Me vs PlayStation

Flipper the Priest

Flipper the Priest

International
15 July 2003
Scotland
It's quite late in the evening of the 29th of December. I think to myself that I'll fire up the PS4 for a bit before bed, and switch it on before realising that I still had dishes to do. Welcome to the jungle. I do dishes and go to bed forgetting about the PS4.

An hour or so later I notice emails from PayPal about transactions being made. I think it's spam, initially, before finding similar emails from Sony and checking my banking app. Immediately I disassociate my PayPal account from my PSN account and change all passwords. £116 has been spent on Fortnite junk with another £32 in the shopping cart. I then go about contacting PayPal, Sony and my bank to recoup the money.

My bank says it's over to PayPal and Sony but they'll help in any dispute. PayPal take the report of the payments and refund them about 24 hours later. After a phone call with them, Sony say they will investigate the matter. I think everything is in order. But then I try to log into my PSN account to find I'm banned. I assume it's a temporary block while the investigation is underway, and go about my offline business.

Yesterday I get an email from Sony saying that the ban will only be lifted if I pay them £116. They say the purchases were made using my console (verified by the serial number I gave them over the phone) so they don't consider them to be fraudulent, and by getting a refund from PayPal I am now, in fact, in debt with Sony. Me? Furious.

The thought of someone accessing your console remotely is pretty troubling. But it turns out you, the victim, either has to take the financial hit or get a ban from PSN.

I don't expect anyone here to do anything about this. But I needed to vent and I guess it may raise a bit of awareness!
 
Flipper the Priest said:
It's quite late in the evening of the 29th of December. I think to myself that I'll fire up the PS4 for a bit before bed, and switch it on before realising that I still had dishes to do. Welcome to the jungle. I do dishes and go to bed forgetting about the PS4.

An hour or so later I notice emails from PayPal about transactions being made. I think it's spam, initially, before finding similar emails from Sony and checking my banking app. Immediately I disassociate my PayPal account from my PSN account and change all passwords. £116 has been spent on Fortnite junk with another £32 in the shopping cart. I then go about contacting PayPal, Sony and my bank to recoup the money.

My bank says it's over to PayPal and Sony but they'll help in any dispute. PayPal take the report of the payments and refund them about 24 hours later. After a phone call with them, Sony say they will investigate the matter. I think everything is in order. But then I try to log into my PSN account to find I'm banned. I assume it's a temporary block while the investigation is underway, and go about my offline business.

Yesterday I get an email from Sony saying that the ban will only be lifted if I pay them £116. They say the purchases were made using my console (verified by the serial number I gave them over the phone) so they don't consider them to be fraudulent, and by getting a refund from PayPal I am now, in fact, in debt with Sony. Me? Furious.

The thought of someone accessing your console remotely is pretty troubling. But it turns out you, the victim, either has to take the financial hit or get a ban from PSN.

I don't expect anyone here to do anything about this. But I needed to vent and I guess it may raise a bit of awareness!
Click to expand...
This is our modern 2020 world we are living. Every big company, is in good mood to take your money (with legit way always) but when it comes to personal service for you, especially in your occasion that second and third party companies are involved, you are 99% of times alone. Most times maybe the justice is with you, but you cannot find your justice, you cannot even search for your justice, because how can an isolated person from Europe or USA start a legal adventure with a huge Multinational company, or even two, with bases, incs, offices etc in different places of the world, shady or sunny. The most usual is that every company will try to throw moral the blame to the other company, but charge the money from the final link of the chain, which is the consumer.

Take the most simple example. Can you imagine a single person, or me better, starting a legal battle against KONAMI/EA for the "free agent" players they remove after each update, or for KONAMis case, for the Colombian league that got removed. while i payed for them in my initial purchase. I am sure that inside the huge "LICENSE AGREEMENT", that we all press ACCEPT, but ONLY after we have purchased the game and when most times we don't even read what it says, i am sure somewhere inside it will be stated that changes can be made and content can be added and removed after purchase at company's will, so they are legally covered.

Add to all these, the rigid way that banks work all over the world, where when you owe them money, you must pay instantly, while on the other hand when you have to take money back cause of an "accident", you can take them back from a week or two, or even never Add also the legal windows all over the globe and you have the final result: Whatever goes wrong is always against the consumer, you, me , us.

To conclude all this, since i receive all those problems as AD HOC against the consumer, me, the only workaround i could do to this, was to create a prepaid debit card for my gaming platforms and services. So when i need to buy a game, i just load my prepaid card with the amount of money needed. i pay and it stays empty, or with 1,2,3€ max. So in case they "hack" me, they can't steal anything, in first stage at least.
 
I'm sure it'll be 'my fault' according to Sony's terms and conditions. The only thing I'm guilty of is complacency. If you could get access to my PS4 I autoconnect to PSN and it's pre-approved payments on my PayPal account. Nevertheless, you should not be able to get access to my PS4 from outside my house! But again, that's probably 'my fault'. Somehow.
 
What a joke to ban you until you pay them for something you didn't buy! As @slamsoze says they always have a get out clause and the little guy has to live with it. That aside, concerning the people who hacked it, why are some people such arseholes. It's one thing to steal from a company etc but I really hate people that hack and scam and steal from individuals, it's as low as you can get. Like the people who loot houses when there's a hurricane or some other major disaster, absolute scum.
 
I dont get how Sony can ban you if someone hacked your account and used your money. Its the same thing as hacking your Credit Card from the other side of the world and buying stuff with it, isnt it?
Happened to my wife. Bank returned the money in no time.
Its not up to you to prove that you didnt buy the items, its up to them to prove that you did.
This whole ban seems a bit odd to me..
 
Update: I've been unbanned. Only because the purchases were eligible for a refund under PSN's terms anyway. They hadn't been redeemed and were within the 14-day window.

I wonder what would've happened had I not noticed when I did. The hacker had tried to download Fortnite on my console but there wasn't enough storage after five years of FIFA and PES saves. Is there a way to transfer the Fortnite currency in game? Otherwise, how did someone stand to benefit?

Glad it's been resolved but Sony still consider the transactions as mine as they were made from my console. That stinks.
 
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