RichC2

Yeah I dunno what Decker is looking at. They're both exceptionally weak this month.

fumanstan

I don't know anything about that Warriors game, but I guess the other option depends on how much you like wrestling

The Questyen

I don't care about wrestling but anytime I see it mentioned on my twitter feed by people who do like wrestling they're talking about how terrible this year's game was.

K&AJones

There are some pretty good deals in the PS Store this month....

Fallout 4 - $29.00....plus all the DLC and Season Pass
Doom - 50% off at $30.00
Wolfenstein: The New Order - $15.00

mattysemo247

Your wording is probably going to cause some confusion there. The base game is $29 and the complete edition with all of the DLC is something like $76.

Also the Wolfenstein BUNDLE comes with both New Order & Old Blood. Still, that is one heck of a price for anyone who hasn't played it.

K&AJones

Thanks for clearing that up....I played the New Order and it was one fun ride and at that price, anyone who has given it a thought should jump on it. Still the Doom at $30 is not bad and Fallout 4 is good as well.

joeblow69

If you don't mind a physical disc, fallout 4 is only $23.77 at amazon.

K&AJones

That's even a better deal.....Fallout 4 has been a real surprise for me and a friend. We didn't play the other Fallout games. It's been an adventure and surprises every day.

Juzylle

So my PSN account was compromised the other day. I (foolishly, in retrospect) had my PayPal info tied to my PSN account. Someone racked up $150 in games. When I learned of it, I called my credit card companies and PayPal to get everything sorted out, and everything was taken care of. Until Sony banned my account.

Over on Neogaf and such, there are a few recent threads where this has happened. Getting banned because your account was compromised...and all because you didn't go to Sony first. I thought I was doing the right thing in cutting off the CC numbers first, but I guess not.

Now my account is banned, and Sony refuses to work with me. They want me to tell PayPal to reverse the chargeback (which PayPal says they can't even do), or they want me to buy $150 in goddamn PSN cards, reimburse Sony, and then they'll refund me.

It's without a doubt the dumbest shit I've ever heard, and quite possibly the worst customer service I've ever encountered. I refuse to buy fucking PSN cards because my account got compromised because of a flaw in their flimsy security. Now I'm at an impasse. I won't give in, and thereby reinforce their horrible policy. But they won't budge either, seemingly. You'd think that being with PSN for almost a decade would lend me some goodwill, but now I'm ready to be done with Sony and go over to MS, since I already have a XBone.

I'm sure this has happened to numerous people....where's the outrage?

Dan

This seems to be happening more and more lately, and yeah, that's a terrible way for Sony to respond. I get that it's a bad situation for them (chargebacks are NOT good for any company, apparently), but to outright ban you and tell you to spend the money on more PSN cards? That's messed up. I GET that they need to get THEIR money back, but damn.

Decker

Thanks for the Heads-Up. Not a bad idea to unlock your PayPal account if you currently have it linked (I did not, thankfully)

dsa_shea

It's fraud for what the thief did and should be illegal for Sony to take these steps. I wonder what can be done about it? So, they rack up charges to buy games and then play them via your name?

Jay G.

If my account was compromised and I could still access it, I'd log in and remove all payment info, then contact the company about the unauthorized access. Contacting Paypal or the CC company for a chargeback is only a last resort if the company isn't cooperating, and typically you have at least 30 days to dispute a charge.

That said, I don't think what Sony did is the correct response. With a chargeback vs refund, either way they're going to give back the money to you, and they shouldn't hold your account hostage for you not doing it the "correct" way.

I'm also struggling to see what buying $150 in PSN credit would really do to balance it out. It would "pay" for the fraudulent purchases, which then get credited back to your account when the cancel them, leaving you with a $150 credit balance.

I'm guessing the banning of accounts after chargebacks is probably an automated protection against fraudsters creating accounts filled with fraudulently purchased games. But if someone calls in complaining about it, and the CS rep can see that it's a long standing account that was compromised, instead of a newly created one the was likely made just for fraudulent purchases, then the CS rep should be able to resolve it without further work on the customer's behalf.

Jay G.

Fraudsters typically don't expect to hold onto compromised accounts.

I'm not sure about what purchases Juzylle saw, but a while back on Xbox, FIFA trading card DLC purchases were big on compromised accounts. The fraudsters would buy the trading cards on a compromised account, and then "trade" the cards to another account they made and controlled. Even after the compromised account was recovered and the DLC purchases removed, the fraudsters got to keep the cards because they had already been traded to another account.

fujishig

Can't that be tracked down fairly easily though, and the other accounts banned?

Jay G.

I think the card trading went through EA servers, so MS had no access to it. Also, by the time the destination account was tracked down, the fraudster may have already sold off all the valuable cards and moved on to a new account.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/04/ho...ards/view-all/

dsa_shea

Yes, that is true but if we are talking about games being purchased by a primary account and needing access to that account to play said games on a secondary account then it should be easy to track. It all depends on what was purchased and if Sony gives a shit about finding the responsible party or simply wanting money from whoever can give it to them. It is definitely not a good business practice with the steps they took with Juzylle.

mattysemo247

A couple things. First, this is why I'm against having a card linked to Sony or MS. If you need to buy something, buy cards on Amazon. That way if it gets hacked, you are talking about $5 or $10 at that point, which someone isn't going to mess around with.

Second, I would file a case with the BBB. You would be surprised how fast companies react and handle those situations, because usually the cases get assigned to higher ranked individuals at the company. That way you are in direct contact with someone and not calling a general customer service representative

dsa_shea

I always buy 10 dollar psn cards at a time and never link a credit card or paypal account to my psn. I know that it is a hassle but with so many assholes out there looking to take advantage, you have no other choice but to protect yourself and limit your potential loss. Now, locking you out of an account that you have purchases tied up in is an entirely different matter and I'm not sure of the legality of it.

fumanstan

I've heard numerous miserable things about the way Sony handles stolen accounts. I'm really surprised they haven't gotten better with the policies, but I guess there hasn't been enough media outrage

Dan

I look at it this way, from Sony's perspective:

User A has an account that gets compromised by a Thief.
Thief racks up $150 in purchases on User A's account, makes their PS4 the 'home' PS4, then logs off to play the games, as I imagine there's a timeline for how often consoles need to check in with Sony's servers.
User A discovers this activity and initiates chargebacks with credit card companies and/or PayPal. <--this is what upsets Sony
User A gets reimbursed while Sony pays a penalty, and the account still technically has that content. <-- because this is the result
Sony bans the account because, to them, User A's account stole the content, and that's all they care about.

The point is that Sony is "out" the $150 plus the penalties of having chargebacks filed against them. That's bad for business.

If User A went directly to Sony, they could initiate refunds for the charges, and (probably) disable the content, all without getting penalized by the Credit Card companies or PayPal. But since those chargebacks are irreversible, Sony's shit out of luck. So they're basically saying, fuck it, YOU didn't come to US first, so WE want YOU to buy PSN cards to make up for our losses.

I don't agree with it, but I get it. Sony thinks you're responsible to contact them first, but there's some responsibility on Sony to explicitly say, "If you believe there is fraudulent activity on your PSN account, CONTACT US FIRST. DO NOT CONTACT VISA/MC/AMEX/PAYPAL."

Nobody thinks about this stuff until it happens to them, and when it happens to them, they call their CC company first, because seems like the the logical thing to do, even when it isn't.

For example:
- If Sony charged you $150 for a purchase you made, but they didn't provide the content or service expected from the transaction, and they refuse to provide a refund. Yes, a chargeback is the right step to take because that's a direct dispute between yourself and the retailer.
- If someone uses your account to make a $150 purchase, and Sony provides the content or service, then your dispute should not be resolved via a chargeback unless Sony is completely uncooperative in providing a refund on their own terms. Because, technically, they did provide the content/service for the price paid.

tl;dr
It's an entirely shitty situation to end up in. Sony somehow needs to educate users to contact them directly if there's cause for concern about fraudulent activity, while users are hardwired to think that contacting their credit card company should always be step #1.

Don't initiate chargebacks unless you are 100% certain the retailer (Sony) can't or won't refund you first.

Gooter

Juzylle, sorry that happened to you.

I just removed my linked PayPal and CC from my account as a precaution.

Keith6601

Someone got my son's account info a couple weeks ago. Thankfully I always use codes and never input my card info when he gets things.

The problem though is they deactivated our ps4 as his primary to activate theirs. Talking to a sony "help" person and they say there isn't anything they can do, there's a 6 month wait between activating/deactivating or some crap. He proceeds to send me a link where I can force deactivate by supplying the system info and such. Yay problem solved except that the response by the people that "look into" the forced one is that there's a six month waiting period. Just going in circles.

He can still access all of his stuff and there's no real issue as no payment info was attached as I said, I just can't play certain games that are no locked as they were purchased on his account instead of mine.

Jay G.

I understand why there's normally a 6 month wait between activation, but seriously, this is something they should be able to override in the case of account hijacking. Ideally, the customer service goal after an account hijacking should be to get the customer back to normally as quickly as possible. No holding their account hostage, and no making them go through months-long waits to get their primary console setting back.

Jay G.

But after User A contacts Sony about the fraudulent charges that were charged back, Sony can then remove the content from the account. So now the User has their money back, and Sony has their content back.

Sure, Sony sill has to eat the chargeback fine, but that's the price you pay for allowing credit cards to be tied to a gaming account. If they don't want to deal with chargebacks when fraudulent charges are made, they shouldn't deal with credit cards at all and only allow PSN gift cards.