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Sony customer care really is awful

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Deleted member 325805

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Last month they did a promotion for PSN+ for a 87p so I signed up, I never really use my console but I thought I'd take a look anyway at that price, as soon as I signed up I removed my Paypal account from my PSN account but apparently that's not enough to stop yourself from being charged again as I was billed for another £5.99 yesterday night. No problem you'd think, I'll just contact Sony and they'll refund me and remove the service like literally every other company I've ever dealt with but no, I tried via email and phone and they basically told me "tough shit, read the ToS". I mean sure, I could have turned off auto renewal so that's on me, but I mean come on, this is basic level customer care we're talking about, how can they possibly have a policy to never help customers when they need it? I had a similar issue with Amazon Prime where it auto renewed and they refunded me within 5 minutes, that's how it's done. And as I said, I don't use my console much at all, and certainly not for online gaming so I won't get any use of the service at all. Sure it's only £6 but that's not the point, it's money wasted and I'm not in a position to just burn it.

UPDATE:

Yesterday I contacted Jim Ryan who is the CEO of Sony telling him of my trouble and how I thought the policy was unfair and too strictly enforced and I have just recieved an email from Sony support granting me a full refund to my Paypal account.


Hi Steven,

I've been passed your details following your recent contact with Jim Ryan.

I understand you've requested a refund for a recent subscription auto renewal.

The information we've previously provided regarding our cancellation policy for subscription renewals is correct, however, I can see that you haven't used the subscription yet so I have refunded the purchase price back to your PayPal account as a gesture of goodwill. This amount should show in your available balance within 48 hours.

I hope this helps, but if you need anything else, just let me know by replying to this e-mail.

Thanks,
Click to expand...

A big thank you to Mr Ryan.
 
So instead of turning off auto renewal you removed your payment information? That's all on you, lesson learned I hope. :P
 
Only experience I've had with Sony's customer support involved me trying to get the thumbsticks on my DS4's replaced and Sony telling me to fuck off because my gf bought the PS4 as a gift and I had no proof of purchase.
 
Don't remove your payment method. Multiple instances of adding/removal of your payment method will lock you out of charging off of CCs or paypal.
 
How do they charge you if you don't have any payment information stored? Maybe it pulled from your wallet or something?
 
Zel3 said:
So instead of turning off auto renewal you removed your payment information? That's all on you, lesson learned I hope. :P
Click to expand...

Do you work for Sony customer service? Yes, I said it was on me, but that doesn't change the fact their policies are bullshit, I have never had a company tell me "tough shit, you're not getting a refund on the service you don't want and won't be using". Customer service is there to help the customer, but I wasn't helped in any way, I was just told to suck it and thanks for the free money.

Syril said:
How do they charge you if you don't have any payment information stored? Maybe it pulled from your wallet or something?
Click to expand...

Who knows? I've never added credit. I guess it's a Paypal thing.
 
ornery said:
Only experience I've had with Sony's customer support involved me trying to get the thumbsticks on my DS4's replaced and Sony telling me to fuck off because my gf bought the PS4 as a gift and I had no proof of purchase.
Click to expand...
I had a similar issue and was thinking I needed to return it. It was less than a year after it had been purchased. The first rep basically said "sucks for you since you don't have a receipt." I called back and the next guy was like "yeah, don't worry about it" but above all, the guy helped me actually solve the problem. Just depends on who you get on the phone.
 
Zel3 said:
So instead of turning off auto renewal you removed your payment information? That's all on you, lesson learned I hope. :P
Click to expand...

There's even prompt on a console warning you about auto renewal immediately after you buy PS+ if I remember correctly.
 
every time I've had a problem with anything, they immediately take the stance of it's MY fault and if they do help me it's doing me a one-time favor. Because their system messing up and double charging me is clearly all on me.

On the upside, I've always gotten what I needed fixed, eventually. But it's a chore.
 
Syril said:
How do they charge you if you don't have any payment information stored? Maybe it pulled from your wallet or something?
Click to expand...

That was my thought too, where have you lost the money from?.

OP, you went to the trouble of removing your payment info because you didn't want to be charged, but couldn't go to the trouble of turning off auto renew?
 
danowat said:
That was my thought too, where have you lost the money from?.

OP, you went to the trouble of removing your payment info because you didn't want to be charged, but couldn't go to the trouble of turning off auto renew?
Click to expand...

As I said, I don't use my console much, I thought removing the payment information was enough otherwise I would have don't you think?
 
Dark_3nergy said:
Don't remove your payment method. Multiple instances of adding/removal of your payment method will lock you out of charging off of CCs or paypal.
Click to expand...

this is insane.


from my own experience with their customer service, I got locked out of my psn because they don't like 2 or more periods in your email address, and my account is tied to the serial number on my first ps3, which died a long time ago.
 
2blackcats said:
I've only had excellent experiences with Sony's customer service.

I'm based in Ireland so maybe that makes a difference.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have no complaints about Sony's customer service.

I bought the PS3 version of The Evil Within instead of the PS4 and they refunded me no problem and they refunded me for Destiny: ROI so I could get the Destiny Upgrade version instead.
 
St3v3 said:
As I said, I don't use my console much, I thought removing the payment information was enough otherwise I would have don't you think?
Click to expand...

It's not an unusual situation, monthly sub services always tend to require you to physical cancel them, rather than just removing the card / payment option.

What's the main issue?, that you're £5.99 down?, where did they take the £5.99 from if you have no payment options?
 
I bought one of their shit 3D tvs in 2011... The latest model before most sites had received their review sets. Very silly in hindsight.

Well the 3D was a crosstalk shit show. When I contacted Sony, they told me that it corresponded with the spec, and for better 3D, I needed to buy a more expensive set lol.

I eventually got my money back after 2 months from threatening them with France's version of trading standards. Terrible, arrogant pricks.. Felt good getting my refund. The fucks refused to refund me 180 that I paid for two pairs of glasses though.
 
Hello OP. I don't work for Sony, but I do work for the complaints department of a large Pensions company (no more specifics than that).

Removing your payment details isn't the same as saying I don't want your service. Not for a large company at least, they need very literal instruction. You should have unchecked auto renewal.

However, I agree with you that its not particularly great service. Especially for such little money. If it were me, I would have probably made a refund in good faith, even though they did act within their rights.

In short, you should try and escalate this to their complaints team. Please be gracious to the team, you're more likely to get good service if you're polite.
 
I've only contacted them twice, one for a new email address as I had forgotten my password and the email account tied to my psn account was no longer active. A passport picture and 24 hours later solved that problem. Other was South Park preorder refund which was solved in about 10 minutes.

They've been good with me but I've heard the nightmare some people seem to have with them.
 
In my opinion Sony shouldn't've to refund anything in this case.

clipboard02phovu.png
Click to expand...

It's clearly stated what happens if you don't cancel PS+ with auto-renewal activated. It's also pretty clear how to avoid this.

edit: Rule of thumb: cancel free memberships immediately, this way you won't forget you have it.
 
#sorrynotsorry said:
Except it's really not. Quit excusing this shit just because you like your PS4. I do too. This is still a serious black mark against them.
Click to expand...

It is? Seems rather normal for any subscription I have ever dealt with. And no this post isn't influenced by the fact that I like my videogame console.
 
danowat said:
It's not an unusual situation, monthly sub services always tend to require you to physical cancel them, rather than just removing the card / payment option.

What's the main issue?, that you're £5.99 down?, where did they take the £5.99 from if you have no payment options?
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm £5.99 down for a service I won't be using at all. And as I said in the original post, they took it from my Paypal even though it was removed from my PS account long before, I got an email now saying my billing agreement with Sony has been cancelled so it seems that if you pay with Paypal they can just freely bill you forever even if you remove your payment information. I'm more angry at the fact they just refused to help me with such a simple request, but obviously I don't like wasting money.
 
St3v3 said:
Yes, I'm £5.99 down for a service I won't be using at all. And as I said in the original post, they took it from my Paypal even though it was removed from my PS account long before, I got an email now saying my billing agreement with Sony has been cancelled so it seems if you pay with Paypal they can just freely bill you forever even if you remove your payment information.
Click to expand...

Hmmm....that doesn't sound good, not sure I like the idea of them being able to bill you once you've removed your information, I'd try and get some further information from Sony about them doing this if I was you.
 
yaffi said:
In my opinion Sony shouldn't've to refund anything in this case.
Click to expand...

While I agree they don't have to it would still be a nice gesture.

Also I remember the ad. It read "1 month PS+ for 99c(or 87p), auto renewal set for 6.99 a month afterwards" (or something very similar).

The monthly rate on PS+ sucks.
 
Horrible shitty company. I have no desire to ever buy anything else from that company after the shit they put me through for a television and phone.
 
I don't trust PSN or Sony's customer service after pre-ordering Destiny digitally in 2014 locked me out of a digital copy of Diablo 3. The tile for Diablo 3 on my PS4 dash had the same "countdown to unlock" as the pre-order of Destiny.

I buy full price games on disc now for PS4 and if I do need to make a purchase on PSN (like Bloodborne DLC or Until Dawn on sale last week), I go and get a PSN card for that purpose.
 
Sony customer service is mostly bad, sometimes really bad. When you want to do a simple thing like changing the version of a PS3 game to a PS4 game, there's no problem for them to do that, that's not where Sony customer service is bad. It's bad when you want refunds or cancel some purchase done on error.

For me, the last nail in the coffin was when i rented a UFC event and it didn't work, i mean it was so laggy it's beyond terrible... i felt like i was streaming a 4k movie with a 56k connection no exaggeration. So the Sony guys told me they can't do nothing about it, i even talked to a manager and he was the same, that's 50$ Canadian money in the garbage for an embarrassing laggy UFC event with my guests. I said, never again Sony ! F**k You ! and the worst is, this was not the first time it happened to me. I rented movies for 6$ a pop with really bad streaming. Their online infrastructure is really bad and they all act like it is the user's fault.
 
Gaogaogao said:
my own experience with their customer service, I got locked out of my psn because they don't like periods in your email address, and my account is tied to the serial number on my first ps3, which died a long time ago.
Click to expand...

What? Every email address in existence has periods in them.

Even if you mean before the @, mine has periods on both sides of the @ and it has always worked perfectly for me.
 
OP I would just try again until you get the results you want. I've had nothing but good experiences with Sony's customer service but it does seem like a hit and miss situation. You might get lucky the next time you contact them.
 
yaffi said:
Of course, nice gestures are nice. But I don't think not being nice warrants someone complaining about Sony being awful.
Click to expand...

The policy itself is awful, if as a company your stance is to not help the customer when they need it then you're a shitty company.
 
have had great service constantly with them, based in california, was refunded star wars battle front and dragon age inquistion, got my old old account back after forgetting password, received vouchers etc, sorry to hear your rep sucked :0
 
sirap said:
OP I would just try again until you get the results you want. I've had nothing but good experiences with Sony's customer service but it does seem like a hit and miss situation. You might get lucky the next time you contact them.
Click to expand...

Yeah basically this. But like I said earlier make sure you escalate it as a formal complaint. Most companies would prefer to give you the money as a gesture if good will rather then deal with the costs of repeated complaints.
 
IIRC, using PayPal to add funds to your wallet, and using PayPal to pay for your PS+ subscription are two separate things.

All you did by removing your payment details was stopping using PayPal for your wallet, while the 'agreement' for the periodic subscription service was still in effect.
 
Weird how on GAF everyone is so quick to post their personal anecdotes with regards to Sony. Don't really see it with other companies.

I had a MUCH worse experience than you with Microsoft, twice actually in a month. Similar case with Sony but they resolved my issue in 2 days vs 30. I think it's pretty good service.
 
I had a similar experience.

I'm always using Prepaid Codes for my PS+ membership, because my girlfriend gifts them for christmas to me.
So at the end of 2016 I had a new code from her for the following year, but I let my membership run out, because I didn't want to use the code while not playing any online games. As soon as my membership ran out it was automaticly renewed for a full year. I immediately called the support, but they couldn't do a shit. So I had my code and also payed the full price for a year. Now I have PS+ until December 2018.
 
It seems like these types of threads always want to pass blame to the company when the customer is clearly at fault.
 
St3v3 said:
how can they possibly have a policy to never help customers when they need it?
Click to expand...

While I agree that maybe they should have just given you a refund here (even though they didn't need to), I'm pretty sure they don't actually have a policy that says that. Also, the title is quite some hyperbole.
 
NewDust said:
IIRC, using PayPal to add funds to your wallet, and using PayPal to pay for your PS+ subscription are two separate things.

All you did by removing your payment details was stopping using PayPal for your wallet, while the 'agreement' for the periodic subscription service was still in effect.
Click to expand...
I believe this is the case as well. I know Amazon keeps the original payment method as the subscription payment while I have another payment method for all other purchases.

OP, all subscription based companies want you to cancel the subscription, not remove payment.
 
Caayn said:
That's pretty balsy to charge despite there being no active payment method assigned to the account.
Click to expand...

This is the bigger issue. Rather than worry about their crappy CS; we should be worried about the fact that Sony is still able to charge a payment method that has been removed from an account.

Once that method is removed it should be unavailable to the service provider, full stop. People already don't trust Sony with payment information, they sure as hell shouldn't be able to access deleted payment info.

I'm assuming that OP actually removed his Paypal information and was still charged through Paypal.

I am also wondering if Sony simply didn't put OP's Wallet into the negative and lock his account until payment was made.
 
Zel3 said:
So instead of turning off auto renewal you removed your payment information? That's all on you, lesson learned I hope. :P
Click to expand...

While that's the right way to do it, if someone made this mistake I'm pretty sure Microsoft would have refunded it, point still stands that Sonys customer support is severely lacking in comparison. Microsoft is usually "the customer is always right', Sony is usually "ToS, bitch".
 
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