Sony renewed my PSN subscription even though auto-renew was turned off

Sony helped themselves to $17.99 of the $50.00 I had in my wallet which was actually to pay for another year; they took out just 3 months even though I have auto renew turned OFF.

Although its not disastrous ($5 loss) don't assume the auto renew OFF is OK.  It means they will take the funds if they are in your wallet but won't take from a card. I searched high and low on the site and can't see the option to not touch your wallet. It even says I have no subscriptions.

So in 3 months I will have to top up the $50.00 and purchase the year sub before they take the 3 months again.

Sony ended the chat because I complained

A chat transcript:

There is a difference between "can't" and "won't" which Sony need to learn.

I have no PS4 but I now have an expensive copy of AC: Unity

Taken from NeoGAF at http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=151818581&postcount=422 ...

My PSN account was also hacked and in the end I got the exact same formletter as shown at this post.  Thankfully I managed to go in and change my password and remove my credit card before the hijacker changed it and lock me out.

The hijacker had attached his PS4 to my account, removing my PS3, and bought the digital collectors edition of Assassins Creed Unity.  My account is Swedish and I was in the US at the time so I sent an email to them rather than calling, I could not find a number to call anyway.  After several days I got a reply stating I needed to call in because they could not handle this via email.  After more than an hour in the telephone queue on an international call very early in the morning I finally got a person to explain my situation to.

Since I did not have a PS4 at the time the guy on the phone said this was obvious fraud and they would refund me and remove the PS4 which made me happy.  After a couple of more days I got an email that I needed to send them my PS3 serial number. Not very easy to get since my PS3 was in Sweden and I was still in California.

I did send them my serial number once I'd got it and got a new reply with the formletter that they would not refund me the money.  I obviously complained but got a new mail back informing that this was a final decision and there was nothing I could do to get the money back!

I still have no PS4 but I do have very expensive version of Assassins Creed.

Sony PSN support and theft protection is absolutely horrible and I would strongly advice everyone to not have a credit card in their account.  I wonder how many of these cases happen every year.  Sony obviously gets a percentage on everything sold so they even earn money on these thefts, perhaps they care more about that then their reputation.  You would think that with the recent couple of years of Sony hacks they would be more sensitive about more bad will about their online services but apparently no.

I bought an extended warranty for my PS4 but when it broke Sony wouldn't repair it

A lengthy piece over at Bleeding Cool.

I heard my wife stirring and she ended up waking up and running downstairs in a panic thinking our house was on fire because she smelled the burning plastic smell. I told her I was pretty sure it came from the PlayStation 4, and she asked me if it was smoky in the house or if her eyes were messing with her since she just woke up. She confirmed our suspicions – it smelled smoky when she went upstairs, turned on the lights up there, and the smoke was fairly thick. Obviously, I was quick to contact Sony about this issue.

After setting up a service, now being a year and 3 months after my purchase date, but still well within my three year extended warranty, I waited a week for my shipping box that never came. I contacted Sony again to get an update on the situation where I was informed that I was NOT under warranty anymore and that my $60 extended warranty only covered my then second console despite what I was told. I got off the online chat and called Sony support directly where I was put on hold for quite a while until I was eventually informed that they would NOT cover the PS4 unless I paid for the service. All of this, despite the fact that it had the potential to burn my house down if I wasn't around to notice the smell and unplug it. I immediately traded in my console as a broken, defective system (lessening my trade value) and put my money towards some upcoming Xbox One releases.

Sony think that security of your PSN account is entirely your responsibility - do they also think that making sure your PS4 isn't dangerous internally and doesn't burn down your house is also your responsibility?  Maybe they want everyone to open their consoles to check they're safe ... which of course will invalidate the warranty.

I accidently bought PS3 DLC instead of PS4 DLC, and Sony won't swap the licences over

More of the stunning customer service we've all come to expect from Sony here.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1009180

In a nutshell: bloke's daughter buys DLC, but acidentally buys the PS3 version instead of the PS4 one on Sony's awful web store. Asks Sony if they can swap it the right one - 'Computer says no!'

Now I know that this is customer error, but any right thinking company would just revoke the license to the PS3 DLC and give them the PS4 license instead (given that they're the same price). A tiny gesture of goodwill that would cost them nothing and help prevent driving customers into the hands of competitors. But this is Sony.

A hacker stole $600 from my credit card, and Sony told me they will refund $150 at most

From Reddit:

On the morning of the 26th of February, I received an e-mail saying that the e-mail address associated with my PSN account has been changed. Having requested no such change, I began to panic and checked to see what was up. Sure enough, I could not log in to my account. It seems that someone else had managed to get in and lock the door behind them. I immediately hopped over to my bank account website and found that a total of $570 had been spent on FIFA points in FIFA '15.

I called up Sony customer support and requested that control of my account be returned to me, which they did. Sony was quite helpful, and the process was painless. I asked about having the fraudulent purchases revoked, and the Sony representative said that the charges could not be cancelled on his end, but I could cancel the charges at my bank by filing a fraudulent purchase claim and I should not be charged for those purchases.

Fair enough. I did as I was instructed and the total amount was returned to my bank account. I was hoping that would be the end of the story.

Today I found that my PSN account had been blocked or temporarily suspended. Upon calling customer support and speaking with two different people, I found that Sony is locking me out of my account until the full amount, $570, has been paid.

I explained that this was a fraudulent purchase made by someone who had hacked into my account. I had never given my username or password to anyone. They did not budge on their position, though. Sony is holding my account hostage until I pay their ransom.

I have been a member of PlayStation Network for years, and I have made hundreds of dollars of purchases over the PlayStation Network, and Sony is locking me out of all of the digital content that I have earned. The only other option I have is to start a new account, which essentially mean surrendering all of the digital content (including 300+ full games) that I have paid for over the years, not to mention my still-active PS+ membership. On top of that, opening a new account means resetting all of my save games, trophies, DLC.

I don't know what to do anymore. I have tried elevating this issue as high as I can, but Sony is still denying me access to the content that I have purchased from them. I just wanted to share my experience in case anyone else has been similarly extorted by one of the major corporations.
I am a graduate student who doesn't have an extra $600 to throw at this problem to make it go away. My PlayStation systems have been great comforts during my times of stress. I am devastated that these have been taken away from me by a company that I have supported for years.

[Note: being Reddit, this has been picked up by a couple of other website - see http://consumerist.com/2015/03/12/playstation-network-users-report-hacked-accounts-terrible-options-from-sony/ and http://www.bitterwallet.com/playstation-doesnt-do-much-for-you-if-youve-been-hacked/84008. The user got it resolved in the end, after weeks of complaining and discussions with the legal teams.  This is not something paying customers should have to go through!]