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[Rhazer Fusion]

That's terrible. Yeah, keep harassing them until everyone in the office knows your name. An account getting banned is bad enough, but not having access to your PAID library is just wrong. That is why an all digital future scares me.

 

[Off-Kilter]

Goddamn PayPal is such crap.

 

[360pages]

PSN cards are annoying, put it might be easier just to drive to the store and buy them then risk a hassle like this. The time you save is not worth something like this happening.

I never use PS+ mostly due to people telling me it's more of a rental feature then you actually owning the game. If you bought the games and saved them on your stick or hard drive then they really shouldn't be able to block you from playing those games since you can play them without being on the internet.

 

[Trev]

The digital age. Where you own nothing. And corporations/governments can just shut you down and out. And literally steal your property.

I hope you get it sorted. But I imagine it will take a huge investment of your time. Something they will never be able to compensate you for.

Best of luck!

 

[Speevy]

That sucks. I hope they reinstate your account.

 

[Liberty4all]

As always I can't promise anything except to say Neuromancer and I have ensured the OP's issue will be seen as well as some of the feedback generated from this thread.

Keep in mind we may not actually get an answer back aside from what the OP was told, if it turns out the ban was justified.

 

[JaseC]

I never use PS+ mostly due to people telling me it's more of a rental feature then you actually owning the game. If you bought the games and saved them on your stick or hard drive then they really shouldn't be able to block you from playing those games since you can play them without being on the internet.

In the case of the OP's ban, he can still play the PSN games he has installed; he just can't access his download history to get the others he's purchased. As for PS+, well, it may not be ideal but Sony doesn't hide the fact that you lose access to your PS+ library entirely if your sub lapses (until such a time that you decide to renew it, that is).

 

[charlequin]

Do you buy games outside of you region using a separate account? To my knowledge that is in violation of the TOS.

Your knowledge is incorrect.

Like I said, I have no clue if that's a viable avenue with Sony or how unlikely my story is, but it worked for me. It might be worth a shot.

Being a tenacious pain in the ass is pretty much a way to get any company to finally resolve your customer service issue. You will pretty much always eventually get the ear of someone who realizes it's far and away in the company's best interests to fix your problem and make you go away.

OP, you can't just give up easily when a CS person tries to brush you off. Just keep them on the line until they give up, or hang up and immediately call back and give the same pitch to the next person. If they tell you they can't escalate you further or that no one on their team has the power to fix your problem, they are lying to you.

 

[Tevious]

As always I can't promise anything except to say Neuromancer and I have ensured the OP's issue will be seen as well as some of the feedback generated from this thread.

Keep in mind we may not actually get an answer back aside from what the OP was told, if it turns out the ban was justified.

Well, I appreciate any help, thanks. PM me if you have any specific questions for me.

 

[InsaneTiger]

Try to tweet Broshida

 

[panda-zebra]

What I've reconfirmed after reading this thread is that there's no way in hell I'll be using PayPal with my PlayStations. Although it's possible the heavy download activity or the TMNT purchase attempt or whatever raised a few flags somewhere and it's more of an account-use-outside-of-region kind of issue, having had to try to deal with PayPal when things go wrong in the past I really don't want to go there again or have that compounded into problems with my SEN account.

PSN cards are annoying, put it might be easier just to drive to the store and buy them then risk a hassle like this. The time you save is not worth something like this happening.

The US is quite a drive from South Korea.

 

[harrypmgaga]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

 

[dark10x]

Definitely call again.

I'm also living abroad (in France) and have been for the past 18 months or so. Have yet to encounter a problem but it is certainly concerning to read stuff like this.

I try to avoid digital purchases whenever possible but I still have a decent number of games on my account (those which are digital only).

 

[Tevious]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

Did you try anything else other than contacting customer service to get your games/money back? If Sony can't work something out for me, then as a last resort I'll look into getting as many possible charge backs on purchases I've made with them as possible and/or taking legal action.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

Jesus, I don't know what I'd do if that ever happened to me. I have thousands of pounds worth of content linked to all my PS accounts.

And what the hell are Paypal thinking reserving charges without checking first? As if there weren't already enough reasons to avoid them like the plague.

 

[mechphree]

You need to shame them on their social networks. You may not get your problem resolved but you will get their attention.

When my fathers truck was broken Into on Walgreens property I was told to call Walgreens. I repeatedly got the run around and nobody would take me serious until I went on their Facebook page and posted a picture of the truck with the broken window. You have to shame them Into responding back to you.

 

[2MF]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

But Paypal is not responsible for the banned account.

 

[Abounder]

I would probably threaten them with the Better Business Bureau or consider a lawsuit. That's one way to get to the supervisor anyway

I also endorse the posts about shaming them on social media.

 

[HalfwayOrb]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

Good thing I stopped using PayPal months ago then. Would be terrifying if my Steam account was banned. I got bout 500 games on it.

 

[ScatheZombie]

If your account became banned via a legitimate error (Paypal chargebacks will flag your account as 'compromised', although it sounds like you resolved that) they will reinstate your account. It may take awhile and several calls, mostly because low level customer service doesn't have the power to reinstate banned accounts, but they will fix it 99% of the time.

However, being a developer I see ... about 10 of these exact posts per day (in our own forums). And maybe 1 per week actually gets unbanned. Do you know why? Because +95% of the time, you were knowingly doing something that should have gotten you banned and are just hoping no one noticed. We get a lot of "But my account got hacked, that wasn't me!", and then all their connections are from the same IP. So unless someone broke into your house, it was you. Or "I wasn't hacking" and yet they have like +80% packet loss ... because they are hacking. Or "I wasn't botting, I was just grinding" and then we see the logs where they were apparently grinding for 47 hours straight using the same 4 key presses.

So, short version: If you legitimately have not done anything wrong and it's just a mix-up or mistake, we can usually track it down and will always unban/reinstate your account.
If you were doing some shady shit, don't bother trying to hide it, because we know pretty much everything you've ever done while connected to our servers.

 

[JaseC]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

If you had $3k worth of games then surely, if you can no longer remember the log-in info or reset the password via e-mail, you can prove ownership via purchase history details. It may take some doing at this point but if you can prove ownership then you can get your account unbanned and just cop the nine-week restricted functionality period that is applied to chargeback cases these days in lieu of denying access entirely. That being said, if you've since started another Steam account there's little value in retrieving the old one, I suppose, as it's not possible to transfer games between accounts.

Good thing I stopped using PayPal months ago then.

Valve stopped outright banning Steam accounts almost 18 months ago. Even if PayPal did take it upon itself to initiate a chargeback on your behalf without confirmation, in the here and now, the worst case scenario is that you'd need to wait nine weeks before you can purchase/activate another game. I mean, fair enough if you'd rather protect yourself against that possibility, of course -- my point is simply that people no longer lose access to their Steam accounts.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

That's bullshit. Call these fuckers every day until they forfeit.

 

[andrerobot]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

Holy shit, I can't believe that Valve were capable of pulling this kind of shit. I'm so sorry for that man, that's really awful.

 

[Goon Boon]

That being said, if you've since started another Steam account there's little value in retrieving the old one, I suppose, as it's not possible to transfer games between accounts.

Still could be worth it. Just Family Share that sucker to the new account.

 

[CouchMaster]

My first PSN account got banned because of chargeback, luckily it was at the beginning of the last gen and I only lost Super Stardust and it was before trophies. So I made another account and never used my credit card on PSN ever again, been living happily off PSN cards and wallet.

 

[2MF]

If your account became banned via a legitimate error (Paypal chargebacks will flag your account as 'compromised', although it sounds like you resolved that) they will reinstate your account. It may take awhile and several calls, mostly because low level customer service doesn't have the power to reinstate banned accounts, but they will fix it 99% of the time.

However, being a developer I see ... about 10 of these exact posts per day (in our own forums). And maybe 1 per week actually gets unbanned. Do you know why? Because +95% of the time, you were knowingly doing something that should have gotten you banned and are just hoping no one noticed. We get a lot of "But my account got hacked, that wasn't me!", and then all their connections are from the same IP. So unless someone broke into your house, it was you. Or "I wasn't hacking" and yet they have like +80% packet loss ... because they are hacking. Or "I wasn't botting, I was just grinding" and then we see the logs where they were apparently grinding for 47 hours straight using the same 4 key presses.

So, short version: If you legitimately have not done anything wrong and it's just a mix-up or mistake, we can usually track it down and will always unban/reinstate your account.
If you were doing some shady shit, don't bother trying to hide it, because we know pretty much everything you've ever done while connected to our servers.

Still doesn't justify removing access to all games in the account.

 

[JaseC]

Still could be worth it. Just Family Share that sucker to the new account.

Ah, smart thinking.

 

[mechphree]

Still doesn't justify removing access to all games in the account.

It's in the TOS though if you hack you loose access the games. Unless I'm mistaken.'

 

[Tevious]

I would probably threaten them with the Better Business Bureau or consider a lawsuit. That's one way to get to the supervisor anyway

I also endorse the posts about shaming them on social media.

Well, I tweeted @yosp about the issue, but I imagine he probably wouldn't even notice. I'm not really big on social media. I have a twitter account, but I don't really use it. Facebook is like a second email that I check a few times a month at best. Not really sure what I should do to draw attention to this. I also tweeted Jason Schreier at Kotaku since I know he's frequents GAF and might be interested it making an article about this, who knows.

 

[A Serious Man]

Never use Paypal. Ever.

 

[Glorified G]

I lost $3,000 worth of Steam games because of one $20 PayPal "suspected fraud" chargeback years ago. And no I don't have access to that account anymore.

So yeah, it happens. And it fucking sucks. I have never used PayPal since then.

Holy shit. I used Paypal for the recent Steam sale and just today for the Sony flash and XBL Ultimate game sale.

Never again.

 

[Joei]

If you had $3k worth of games then surely, if you can no longer remember the log-in info or reset the password via e-mail, you can prove ownership via purchase history details. It may take some doing at this point but if you can prove ownership then you can get your account unbanned and just cop the nine-week restricted functionality period that is applied to chargeback cases these days in lieu of denying access entirely. That being said, if you've since started another Steam account there's little value in retrieving the old one, I suppose, as it's not possible to transfer games between accounts.



Valve stopped outright banning Steam accounts almost 18 months ago. Even if PayPal did take it upon itself to initiate a chargeback on your behalf without confirmation, in the here and now, the worst case scenario is that you'd need to wait nine weeks before you can purchase/activate another game. I mean, fair enough if you'd rather protect yourself against that possibility, of course -- my point is simply that people no longer lose access to their Steam accounts.

I am agreeing with this guy. Something sounds fishy in the OP. I'm calling total bullshit on the OP. I remember last year sometime someone wrote something very similar to this about their Xbox360 and them getting banned and not knowing why, and after some digging, Gaf found out they were bootlegging like, all their games.

 

[Tevious]

If your account became banned via a legitimate error (Paypal chargebacks will flag your account as 'compromised', although it sounds like you resolved that) they will reinstate your account. It may take awhile and several calls, mostly because low level customer service doesn't have the power to reinstate banned accounts, but they will fix it 99% of the time.

However, being a developer I see ... about 10 of these exact posts per day (in our own forums). And maybe 1 per week actually gets unbanned. Do you know why? Because +95% of the time, you were knowingly doing something that should have gotten you banned and are just hoping no one noticed. We get a lot of "But my account got hacked, that wasn't me!", and then all their connections are from the same IP. So unless someone broke into your house, it was you. Or "I wasn't hacking" and yet they have like +80% packet loss ... because they are hacking. Or "I wasn't botting, I was just grinding" and then we see the logs where they were apparently grinding for 47 hours straight using the same 4 key presses.

So, short version: If you legitimately have not done anything wrong and it's just a mix-up or mistake, we can usually track it down and will always unban/reinstate your account.
If you were doing some shady shit, don't bother trying to hide it, because we know pretty much everything you've ever done while connected to our servers.

I got nothing to hide here. Trying to provide as much info as possible.

 

[LAUGHTREY]

Not since mid 2012. Valve's current nuclear option only prevents you from making new purchases in the store. Old purchases will install and run just fine.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Valve-Allows-Banned-Players-Games,15447.html

That seems a bit silly, suck up bandwidth while guaranteeing never buying anything again?

 

[JaseC]

I am agreeing with this guy. Something sounds fishy in the OP. I'm calling total bullshit on the OP. I remember last year sometime someone wrote something very similar to this about their Xbox360 and them getting banned and not knowing why, and after some digging, Gaf found out they were bootlegging like, all their games.

That's not the OP, haha, and I didn't mean to suggest his (as in harry's) case is fishy -- just making the point that he can get his account back if he feels that the effort is worth it.

That seems a bit silly, suck up bandwidth while guaranteeing never buying anything again?

From Valve's perspective I'm sure the good will is worth the small bandwidth fee (don't forget that Valve allows third parties to host content servers), and you'd have to be a repeat offender to cop a lifetime purchase ban.

 

[Tevious]

I am agreeing with this guy. Something sounds fishy in the OP. I'm calling total bullshit on the OP. I remember last year sometime someone wrote something very similar to this about their Xbox360 and them getting banned and not knowing why, and after some digging, Gaf found out they were bootlegging like, all their games.

So because one dumbass lied, therefore I must be too? Believe what you want, but I am legitimately baffled as to how my account was permanently banned and I am trying to be as open and honest as possible.

 

[Ban Puncher]

This thread has scared the willies out of me ever using PayPal to pay for PSN and Steam purchases ever again.

Story Time - I've got a buddy who sold his PSP a few years ago but forgot to delete his PSN profile. The new owner went buck wild with my friend's credit card, purchasing all sorts of crap. Instead of ringing Sony first though he called his credit card company and reported the charges. Sony banned his account and he lost everything.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

This thread has scared the willies out of me ever using PayPal to pay for PSN and Steam purchases ever again.

Come on, this is an extreme, unique case: homeboy is in South Korea, downloading all kinds of games, buying things with PayPal in foreign countries, has had his console on for days, downloading out of date demos...I personally think OP will get this reaolved. He has more of a chance getting his stuff back than he would if someone robbed his home of physical goods *knock on wood*

OP, best of luck. I think with a bit of work you'll pull out of this just fine.

 

[ScatheZombie]

I got nothing to hide here. Trying to provide as much info as possible.

Then it should work itself out, eventually.

I mean, yeah, it's really shitty you lose access to everything. And yeah, it's really shitty you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and go through a dozen unhelpful, probably lazy CS reps to get any movement on the problem. But if you're persistent enough, you can usually finally get someone who can help and fix your problem.

 

[drotahorror]

GL OP. Gonna save Paypal for ebay/newegg only.

 

[UnluckyKate]

PayPal and South Korea up over us based account ... Yeah that is it right here. Sorry man

 

[Ban Puncher]

Come on, this is an extreme, unique case: homeboy is in South Korea, downloading all kinds of games, buying things with PayPal in foreign countries, has had his console on for days, downloading out of date demos...I personally think OP will get this reaolved. He has more of a chance getting his stuff back than he would if someone robbed his home of physical goods *knock on wood*

OP, best of luck. I think with a bit of work you'll pull out of this just fine.

I'm all for digital and will continue to purchase with gift cards and the like. PayPal are the ones who seem like a pain in the ass to deal with.

 

[The Red Wizard]

Good luck OP; I hope that you get your account back. This thread has worried me enough to avoid using PayPal to buy items and credit from Steam/eShop*/PSN/XBL.

*I don't think that you can at the moment

 

[Yoday]

Between the possibility of something like this happening and the looming return of restrictive data caps, I have gone from being determined to go fully digital this generation to going back to discs for all major releases. I couldn't imagine loosing an entire generation of games simply because my account got flagged by Sony for something dumb. I will wait until we see more in the way of protection of consumers when it comes to digital goods, and the death of data caps that could prevent you from downloading a game that you might want to just mess around in for a few minutes.

 

[Tevious]

I changed my avatar to cheer myself up.

PSN cards are annoying, put it might be easier just to drive to the store and buy them then risk a hassle like this. The time you save is not worth something like this happening.

The US is quite a drive from South Korea.

The most convenient method to get PSN cards is to just buy digital codes off Amazon or even Best Buy. That's usually what I do when checkout isn't working with my credit card. I just thought I'd try PayPal because its right there at the checkout and even has a $5 amount that I needed for some of the DLC I bought. BIG MISTAKE.

 

[fedexpeon]

Come on, this is an extreme, unique case: homeboy is in South Korea, downloading all kinds of games, buying things with PayPal in foreign countries, has had his console on for days, downloading out of date demos...I personally think OP will get this reaolved. He has more of a chance getting his stuff back than he would if someone robbed his home of physical goods *knock on wood*

OP, best of luck. I think with a bit of work you'll pull out of this just fine.

Paypal does this a lot. I see it quite often in my line of work.
PP would refuse to release funds from their own account to the merchant account because they feel it is their right to block the transaction since technically it is theirs money.
When you are using PP, you are paying PP, and not the merchant directly. They will just give back your money if they believe it is an odd transaction. It sounds easy and great until they eff you over by not informing you.
And man...just hope you will never get paid with a PP card or even use PP as a "checking" account. They can hold your fund if they feel like it because they aren't regulated like bank. Thousands and millions dollars might be sitting in your "account" for weeks/months with you having no access to it.

I would only recommend using PP when doing auction and for small company, but if it is a big company, just use your debit card. There are so many federal laws and card/bank insurances in order to protect against unauthorized transactions anyway.


(Man...I don't know how Neogaf ad logistic works, but I love seeing "Simplify Your Checkout with Paypal" when talking about how crappy PP is.)

 

[geordiemp]

Paypal does this a lot. I see it quite often in my line of work.
PP would refuse to release funds from their own account to the merchant account because they feel it is their right to block the transaction since technically it is theirs money.
When you are using PP, you are paying PP, and not the merchant directly. They will just give back your money if they believe it is an odd transaction. It sounds easy and great until they eff you over by not informing you.
And man...just hope you will never get paid with a PP card or even use PP as a "checking" account. They can hold your fund if they feel like it because they aren't regulated like bank. Thousands and millions dollars might be sitting in your "account" for weeks/months with you having no access to it.

I would only recommend using PP when doing auction and for small company, but if it is a big company, just use your debit card. There are so many federal laws and card/bank insurances in order to protect against unauthorized transactions anyway.


(Man...I don't know how Neogaf ad logistic works, but I love seeing "Simplify Your Checkout with Paypal" when talking about how crappy PP is.)

Wow, so it might not be Sony fault if Paypal kept the money and Sony did not receive anything ?

Sounds like OP MIGHT have an issue with Paypal ?

 

[danthefan]

The US is quite a drive from South Korea.

Can buy digital PSN cards from Amazon.

 

[StuBurns]

No defence of Sony, this is bullshit, however, PayPal is a fucking shit show, they're like the internet mafia, really awful.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

No defence of Sony, this is bullshit, however, PayPal is a fucking shit show, they're like the internet mafia, really awful.

What's surprising is how people still use them after so many horror stories of them locking accounts and funds for months on end for no reason...

And now they've started to do charge backs without even asking the account holder.