the choice of the games above, when it failed I got redirected to the web... and it won't redeem there either *

So back to square one. Nice thought though!

well as far as i'm concerned its a dead code which doesn't do anything and there isn't many entry boxes to input it into,

and all the links go back to this website and all origin so i'm assuming the vip team are aware of this and are working on it

so i'll just write this one off as i don't need it anyway

but thank you for your help guy's

No worries, I've contacted support as I'm genuinely curious. I'll let you know what response I receive.

yea well as a safety precaution i have changed my main ea password as well as my paypal one not that i needed to because it's not been associated with this site anyway,

but just to be on the safe side i thought i would, because i cannot believe i fell for that one myself

you know on the other hand if it wasn't for several thousand worth of store content and main games i would say get on with it, but i'm not willing to take that risk at any cost myself

so it would be interested to see what EA has to say about this though, keep us posted all the same

It doesn't appear to be a scam at all. Not only are all the links in the email genuine but the headers indicate that it was sent by EA's servers, the SPF records are correct and the DKIM key is correct and intact:

Received: from mta902.em.ea.com (mta902.em.ea.com. [63.211.90.186]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id dr7si13207532vdb.48.2012.06.27.13.22.50; Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:22:50 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of bo-bw5u90kbgwraejauwf4waqrwafwsv9@b.em.ea.com designates 63.211.90.186 as permitted sender) client-ip=63.211.90.186; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of bo-bw5u90kbgwraejauwf4waqrwafwsv9@b.em.ea.com designates 63.211.90.186 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=bo-bw5u90kbgwraejauwf4waqrwafwsv9@b.em.ea.com; dkim=pass header.i=@em.ea.com DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=em.ea.com; s=20111006; t=1340828569; x=1356639769; bh=QtX32NLQbOOG+3BPDRa1sc3f0Ks=; h=From:Reply-To; b=ooI28tvu+Mz6PGti7tqhzKtGFAGD+yXYoklpUDJBiBb9HcuKbfJJr+qPhqjs<br/>gztEo lWu4OTldEdXvcGYdH9h+9gxc+q2yGaZ2Bo/owmRlHuHh44MSAx32L7JNZgCGeU<br/>8tcj RYv9bYlfm/Mpy8MMP6wJzq+Bct/LRR82E4NQM2tQ= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=200505; d=em.ea.com; b=0ZSmYzjyLiC7FHgtB5fW/71eMyr+WgNpOCdUQCyXjPwg6jIASCDBltM/T+i/<br/>tmyQ3Cz53qLIC9eZjonVRbUwBW458i4kN9ED7LUcHyYK5tp4dfj94NBLkwMeof<br/>rP+stJ0WNTd3J61PfOzbZkjTrzxb1O/RGjyUdLTnhtI03rcUo=; h=Date:Message-ID:List-Unsubscribe:From:To:Subject:MIME-Versio<br/>n:Reply-To:Content-type;

tl;dr the email came from EA, even if the content is a bit weird. So I wouldn't worry about falling for a phishing attack, I tend to check all this stuff fairly thoroughly though!

An EA rep got back to me telling me to register it as a game code within the sims 3 website but that didn't work. I think perhaps he thought it was the game code you get for 1000 free points. I've replied back including some of the body of the email and re-iterating the problem.

Anyway, my curiosity is somewhat sated at this point so I'm off to bed.

oh well i myself binned the whole email because its not and never will work for me because the number was way too long and the part of the site they sent me to doesn't like the code even the activate part,

the whole thing in my opinion was and is a total waste of my time all that for 100 points and a load of spam mail straight after, no point really, and that and the fact that we'll only get run round the houses only to come back to where we started with yet another code that only works in the United States and no where else,

but thank you all the same for keeping us posted

Yes it's looking likely the code was americentric.

I also got the email with a 20 digit code, I'm a bit confused too lol! Just waiting to see if anything else comes through

I got a 20 digit code too... what on earth was the point of this offer if you cant use it?

Everyone slow down! You don't have to worry! The code expires january 2012! They have much time to solve the problem!

cityguysims wrote:Everyone slow down! You don't have to worry! The code expires january 2012! They have much time to solve the problem!

umm... well when i last checked the date as of today i could of swarm it said June 2012 so if thats your assumption then it expired 6 months ago

but even so a number of us are not wasting anymore time with this one, and i've already deleted the email because i know i have no chance of getting anything from it based on past tenses which i had a inbox full of these promotion codes which were set for US Residents only so everyone outside of the US clearly isn't there problem and if any of the codes are offered then you have to spend wildly just to get half of the percentage value back through a part refund, which to me thats a total waste of time

so, for this one it's only 100 points which isn't going to get you very far at the best of times, and i would rather buy simpoints packs than get run round the houses myself

so i don't know what you guys want to do but i'm calling it a day with this one myself and moving on