All my devices have been deactivated

From NeoGAF:

I have 2 Ps4 and 2 Ps3. All listed as my devices. We have 1 ps4 set as primary console, one as guest.

Now, yesterday apparently all my consoles were deactivated. I did not do this. There is a Ps4 now activated as my primary console (but I do not own this console).

I dont know what to do, I have 2 Ps4's in the house and I cannot activate either as a primary.

I cannot deactivate all my consoles as they have already been deactivated on the PSN account page and it no longer gives me the option.

I contacted PSN support twice, and they say I have to wait 6 months, and that they seem to think I have given my PSN details to another PS4. I am claiming this must be account fraud.

However, PSN support say as this mystery Ps4 has made some free purchases (PS+ downloads) on my account then they dont believe me and say it is my doing. I ahve argued with the guy for hours, he will not let me speak to someone else and I cannot deactivate this unknown Ps4.

Help GAF, I am going nuts. PSN service is the rudest and most non-compliant and unhelpful support I have ever seen. I am the account holder and they will not help me and terminated the phone call. Unbelievable.

We all had issues with Sony's customer service (a compilation post)

With the increased exposure due to the Watchdog programme, people all over the Internet have been commenting on the stories, adding to the initial stories from RLLMUK.  These comments generally fall into four categories:

• I got a refund so I'm all right Jack
• Something irrelevant since they haven't read the situation properly
• Backing up Sony because of some sense of company loyalty
• Other horror stories

Here are some examples of the last of these.

Agent_Llama on Eurogamer:

My other half bought a game from PSN and, somehow, they managed to charge him 12 times for it. Refused to refund it, even though it's technically impossible to buy a game more than once on PSN. Eventually managed to wrangle vouchers out of them to use on PSN, but they flat refused to refund the excess charges.

wibbl on Eurogamer:

I have been trying to chase up 10 quid that I am owed for a PayPal promotion they were running throughout March that has never been honoured. PayPal actually refunded the money I was owed, but Sony then responded to this by banning my account.

I'm now embroiled in a tedious support saga trying to both get my account re-enabled and my tenner back.

All because two multinational corporations are incapable of running a simple promotion, and both are more interested in pointing the finger at each other than actually protecting their customers.

CliffPromise:

I was the victim of fraud on PSN. £34 in FIFA points that had been bought abroad. I had to chase them for months to get it back.

loadstone007:

I bought a DLC on the wrong store, which doesn't match the version of the game I have. This means I can't use that DLC - and Sony refused to refund me. I don't get it - I'm unable to use the DLC and it was made in error. They can block the license for that DLC on my system, so why not give me my money back? I spent $10 in vain.

redcrayon

Back in October, I used the 'add £50 via paypal and we'll give you £10 extra credit' promotion. After adding the money, PSN didn't credit me. I then contacted Paypal, who blamed Sony, and then Sony, who first claimed the promotion wasn't valid (it was, it had been emailed to me earlier that week) and then blamed Paypal. It took me a total of 9 emails to five different people to get the bottom of it, and even then only after I forwarded them a copy of their own promotional email, then the receipt from my paypal transaction. It was only a tenner, but even so, their immediate answer being 'not pur fault!' when I've just given them £50 and spent hundreds with them on my PSN account over the years was disgusting. My advice is to avoid any Sony/Paypal promotions like the plague.

berelain

Sony have terrible customer service; I was on the receiving end of it after my original 'fat' PS3 had the yellow light of death, and the refurbished one they replaced it with had the same yellow light within 24 hours of me receiving it, and the refurbished one the replaced that one with also yellow lighted within another week. It took a few hours of phone calls and a lot of frustration before they eventually agreed to send me a newer model PS3 instead of another refurbished 'fat' one, which clearly had a problem. That replacement is still going strong.

psaunder

Had similar issue here in Australia. Accidently purchased a PS Vita game on the master account, instead of my kids account , so had to purchase it again (not sure which way around) , either way I asked for a refund of the game I couldn't use. After a few emails, they stopped responding to me. Pathetic customer service.

beck1110

I bought the monthly plus games through the PS Plus section of the PlayStation website and was charged for one of the games due to a mistake of their pricing. I spent weeks getting in contact with Sony and got nowhere, it was only after I contacted several gaming journalist websites and watchdogs that I very suddenly and randomly got a refund.

I was appalled at Sony's lack of customer service and lack of process for complaints. Each member of staff had a different answer and method to deal with my complaint. It took on average 4 days for an email to be responded to and nearly an hour to get through to a real person on the phone. Every one of their staff admitted the problem was with their website but would not issue a refund or even a credit voucher as it was against their policy.

Rpt81

Back when they gave out the 10% code for the Christmas outage, I accidentally ordered (via the web store) PS3 DLC where I actually wanted the PS4 version. Rang up, not expecting any joy, and was told that there was nothing that could be done about it, even though I hadn't actually downloaded the content at all.

PoliteElliot on Gamespot

In my experience Sony customer service was terrible! Purchases were made on my account fraudulently and I contacted Sony via their website. I reside in Norway and I had to email 3 different customer support addresses, all supplied by Sony, and each time I was asked to try another address! Eventually, unbelievably, I was asked to contact a Film company!!??

"Thank you for contacting Nordisk Film Distribution AS – Official distributor for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. We will return with more information to you as soon as we receive it from SCEE."

And I never heard anything from them after this ...

Eventually I just gave up - congratulations Sony, cutting down your support costs by making it so ineffective your dissatisfied customers give up. If it was as difficult to make purchases as it is to get customer service Sony would make very little money.

My account was blocked because I blocked a fraudulent payment

In a rare move, a proper news website has run a piece on Sony's awful customer service: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/02/sony_holds_gun_to_gamers_heads_over_fraud_charges/

"I was advised on the telephone by Sony support that all use, including fraudulent activities committed by an unknown third party, is my responsibility. He advised me that Sony takes no responsibility for fraudulent use of my credit card details and security rests solely with me."

A couple of points here:

• The third party is not unknown to Sony.  They will have records of the IP address used to make the purchase and the console that the game was downloaded to.
• Security cannot rest solely with the consumer since they need not be involved in any fraud - it could be the (known) third party calling Sony and asking for a password reset, and there's nothing that the consumer can do about that.

 Later in the article Sony respond, showing complete idiocy about how digital marketplaces work and consumer goodwill can be retained.

To do otherwise would create an opportunity for consumers to claim that they were not responsible for a purchase on their account, receive a refund and yet retain the content.

You could just remove the licence for that content from the account, and ban the console that was used to buy it. Then the content would not be retained, unless the fraudster wanted to only play offline for ever more.

If the reported unauthorised transactions were made on a console other than the one owned by the account holder, the person responsible must have had details of the account sign-in ID and password.

 Again, wrong.  There have been stories of people regaining access to their account by just calling Sony customer services and asking for their passwords to be reset, to a different email address.  The security breach could be entirely on Sony's side.

the nature of digital content, in that it is made available immediately and cannot be returned

It can be returned.

whether the account holder willingly gave their details to a friend/acquaintance or were tricked into providing them via phishing sites or similar, the responsibility for keeping this information secure does lie with the account holder

If Sony offered two-factor authentication on their accounts, they may be right to insist on this.  But they don't, and they have suffered multiple security breaches themselves.  Do they really need the odd £50 that is reclaimed from fraudsters instead of having a happy customer base?

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.

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!]