Only being able to get a refund if you haven't installed the game and owned it for no more than two weeks is wild. 50 dollars down the drain.

Hi guys,

I recently bought a game on the PS store called “Rust - Console Edition”. I used to play this in the past on PC so I didn’t bother to look up reviews and the state of the game. But now I’ve been playing it for a week and its literally unplayable, it has a enormous amount of bugs and lagspikes despite having a excellent connection to the servers (15-20ms). Apparently these things are known for over 2 years now and it still hasn’t been fixed by the developer, so therefore I’ve submitted a refund request. I’ve sent Sony some clips as proof but it still got denied…

I really don’t know what to do, 60buck for a game that doesn’t even work is such a bummer.

Sitting here quite upset at my first chat with someone on the PS site. Yesterday I bought Minecraft for $19.99 for my daughter. Apparently Astro Bot was in the cart from eying it a while ago. It was purchased alongside Minecraft without me realizing initially. Thing is, I bought a physical copy of Astro Bot back in April. I realized the mistake last night, now 1 day later the chat rep told me to kick rocks because it's been opened, and cut off my chat when I requested to be taken to the next employee who could help me which was quite wild to me...anyway really feel like I'm getting taken for my $65 and would love advice for best next steps...they just sent an email so figured an unhappy response there was my next move...

I bought a game on the store for $40 and it’s hot garbage, I want my money back. But it says that if it’s been downloaded then refunds aren’t possible. In what world does that make sense? Has anyone been able to get around it by just pestering customer service?

I bought the Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life port for $8 yesterday and played it for around 30 minutes. It was super buggy and just not enjoyable to play because of some game breaking issues. I called to get a refund on the game, but was told “because I downloaded the game, I’m not allowed a refund.” I’ve never returned something on PS before but have on steam and other platforms and all of them have a time limit or play limit for returns. Is Sony’s seriously that, if you download the game, even if you only play it for 5 minutes and realize it’s not what you expected, there’s no refund?

If you want a refund from the PS store you have to tell them it was an unauthorized charge from your child without your knowledge. They will issue a goodwill gesture. Says it’ll take 1-2 billing cycles to issue a refund.

Anyone know?

Tried chat bot for 6 days straight. I'm now running close to the 14 day return period. Wtf is this....

Edit:

Found a number +44 203 538 2665 - they were able to do the refund for me. Hopefully this helps other people based in the UK.

It’s not a secret to anyone who’s tried to actively get a refund on a game they didn’t like because it wasn’t what was expected (IE Fallout 76 or No Mans Sky) or even people who have purchased poorly ported games (Like Marvels Ultimate Alliance 1+2) that Sony will fight you tooth and nail to refuse that refund.

As someone who’s been all digital since PS3 it baffles me how Sony gets away with such poor business practices towards their consumers on digital purchases. Simply DOWNLOADING a game voids your ability to get a refund on almost 100% of the cases.

I ask how you know a games going to constantly blue screen or not run properly or have game breaking bugs without personally playing it first?

Maybe if enough people voice their disdain for the current refund “policies” Sony has in place now they’ll actually listen and try to be more reasonable and at least allow a refund for any game that’s functionally unplayable to the user.

I STILL can’t get a refund for Marvels Ultimate Alliance 1+2 for PS4 even after they were removed from the ps store for being such poor ports with constant blue screens in multiplayer and that’s a real slap to the face for consumers who trust PS to have games in working condition on their stores and that their purchases won’t be regretted because of technical issues at no fault of their own.

Hi Reddit,

In February I bought 2 copies of Hogwarts Legacy, and Playstation will not give me a refund. The first copy I bought isn't compatible with my current console(I have a PS4 and I bought the PS5 version accidently). So after realizing my mistake, I also bought a copy of the PS4 version. My plan was to get a refund on the PS5 copy, and keep the PS4 copy. Well it has been over a month now. And I've been trying almost every single day to get a refund to no avail.

Before I share the issue I'm having, I feel like I should explain how the refund process is supposed to work. So, you go to Playstation's website and you click a few links that'll take you to their Customer Support. From there, a chat box loads and you put in your name and answer a few automated questions, and then it puts you on hold for an agent. After that, I assume the agent hears your story and gives you a refund.

However, I don't know if that's the case because I never get to that last part. Everytime I try to contact Playstation's support center and I get to the automated Chatbot it either stops loading the questions, making me have to end the chat prematurely, or it puts me in a queue and the agent never connects to the chat.

It's been really frustrating to have to deal with this. At first I chalked it up to issues with me (like my internet connect, etc. etc.) But as time goes on, it seem more and more likely that their Customer Support doesn't work by design! And there's no other way to contact them! This is the only option! There's no phone number or email!

Has anyone else had this problem? I really hope I'll get a refund but it doesn't seem like it'll happen.

Tl;dr: per my purchase agreement, I am eligible for a complete refund. They refuse to give it to me, and they will not provide a reason.

I'm not a gamer or a Playstation owner. I thought I was buying a download code for someone, as a gift. Now the game is on my account, and I can't do anything with it. I have not streamed it or downloaded it. I haven't actually touched it at all. Today is two weeks since I bought it.

My request was "escalated" and I was told that I'd get an email. No email ever came. When I reached out, the staff was curt and unhelpful.

I lost my job the day after this started. That $110 would be nice right now.

Why is this so difficult?

Edit: I contacted my CC and reversed the charge. Depending on whatever constitutes their investigation/collaboration with Sony, I may lose it again in a week or two. For whatever reason, this is seemingly as far as I can take it. This whole thing has been immensely frustrating. The process should have been as easy as some in the comments describe; unfortunately, there are probably just as many or more comments familiar with what I'm talking about.

Thanks, to those of you without heads full of moldy bread.

Final edit (Dec 2023): My credit card company decided to cooperate with Sony, so I am stuck with this charge. Lesson learned, I guess...

I actually got my first Playstation refund. After many failed attempts and being lied to, they accepted my refund request. (They said my request didn't meet the policies, even though I never downloaded the content. But we worked it out :)

I recently decided to purchase GTA V on the PS5. I went to the store and bought what I read as GTA V which I have a screenshot of. It was €19.99. After I had downloaded it and pressed play it opened up GTA Online, not the actual game which I thought I'd purchased. It then prompted me to purchase the story mode separately for an addition €30 or so. This annoyed me as I felt like I'd been falsely advertised to as the PlayStation store doesn't make this clear.

I went ahead and purchased the PS4 + PS5 bundle which includes GTA V Story Mode and GTA Online and then went about asking for a refund for my original purchase as it was by mistake due to their bad store design. I've since waited over a week, had them agree to a refund

I can confirm that I've provided a refund for the purchase price €19.99 back to your payment method. Please note that it may take up to 5 working days for the funds to appear on your payment card statement.

only to then change their mind 5 minutes later and say they will not issue a refund.

We apologize for the previous email. As outlined in our refund policy, you have a 14-day cancellation right to games, game packs, season passes, in-game consumables that have not been downloaded or consumed. After investigating your request, we have identified that you have already started downloading the content that you have requested to be refunded. Therefore we are unable to offer you a refund for this purchase. 

It boggled my mind they would do this. I've since got back on to them and had them tell me.

I have now passed your query on to our specialist team for further investigation.

As if this is somehow a complicated situation requiring a "specialist".

Has anyone else dealt with a similar case or know how to sort things out? I'm at the stage where I may talk to my bank about a charge back. Why do they make it so difficult for customers? I'm typically a PC player but have got myself a PS5 recently but this sort of carry on is just making me regret the decision. Sony get your act together.

Library shows Grand Theft Auto 5, not GTA Online.

EDIT: Not sure why people feel the need to downvote every comment regarding the refund. It's perfectly okay to be critical of a company. Seems there's a pattern of downvoting anything regarding refunds. A quick search of "refund" on this subreddit reveals that. To anyone in the future thinking about writing a post about a refund issue their having. Don’t. This subreddit is full of Sony shills.

Second EDIT: Playstation refunded the purchase 😄

I didn’t mean to buy a item I didn’t know was in my cart, how do I refund it?

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!