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Sony Suspends Thousands Of PlayStation Network Accounts in UK, Allegedly Because Of Issue With PayPal (kotaku.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the what's-happening? dept.

An anonymous reader writes: PlayStation Network (PSN) users in the UK who've paid via PayPal have had their accounts suspended. 'Thousands' of users this week received an automatic refund for purchases they made with the US money transfer service. According to game blog Kotaku, since Sony hasn't received money from those users, their accounts have been suspended. Neither Sony nor Paypal have addressed the issue yet.

35 comments

  1. Grossly Incompetent by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    The only reason Sony gaming has been as good as it has is that is essentially US run at this point. It appears that Sony international accounting still leaves a lot to be desired as they have been incapable of taking peoples damn money in the UK... The Japan based Sony is a mess, they have been losing ground everywhere except for the PS4 and haven't had a real hit new product (think walkman etc.) since the introduction of the Bluray (2003), and they had to bribe the industry with arcane DRM that breaks every 20th movie you try to watch...

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  2. Re:Serves Them Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about the privacy-concerned? I do pay with cash whenever I can and for whatever I can. Often under made-up names. Why would e.g. PSN or a local tailor need to know my real name?

  3. Change the Headline by thechemic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The headline in its current form makes Sony look bad, and this isn't necessarily their fault. The headline should read, "PayPal initiate 1000s of charge backs to PlayStation Network Accounts for Unknown Reason Resulting in Suspensions."

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    Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
    1. Re:Change the Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Read the article: the problem is Sony closed (or blocked) the account they were asking PayPal to send money to. Since PayPal couldn't provide them with the funds, they refunded the transactions.

      You'd think by now people would know to never do business with Sony.

    2. Re:Change the Headline by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Dealing with PayPal, I bet this is not Sony's fault. If there was a spike in chargebacks, it's usually some clever boys finding a way to get refunds for charges they never paid. But PP does sometimes burp, and they will fix this.

      Not that Sony ever made a mistake...

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      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:Change the Headline by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Remember reading somewhere about how some UK fellows figured out some chargeback tricks to get PSN credit/games.

    4. Re:Change the Headline by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 1

      At least PayPal didn't try to rootkit my PC.

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      Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
    5. Re:Change the Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PayPal is extremely hit or miss. I've got a small business and I refuse to offer them because they'll automatically refund transactions without consulting with the person that's paying. They'll also occasionally keep money hostage for various reasons.

      But, that being said, just yesterday I called them over a confusing billing statement and I was able to get through to a real person within a couple minutes and get it straightened out.

      You have to be careful with them, but they do seem to train the few customer service reps they have. And the guy I talked to sounded like he was from the US.

    6. Re:Change the Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Friend of mine has a few webshops and works with PP. Every few months i get to hear fascinating stories about how PP holds his whole accounts hostage (as in he is not allowed to pull funds out, but can receive payments) for extended periods of time. For the stupidest of reasons mostly PP demanding absurd amounts of paperwork to release the funds.

      On the customer side, they fail gloriously in the european market by offering direct pay through your bankaccount but their system still demands the presence of a Credit card in the account for many things - which is kinda redundant. What would i need PP for if i have a CC?

    7. Re:Change the Headline by Mortimer82 · · Score: 1

      As someone who worked as a Blizzard Europe Customer Service Agent many years ago, I can believe this.

      On some Swedish forum some "clever" kid posted a "hack" which would let you get anything you wanted on your WoW account for free, the advertised process was something like:
      - Change your account's country to a particular EU state.
      - Change your billing type to some direct debit system.
      - Enter bullshit details.
      - Buy what you want, and it works.

      Except what they didn't realize is that when the end of month batch would run in a few weeks, the system automatically suspended any service with "invalid" details. If you purchased game time, your account would be frozen, if you purchased something like a realm or faction change, that particular character would be "locked" from play, all until the "bounced" payments were reimbursed to Blizzard.

      Now, any intelligent person would instantly avoid this due to it literally being fraud. However, due to the weeks delay due to the nature of this billing system, many naive kids racked up a significant amount of "bounced" transactions which largely locked them out of most of their characters which had realm changes even after they fixed their game time.

      This made for a very difficult couple of months for support staff with many kids literally crying that Blizzard "set them up", lulling them into a false sense of security. The truth of the matter is that this is just the nature of that payment method, legitimate users of it never knowingly let anything ever bounce because it was common practice for merchants to blacklist that payment method to anyone whose payment bounces, Blizzard being no exception. It's a really crappy system from the point of view of the merchants, but it was (probably still is) a very popular system in those countries and presumably works very well overall for subscription services.

      Due to this, Blizzard locked customers from being able to change their account's countries after this except through customer service with documentation proving your new physical address.

      Moral of the story, if you're stupid enough to commit fraud in the first place, don't do it for services where you have something to lose.

    8. Re:Change the Headline by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

      Read the article: the problem is Sony closed (or blocked) the account they were asking PayPal to send money to. Since PayPal couldn't provide them with the funds, they refunded the transactions.

      You'd think by now people would know to never do business with Sony.

      I read TFA, and it didn't say as what you said. You picked and chose to read only a portion of TFA.

      Neither company has yet responded to requests for comment. However our intrepid insider said this although, understandably, they didn't want their name on it:

      "The payments that were charged back to Paypal were coming up from a while back in June, the 11th, the 15th, stuff like that. I saw a Paypal statement from someone [which] said 'This error is on Sony's end and is to do with them closing or somehow limiting their GDP account, meaning that the funds didn't credit the accounts.'

      That doesn't seem to fly because why would it take at least two weeks for those payments to clear? Oh well, it's a massive mess anyway."

    9. Re:Change the Headline by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Dealing with PayPal, I bet this is not Sony's fault.

      Reading the article, you just lost the bet. The problem was Sony's account on Sony's side wasn't clearing due to Sony's mistake. Paypal as per standard policy refunded the payments after they were in limbo for 2 weeks. Frankly if this was a bank the only difference would be that we'd have heard about this last year.

  4. Renewal on Expiration Day? by omnichad · · Score: 1

    This is the problem with having automatic renewal set to happen on the date of expiration. It gives no time for resolving the payment if it fails to go through before your account is suspended. Not just Sony but all sorts of services do annual billing like this.

    1. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by omnichad · · Score: 3, Informative

      Replying to myself pre-emptively after actually reading the article to save anyone the trouble.

      These are payments that were made as much as two weeks ago, but essentially Sony never claimed the funds because their side was set up wrong so they were refunded automatically.

    2. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      I'd accept that. PayPal doesn't do merchant servicing very well. 'Merchant disservicing'. is their model

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      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Eh? From what GP wrote, it was Sony who fumbled the egg here.

      It wouldn't have killed them to have just let the accounts continue in the meantime, until it was solved. Little bastards.

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      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re: Renewal on Expiration Day? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      It's not that simple.

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      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    5. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh? From what GP wrote, it was Sony who fumbled the egg here.

      If a well-established payment service could have such a large merchant coming on-board "fumbled" so easily, it is the payment service's fault to *not* go the extra mile to prevent such refund and help the merchant to fix it.

      New merchants coming on-board a payment service *means* they are new to the service and their staff will be unfamiliar with setting up. Normal business help and work with new customers, I guess American business think they playing FPS and treat customers as noobs for earning kills.

      It wouldn't have killed Paypal to just let the money sit in the meantime until it was solved either, so, "Little bastards".

    6. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Coming on board? You pulled that out of your arse, they were already running but they closed the receiving account.

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      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't change a thing. It still wouldn't have killed Paypal to just let the money sit in the meantime until it was solved, "Little bastards".

    8. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      It wasn't paypal who blocked the accounts, you slack cunt. They wouldn't (well, shouldn't) even be able to.

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      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:Renewal on Expiration Day? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Paypal refunded the payments, though. They had already sat on the money for 2 weeks waiting on somewhere to deliver it. For such a large account, they should have tried to reach out to Sony. After all, their share of the fees are worth well more than enough to pay for the time to make a phone call.

  5. Re:Serves Them Right by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

    Only hackers and criminals use these money transfer services. Any legitimate purchase should be made via a proper band credit or debit card.

    Trump 3030

    My credit card is from The Moody Blues...
    they're proper, right?
    Only asking because my BieberCharge stopped working...

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    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  6. Should of used dogecoin. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Paypal and Sony, two companies that screw each others customers over.

  7. IPN Server Change? by sgrover · · Score: 1

    Is this related to the IPN Server Change? Just went through an update of Magento due to a change in PayPal (See patch SUPEE-8167). The notes for that indicated that if it was not done by Jun 30th PayPal would stop working due to a change in the location of the IPN servers. So I wonder if the PSN network missed that, or if these really are bad accounts.

  8. PSN horror stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See all the horror stories from people with PSN problems at consumeraffairs. It is not just this issue, they are pretty bad:

    https://www.consumeraffairs.com/home_electronics/sony-playstation-3.html

  9. BS wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's why I don't play computer games that require accounts. That's BS

  10. Applies to more than consoles by spire3661 · · Score: 2

    IF this happened to me, i would also be locked out of the 'apps' on my Sony camera. (they offer apps that can do things in-camera that would normally take a full workstation to accomplish). I regret ever linking those accounts.

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    1. Re:Applies to more than consoles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are the apps on recent Sony cameras actually good? I have a NEX-6 and the apps on it all have horrible performance (i.e. they take 20 seconds to start and 5+ seconds to respond to any button press).

    2. Re:Applies to more than consoles by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Yes, they still take a bit to open on my a6000. From what i understand its basically a whole different firmware being loaded. I used them until i got a raspberry Pi Zero W. Now i just use Gphoto2 to get those same effects and trigger the camera through terminal on my phone.

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  11. Re:Serves Them Right by spire3661 · · Score: 1

    Thee ability to use a made up name in any kind of transaction is quickly coming to an end. They want everyone in their own tiny little container. The price you see will be based on some arbitrary score related to your profile, with no actual connection to cost. We are in the era of straight up wealth extraction.

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    Good-bye
  12. Re: Serves Them Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have done this before literally decades ago when I was selling computers. The larger the business the more shipping and handling fees. For a $250 Ethernet card individuals would pay $10 shipping, company addresses would pay $15 and if it's government there is a $45 fee. The county had to order 70 cards and I charged them $45 per each line item, card being one item, and T-junction and transceivers separate (even though my supplier shipped these things as as bundle and I did not bother to repackage).

    I made more money charging them shipping than the equipment itself.

  13. 4dapayers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    pay up for another console you fucking mongtards console users you deserve it

  14. Re:Serves Them Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The reason I use PayPal is because most web sites are completely crap with security. Companies like Umart seem to get their customer database hacked (or sold by an employee) every 6-7 months. I don't trust most web sites with my credit card details, especially HP.