Final edit: RESOLVED!
The phone number is the way to go. I was initially wary because it started with the inevitable "we are experiencing a high volume of calls" before I had to navigate through all the keypad press options, you have to go through "technical help", "technical help with account/software" options. In the next set of options, the guy says at the end "and for refunds... please go to our support website and select chat with refund assistant". Obviously, I'd tried that several times with no success which is why I was calling them, so I picked an option that I thought was most likely to get me a human to speak to, I think it was " issues accessing your Playstation account".
When an actual human spoke on the other end, I immediately was like "Ok, I know I selected this option but it's a refund issue, I tried loads of times to use the virtual assistant but-"
But the guy was so chill, he was just like "Don't worry, let's get that sorted for you then." And he basically refunded me straight away, he was really nice.
Two important takeaways from the call:
He said that the 14 day refund policy on subscription cancellations are for the INITIAL PURCHASE, not auto-renewals, so they are not obligated to refund you for any auto-renew charge, even if it's the day the money goes out and you haven't touched your playstation. But he said he'd refund me anyway as a good will thing. But I read the policy on the website, and either I'm dumb or they've worded it in a way that it's not obvious (most likely the first option tbh).
Second thing, I said to him that the support website is awful, and he laughed, like he was aware of it. I said that you have to be Sherlock Holmes to hunt down any kind of phone number to call support, and he basically said that's deliberate on Sony's part because if the number was easy to get hold of, people would be calling them for all kinds of things that don't require actual help. At least he was honest, lol.
So that's it, all sorted, my advice is don't bother with the website or the email, phone them and bear in mind that the agent can refund you over the phone even though the prerecorded options tell you to hang up and use the website for refunds.
Edit: I've got some actual contact details now, thank you to the person who helpfully provided the phone number! I'll call them tomorrow and update with my progress. In the meantime, here's all the contact info I've managed to gather, I hope it will help the poor buggers in the future who inevitably will struggle to get hold of Sony.
Page on their legal website that has a template for subscription cancellation request:
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/service-cancellation-request/
Sony UK support email address: [email protected]
Sony Customer Support Phone number (UK): 020 3538 2665 (Mon to Fri, 9am-5pm)
(I'm in the UK in case that makes a difference).
Yesterday, my PS Plus auto-renewed for £83.99, and I just can't afford to pay that right now, so I checked the website and it said I can get a refund within 14 days of purchasing a subscription. Great. So I manage to find a chat bot, no phone number or anything, and every time I go through the chat bot it says I must talk to a service agent, then says no agents are available and the process ends. I've been trying for 2 days straight at different times. Are there no agents? Is there a phone number somewhere that I've just not been able to find? It's annoying me because as each day goes by that I can't get this resolved, it's heading towards that 14 day mark where they wont refund me anymore (which I guess is what they hope will happen).
Any help appreciated, thank you!