Source
r/playstation•
mitTch

Worst customer support I have ever seen?

:POST_Tech_Support: Support

Hi everyone, I want to post my story and struggles with the customer support from playstation direct specifically and see if anybody else had any issue with them and every suggestions on what to do from here on.

For the reference, I am based on NL, Europe.

During black Friday I start getting a lot of adds about 120€ discount on PS5 via their official shop, playstation direct. I was considering it for a while and this price fit in my budget. The whole story started wrong, as it went out of stock while it was in my cart, but trying again the day after I managed to complete the purchase. O got a PS5 disc edition with no bundle, but I also bought one extra controller and a charging station. Since there were pretty decent discounts I went further and purchased a year of PS+ premium and Hogwarts Legacy, both digitally via the official store.

One week passes and I receive the concole. I set it up, plug it onto my tv and try using it. Maybe 5 minutes pass by, the console gives a message that it is overheating and it switches off. It sounds like the fans are not even rotating. I didn't even have the time to open a game.

Now it is weekend, so I wait for Monday morning and contact the support. PS support tells me to just contact playstation direct, as getting a replacement is the best procedure here.

The operator from PS direct sounds super helpful until I hear panic in his voice: they have no stock, so there is no replacement for me. He can only offer me a refound for the console (what am I gonna do with the rest of the items? What about the discount i received? No answers). The only alternative he can propose is to escalate the case, I will receive an email within 2 days with an alternative solution.

The situation becomes ridiculous: even after escalation they only offer a refound to the console, no words about any other item, they cannot offer a voucher for the equivalent of the discount i received, no option to get a different bundle (the slim edition is now available for the same price as the normal version, so they will probably never have the normal version again, but they cannot offer the new one).

The only solution they are proposing is to refund me the faulty console so I lose the discount and can purchase a new one full price. And they don't understand why I am not happy with this option.

Alternatively, I can wait until end of December and contact them again it I ever see stock available again, so they can replace it (while paying for PS+ and waiting for a stock that will probably never arrive)

I am absolutely amazed by how terrible this customer support is, is it always like this? Would I be better off just contacting my credit card company and say fuck it to Sony all together?

It's crazy for me how they are asking me to pay for their bad QC..

Posted Dec 1, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

115
Tin_Cascade•

So, the situation is fair under most of EU wide customer rights legislation. You can either have:

  • A replacement - which may be delayed
    • This is where they are slightly wrong. As a Slim is the equivalent model (by their own notices, it is), they should have offered you this as an "equivalent replacement product"
  • A refund of what you paid, as you purchased during a sale.
    • As morally wrong as it may be, you have no legal right to be refunded a higher purchased price to compensate you. A lot of companies may chose to provide it, sadly Sony is not one of those.
7
mitTchOP•

The refound of what I paid should cover all additional items purchased, since they cannot be used, shouldn't it?

-5
Tin_Cascade•

Not if you bought them separately - by that, if you added them to your cart and weren't included with the PS5, then you have no formal legal recourse. However, most places would take them for a refund under "as new" in the EU.

Except for PS+, but you bought that through a separate route I assume (via the console / different web page), which should be refundable within the first 14 days and pro-rata'd

2
mitTchOP•

Thank you for the helpful infos! Extra controller and charging station were in the same cart, so it should go together, I will need to handle the ps+ and game separately I suppose.

-3
Tin_Cascade•

Extra controller and charging station were in the same cart, so it should go together

They don't: they were bought separately. If it was a single item in the cart which said "PS5 Bundle (Extra Dualsense and Charging Station)", then it's considered a single item.

However, they should just refund them out of goodwill.

6
bioboy79•

I’ll never buy anything again from Direct. Got recentlyissues with the Portal, I had no alternatives but to get a refund.

In general Sony Support is a disaster. For example I had issues with a controller and there was no way to find someone to repair it. You can read about it here.

2
mitTchOP•

I for sure will never buy anything from direct again, I wish I knew before that so many people had issues with them

2
bioboy79•

I got lucky with the PSVR2, no problems there, and I’m still waiting for the Pulse Explorer. I think this shouldn’t have issue (as long as the batteries don’t explode in my ears…).

But that’s it, I’m done with it, as long as there is no proper support.

1
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1
lions2lambs•

I just learned that PlayStation direct exists. I feel like you just learned two valuable lessons.

  • don’t use their first party store
  • don’t enable ps+ till you know things are working
1
mitTchOP•

I cannot understand how their first party store can be so bad honestly, I would have expected much better from one of the biggest company in the world. And regarding ps+, waiting would have meant missing out on quite a bit of discount, I was ready on "wasting" a few days of it, I could not really anticipate on this shit show..

-1
lions2lambs•

That’s your third mistake, expectations… why would you expect and assume that? You’re clearly not a kid but you’re making kid decisions.

Anyways, you’re in the doghouse now. You’ll have to call back and argue, escalate to manager, when that doesn’t work escalate higher, keep escalating till you hit “office of the president” if they have that. You’ll need to do research to find out what highest escalation point is. The job of regular reps isn’t to make you happy, but to stop you from complaining up.

1
mitTchOP•

Thank you for the life lesson, I definitely need it. And the world would clearly be a better place if everyone should always expect to receive broken products from reputable sellers. If this is the bitterness that the community has I really hope I can escape from it.

-1
lions2lambs•

Ummm. You’re clearly not a gamer.

  • PS2 Red Screen of Death. I went through 4
  • PS3 The Yellow Light of Death. I went through 1
  • XBox 360 The Red Ring of Death. I went through 1
  • PSP Pesky Pixels. I went through 1

My PS4 didn’t experience any issues and my PS5 is luckily okay so far as well.

Having said that, I always buy extended replacement warrant on consoles because they’re all crap in terms of manufacturing quality and always have been.

-1