-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
PS Plus Members in Asia Irate As Sony Wipes Discounts on Tier Upgrades, Demands Upfront Fee for Stacked Subs [UP: Sony fixes error]
- Thread starter Godot25
- Start date
- Status
Punished Miku
Gold Member
Been reading about this all morning. Completely indefensible.
So if you bought PS+ on an official Sony sale on their own store at a discount they offered, they are now asking for the money back lol. Yes, you read that right. If they did an end of year 33% off PS+ sale and you bought 4 years of PS+, they now want 33% x4 + the cost to upgrade to Essential / Premium, and you have to pay all of it at once for the entire duration of whatever you stacked. It's like buying the Last of Us 2 on sale for $20, and then if they put out a $10 next gen upgrade, they ask for the $40 back on top of that.
And yes, it's real. Some people stupidly bought PS+ on sale for 10 years or some shit. And now they can't even upgrade at all unless they pay back all those sale price differences x10.
So if you bought PS+ on an official Sony sale on their own store at a discount they offered, they are now asking for the money back lol. Yes, you read that right. If they did an end of year 33% off PS+ sale and you bought 4 years of PS+, they now want 33% x4 + the cost to upgrade to Essential / Premium, and you have to pay all of it at once for the entire duration of whatever you stacked. It's like buying the Last of Us 2 on sale for $20, and then if they put out a $10 next gen upgrade, they ask for the $40 back on top of that.
And yes, it's real. Some people stupidly bought PS+ on sale for 10 years or some shit. And now they can't even upgrade at all unless they pay back all those sale price differences x10.
Last edited:
Lunarorbit
Member
This is going to back fire so fast.
Sometimes you see things like this and just wonder how out of touch whatever genius is that came out with this idea. Now you're going to have bad pr, irate customers, and in a few days backtrack and hope the public forgets
Sometimes you see things like this and just wonder how out of touch whatever genius is that came out with this idea. Now you're going to have bad pr, irate customers, and in a few days backtrack and hope the public forgets
Hezekiah
Banned
Pretty as hell
nominedomine
Banned
Damn, Sony is tripping. They really don't want people to pay anything less than the official price.
I get their angle but they are going way too far in trying to avoid getting into a Gamepass like situation where people won't ever pay the official price and will unsub as soon as they run out of 1$ deals and things like that.
I get their angle but they are going way too far in trying to avoid getting into a Gamepass like situation where people won't ever pay the official price and will unsub as soon as they run out of 1$ deals and things like that.
Last edited:
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
This could be a bug. As one Reddit user pointed out that if you upgrade for 180 days, Sony also charges for the previous discounted price (as you mentioned), but if you upgrade for 179 days, that fixes the problem.
Let's see how it pans out after a few days -- especially when the service launches in US on June 13.
It'd be a real dick move if it's not a bug and Sony is charging for the previous discounts. It doesn't make sense they'd though. Never heard of such a thing before and also how will they keep track of all discounts anyway.
Kilau
Gold Member
AdjudicatorHead
Member
Playing devil's advocate here, what I imagine actually happened is likely much less sinister and this is probably the result of an uncaught code error. So in the backend, what I imagine they do is to pro-rata your existing subscription by taking value / total_days * days_left and subtract that from the upgrade fee. What probably happened there is that whoever wrote the code used some piece of data attached to the membership to get the price paid for the sub, rather than using the live store price. I could be totally wrong, but this decision seems so bizarrely bad that I'd feel it's more likely the result of an edge case in the backend handling of upgrades than an intentional decision.
I hope they fix it soon or if it does turn out to be intentional, they should get off their crack pipe and reverse it.
I hope they fix it soon or if it does turn out to be intentional, they should get off their crack pipe and reverse it.
Last edited:
If you got your subscriptions from the ps store/site, it's probably pretty easy.
Last edited:
Hezekiah
Banned
That's what I think - it's a technical issue.
It's not like they wouldn't be fully aware of the PR backlash.
Swift_Star
Banned
Waiting to see if it’s true on others places.
Punished Miku
Gold Member
I think they list it on your sub as a different digital item, so it's already sorted. "PS+ Discount Code" etc. or something like that.
And yeah, maybe this is an error. But we also thought the PS+ code stacking being killed silently was an error until it wasn't. We shouldn't have to constantly wonder if they're evil or incompetent.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
If this is true, I’ve seen some low things in the industry, but this is a big one and that is saying a lot. Surely the inevitable backlash will force Sony to back off this crazy demand from gamers much like the time where Microsoft doubled XBOX Live’s price. How can they even properly keep up with who bought PS Plus at a discount anyway? There is no way they are going through with this, right? Right?
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Wow. Doesn't even sound legal.
But who knows, maybe the fine print says they can do that. I dont even thin Sony would have weird retroactive terms in their ToS to do this.
Let's see if this is a US/Europe thing. Asia is the smallest region. They might be trying to rip them off hoping nobody else notices or cares if US/Europe dont do this.
Punished Miku
Gold Member
Probably legal. They just claim that they're converting strictly based on money, and not on what you bought. Essentially giving you a "refund" on what you paid on PS+ but you can only get the "refund" to use it towards the upgrade. Just slimy.
Tarnpanzer
Member
Thank god I did not stack...
Javthusiast
Banned
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Nah, this has to be an oversight that will get corrected. Not a 1:1 comparison but imagine if you bought a game on sale and then if you went to buy the season pass or DLC, they make you pay the rest of the full game price first 
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
That would be a slimy way.
Of course someone can say you snooze you lose, activate it by the conversion date, but the new services dont even go live until June 13. So it's not like they missed the deadline.
There shouldnt even be any deadlines to begin with. But just in case anyone brings up trying to activate it after the new service starts, it looks like Sony is trying to grill them before it even starts.
AdjudicatorHead
Member
What happens to people who bought a mixture of full price and discounted subs in their current remaining membership? Sounds like an absolute nightmare to calculate that properly, decide which one gets 'used' first for the pro-rate calculation. I'm 90% sure this was just a coding oversight in the upgrade backend and they'll fix it ASAP, there's no way they'd try that intentionally knowing the harm it would do in negative PR.
balls of snow
Member
My plan of only buying a year at a time worth of psplus is paying dividents.
Holy shit snacks sony.
S0ULZB0URNE
Member
DaGwaphics
Member
I hope so. Would make the few years of PSNow I went and bought a complete waste of time. Mine would be an interesting almost impossible case to calculate if this isn't a bug. I bought the codes heavily discounted by a third-party, how much did the codes originally sell for when purchased from Sony?
MrTentakel
Member
To make matters worse, unfathomably, the Japanese giant is wiping out historical discounts on subscriptions purchased through the PS Store. So, if, for example, you bought your membership while it was on sale and then choose to upgrade, it’ll bump up the price difference to erode the savings you originally earned. This basically means that it’s retroactively eliminating any deals it may have offered on subscriptions in the past – unthinkable, really.
aaaaehm: Please, think of the poor ... CEO? With exploding inflation, the second yacht will be top Dollars!
(I tried!)
aaaaehm: Please, think of the poor ... CEO? With exploding inflation, the second yacht will be top Dollars!
(I tried!)
Punished Miku
Gold Member
I think it's pretty easy to calculate. They list the discount codes as separate digital items. It's not calculated at the register. It's a new digital item called "PS+ discount code" or something. So it's already sorted.
People who bought discount cards from third party sites are getting a better deal than from the official Sony store, as long as the discount sites bought the cards at full price. Pretty weirrrrrrrrd.
AdjudicatorHead
Member
That's what I mean, the calculation of that accurately is so complex to nail that there's no way they'd bother for a one off windfall, with the amount of customer complaints they'd have to handle and manually fix for incorrectly calculated upgrades. It wouldn't end up being profitable for them and the PR harm would be quite bad.
Shmunter
Member
There’s no way the could know how much you paid a retailer no different to a game on a disc.
This entire thing doesn’t stack up logically.
I don't think it is that difficult if you have each 'segment' of service broken out.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I was wondering how they'd know.
So youre thinking a third party site selling them at a discount may trigger the payment too? Purple board suggested only people who bought direct from Sony's site would lead to it.
Punished Miku
Gold Member
Exactly. The PS Store discounts are literally listed as separate digital items. Calculating this is extremely easy. Just literally looks at your purchase history and counts in single digits.
Punished Miku
Gold Member
I think if you got a normal PS+ code from a third party site at a discount, your normal PS+ code wouldn't trigger this. You just have to see when you redeem your code what it shows up as on your purchase history under subs.
AdjudicatorHead
Member
Let's say you buy 1 year of a discounted retail code then you stack a 25% discounted year on Days of Play and then you stack a full price year. You've used 7 months of the sub. They'd need to estimate/figure out the discounted retail code, prorata it, add the discounted year and add the full year, and then people could go and argue with them about which ones have been used up and how much they actually paid for the retail code versus the estimate. Then if you throw in weird cases like people who stacked a 3 month on top or a 1 month at full price, it gets even trickier. I doubt they'd go to the trouble knowing the backlash and potential for edge cases.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Just a few seconds before you posted lol.
AdjudicatorHead
Member
Very big difference between defending a decision and believing that a decision is a mistake and will be fixed. I said in my post that if this was intentional, it is unacceptable. Have the balls to quote me next time.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked