Sony is no stranger to having its online and network services consistently hampered in some way or the other- whether it is a large scale hack, or a DDoS attack, it happens all too frequently for Sony.
With so much experience with these hacks, you would think Sony would be better at handling the fallout of hacks for individual customer accounts, and the like.
As it turns out, they are not, since it appears they have went ahead and denied a refund to a customer whose account saw a game purchased fraudulently by a hacker.
A long story short, Sony emailed the user, Pockets, about a purchase that had occurred on his account that seemed suspicious; it was for the PS3 version of Shadow of Mordor (Pockets does not own a PS3), made on a console with a serial number Sony admitted is not registered to Pockets. Sony acknowledged that the game had been purchased by a hacker, and that Pockets had not paid for it- and then they proceeded to not refund him the money.
Their reasoning is shocking and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so anti consumer:
“In relation to the transactions you recently flagged as unauthorised, our investigation concluded that the serial number of the console on which these transactions were made does not match the serial number of the console you provided to us on your original call. Regrettably, as stated in the PlayStation Network Terms of Service, we are unable to offer a refund for purchases made on PlayStation Store unless the content is found to be defective. We have taken the appropriate action against the console which made the purchase but unfortunately we cannot share the details of this console with you for security purposes.”
So… wow, just… wow.
Guys, I wouldn’t put my credit card (or even money in my wallet) on my PSN account if I were you.