Topic: Account suspended due to chargeback; how can I resolve this???

So I pre-ordered two games back to back on the PSN and unfortunately Sony racks each charge up separately; because they were the same charge a minute or two apart my credit card immediately hit the second one as fraud.

I received an e-mail stating my account was suspended due to chargeback; within 24 hours I was on the phone with my CC and they reinitiated the charge of which I can verify went through...in addition they will not block or reverse anything again without my consent (frankly been with them for over a decade and never had this happen).

I have since used the link in the e-mail to send four different messages indicating we should be good now; it just keeps popping up saying a specialist will follow up in 1 - 3 business days. Today is a week..in addition you cannot use the online chat because it requires you to login and when I try to my account comes up suspended. Furthermore when calling the 800 support number they explicitly state that number is NOT for resolving suspensions; despite that I got through earlier today only to have the agent tell me they could not help per the message and hang up.

What am I supposed to do to resolve this? Sony has since received their money as I said within 24 hours and frankly if it wasn't for the PSN requiring each pre-order transaction to be separate this would have never happened. I am a middle aged guy that has been a Sony fan from the launch day of PSone and had every machine since....I spend hundreds if not thousands every year on games/accessories....this is ridiculous.

@rvk5150 Woah, that sounds awful. Here’s hoping it gets resolved. I have no advice other than keep trying to contact them. Perhaps try opening up a burner PSN account so you can at least log in to try to get in touch with someone online who might be sympathetic to your plight and get you in touch with the right people.

Thanks for the response; I will keep that in mind as a strategy....did not think of that.

I just cannot understand what else I am to do; I have literally sent 4 -5 messages through that form and immediately took care of the chargeback. I cannot be the first this has happened to and they do not allow for other means to contact them and resolve it; do they really want to alienate longtime customers this way?

You have to call them and pay them back the amount you initially paid. it happened to me before.

and theres a link within the support section of the site that has unban requests for chargebacks only , from what i remember.

I am sorry to hear about your troubles and I hope it gets resolved soon. Never easy to get a (simple) good resolution when it comes to stuff like this and Sony.

I just wanted to add though... your sentiment about being a long time customer... that should be redundant. Shouldn't matter if you're a long term customer or someone who just got their first console last week.

@nomither6 So I want to but when you call it states that suspended accounts cannot be handled by the calls; then if you try to fool the computer system just to get someone on the phone it requires an online id ticket which requires you to be able to open one and chat online which I cannot do because when I try to it is blocked due to my account being suspended.

I have sent 4 - 5 messages with the online form link that I received via e-mail...all it says every time I do is that a specialist will get back to me within 1 - 3 business days which has not happened.

Finally; I had the charge reversed within 24 hours...I have a letter from the credit card company and my statement to prove it; regardless if I had to pay again or if there are some "fees" Sony is attempting to recover I will gladly pay it but I am not being given the opportunity.

Thank you for the reply...if you know a way to get through to someone I would love to hear it.

@TheIdleCritic Thank you for the response and I agree...just venting. I have worked in the automotive industry for over twenty years; this kind of behavior from any of the companies would immediately lose loyal customers; I have seen it first hand; that was my point.

@rvk5150 its best not to do anything online and just call them when they're open PST . Make a new throwaway account to get access to what you need to make the phone call to contact their support . And like i said , it happened to me too , but this was in 2016 ; I called them and my account was un-perma-banned within maybe 30 minutes .

@rvk5150 Sure

Today I was planning to take the advice of creating a burner account in order to get through to someone at Sony to speak about this; I am pleased and surprised to wake up to an e-mail this morning that confirms the chargeback has been reversed and my account has been reinstated; on the 10th day after this nonsense all started.

I am happy it is over; thank you all for the responses and advice on this.

@rvk5150 That’s surely a relief. We’ll give Sony the benefit of the doubt and say that it took so long because of the pandemic strain on staffing. But it would have been nice if they told you 10 days up front instead of 1-3 days. Well, the important thing is you’re reinstated.

Exactly

This happened to me a couple years ago. I had £50 in charges on my account from Fortnite despite it not even being downloaded on my PS4 at the time so I bounced it back. Sony then cut off all access to games, including discs on my PS4. I emailed them and they told me to give them the £50 or else my account would be permanently suspended and my thousands of pounds worth of games lost. So I coughed up as I had no other choice. Sony's customer service is an absolute travesty.

Yeah I hear ya...in my case it was the credit card acting on their own but what kills me is you cannot call/e-mail/chat because they lock you out; they only allow communication through a link they send you and again.....what they state would take 1 - 3 business days to review took 11 days; total bs.

Their customer service; at least in this case; leaves a lot to be desired.

Yeah I have heard of this problem before. If you dispute a charge to them you have to go through them. If you go through your bank or CC company then Sony will freeze your account. They never were that way till they had that big data breach a few years ago.

That's one reason I don't use a bank card or credit card on PSN and just get the PSN cards.

This sort of thing is why I only use PSN/eshop cards when purchasing games on consoles. The big console makers have atrocious policies and customer support, and giving them access to your credit/debit cards isn't a great idea.

@nessisonett Still blows my mind companies can revoke access to licenses you paid for on a whim, and even disable your ability to play """physical""" games on your own hardware.

Services like GamePass are looking better and better when these companies can turn our costly libraries of game licenses into dust with virtually no justification at the snap of a finger. At least physical games can be sold off, but you're just screwed if you they decide to to remove your access to your digital library.

I can understand the convience of a credit/bank card you see something on a digital store you want and it's just either pull out the card or just hit purchase if the info is saved. A PSN card though if you see something you want well then you have to go to a store that sells them buy then go back home, unless you just use the PSN App on your phone at the store right when you get it. But again it means going to a store.

@Ralizah Yeah, the ability to disable my physical copies really opened my eyes. Everyone that whines about physical copies and such is basically paying for the privilege of a license on a disc. So I just don’t care anymore, who cares if Game Pass is going to ‘ruin the industry’ and I ‘don’t own it’ or whatever, I don’t really own anything beyond the PS3.

@Tasuki You can buy PSN store cards from places like Amazon and they will email you the code within a few minutes. Done it loads of times now, and sites like Shopto and CD Keys sell them for cheaper then the card value, so you only pay something like 45 quid for a 50 quid card. All legit too.