Sony Suspends Thousands Of PlayStation Network Accounts in UK, Allegedly Because Of Issue With PayPal

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.

Re:

[spire3661]

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.

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

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...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Grossly Incompetent

[LeftCoastThinker]

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 ev

Change the Headline

[thechemic]

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."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:

[rickb928]

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...

Re:

[CronoCloud]

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

Re:

[Mortimer82]

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 mont

Re:

[ma1wrbu5tr]

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

Re:

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:

[parkinglot777]

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."

Renewal on Expiration Day?

[omnichad]

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.

Re:Renewal on Expiration Day?

[omnichad]

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.

Re:

[rickb928]

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

Re:

[Hognoxious]

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.

Re: Renewal on Expiration Day?

[rickb928]

It's not that simple.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

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

Re:

[Hognoxious]

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

Re:

[omnichad]

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.

IPN Server Change?

[sgrover]

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.

BS wins

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Applies to more than consoles

[spire3661]

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.

Re:

[spire3661]

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.