Flipper the Priest
International
- 15 July 2003
It's quite late in the evening of the 29th of December. I think to myself that I'll fire up the PS4 for a bit before bed, and switch it on before realising that I still had dishes to do. Welcome to the jungle. I do dishes and go to bed forgetting about the PS4.
An hour or so later I notice emails from PayPal about transactions being made. I think it's spam, initially, before finding similar emails from Sony and checking my banking app. Immediately I disassociate my PayPal account from my PSN account and change all passwords. £116 has been spent on Fortnite junk with another £32 in the shopping cart. I then go about contacting PayPal, Sony and my bank to recoup the money.
My bank says it's over to PayPal and Sony but they'll help in any dispute. PayPal take the report of the payments and refund them about 24 hours later. After a phone call with them, Sony say they will investigate the matter. I think everything is in order. But then I try to log into my PSN account to find I'm banned. I assume it's a temporary block while the investigation is underway, and go about my offline business.
Yesterday I get an email from Sony saying that the ban will only be lifted if I pay them £116. They say the purchases were made using my console (verified by the serial number I gave them over the phone) so they don't consider them to be fraudulent, and by getting a refund from PayPal I am now, in fact, in debt with Sony. Me? Furious.
The thought of someone accessing your console remotely is pretty troubling. But it turns out you, the victim, either has to take the financial hit or get a ban from PSN.
I don't expect anyone here to do anything about this. But I needed to vent and I guess it may raise a bit of awareness!
An hour or so later I notice emails from PayPal about transactions being made. I think it's spam, initially, before finding similar emails from Sony and checking my banking app. Immediately I disassociate my PayPal account from my PSN account and change all passwords. £116 has been spent on Fortnite junk with another £32 in the shopping cart. I then go about contacting PayPal, Sony and my bank to recoup the money.
My bank says it's over to PayPal and Sony but they'll help in any dispute. PayPal take the report of the payments and refund them about 24 hours later. After a phone call with them, Sony say they will investigate the matter. I think everything is in order. But then I try to log into my PSN account to find I'm banned. I assume it's a temporary block while the investigation is underway, and go about my offline business.
Yesterday I get an email from Sony saying that the ban will only be lifted if I pay them £116. They say the purchases were made using my console (verified by the serial number I gave them over the phone) so they don't consider them to be fraudulent, and by getting a refund from PayPal I am now, in fact, in debt with Sony. Me? Furious.
The thought of someone accessing your console remotely is pretty troubling. But it turns out you, the victim, either has to take the financial hit or get a ban from PSN.
I don't expect anyone here to do anything about this. But I needed to vent and I guess it may raise a bit of awareness!