NEWS
Sony look like greedy little piggies.
With both PSN and SOE down for the count, both networks are suffering from losses that are dependent on these systems to work. With tens of millions of people affected by these outages, as well as the prospect of a large amount of consumer data being stolen, you would think that Sony would be doing everything it can to keep its customers happy.
But today something happened that could once again bring the wrath of Sony's customers down on Sony's head... strangely enough, the source of it all is Sony itself.
Ever since the PS3 data theft fiasco has hit, I've kept a close eye on my bank accounts. Call me paranoid, but the thought of a group of hackers possibly holding my credit card details close is cause for alarm in my otherwise straightforward life. So this morning, when I logged into my online banking, I was fairly shocked to notice my balance had changed.
Quickly taking a look, it turned out that some simple recurring charges had been removed from my account, I breathed a short sigh of relief... before the realization hit me. Sony were still charging me for things that it was impossible for me (or anyone) to access.
A check of various forums showed that it wasn't just me, that it was actually a lot of people, all in the same, or similar, boat. Not all services had been taken out... no one mentioned PlayStation PLUS charges being removed, but things like DC Universe Online, and Star Trek Online have had people complaining about funds being removed. Even the popular kid friendly MMO, Free Realms, has it's fair share of people commenting.
You would think, that with weeks of customers complaining about fees that are going out of their accounts for services they have no access to, Sony would have said something along the lines of 'oh, we screwed up', and most certainly have already stopped these services from being charged on customers credit cards for the time being... but neither of these is the case.
While this is surely a simple matter of oversight, it has to be understood that a lot of people aren't going to look at it this way. Actions like this cause a large amount of brand trust to be lost, and in this case... brand trust is something Sony can't afford to lose.
The fact remains that for the time being, you are going to be charged for services you have no way to access, and Sony aren't going to say or do a thing about it until well after the fact - as Sony generally does.
Good work, Sony.