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Buyer beware! (Me vs. PlayStation)

This is a bit similar to the eBay vs. PayPal thingie...

A few friends bought me a 1-year PS+ membership Feb. 2016 as a housewarming gift. That was really nice of them. Initially I quite enjoyed the monthly games and playing online with friends (mostly Destiny). Later the (especially since Nov. 2016) the monthly games steeply declined in value  and in the last 2 months there were no games that would interest me. So I disabled the auto renewal and let my PS+ be cancelled early March.

Now this is where I should've left it.

Then, PlayStation made a pretty good deal by offering PS+ for 99 cents for a month. I though: "Shit, it's only 99 cents." and I could get 2 more months of monthly games out of it. I bought the "cheap" month.

That was a HUGE mistake.

A week before the 99 cent month was over I got the usual mail from PlayStation, that my subscription will end if I don't have the auto renewal enabled. I thought: well, I disabled it before my 1 year subscription ended, so it should still be disabled. Nope. Even with this one-time-only deal the automatic renewal was turned back on. And I had a credit card assigned to my account, so after the 1 month ended I was billed 6,99€ (of course they renew with the most expensive option - on a monthly basis).

I immediately (within 24 hours of the renewal) opened a support ticket that I didn't want that and the extra month (especially not for 6,99€) and that they should refund me. According to the Internet and their FAQ this should be no problem, even if I've used PS+ in the mean time. Well, the support completely misunderstood my request, because they thought I wanted a refund for some other cashback-deal. So I've waited a few days... Nothing.

About 2 weeks later I opened another support ticket asking what was going on with my first ticket. Apparently I was too late at this point (more than 14 days... half of the 1 month subscription) so they can't do anything for me anymore. I lost my 6.99€ forever.

Since then I've disabled the auto renewal for a second time and just to be sure deleted my credit card from my profile.

What I'm trying to say? My point is: BUYER BEWARE!

Sony turns on the auto-renewal with each purchase of a PS+ subscription, it doesn't matter if it's the regular 1-month, 3-month or 1-year option or some one time deal. If you have any money in your PS account or have a credit card added they will take your money! I was stupid, because I didn't double check if auto renewal was enabled, but I hope I could help some people out there.

In conclusion: I think PlayStation baited a lot of people with this deal, and much like me, many have paid 6,99€ + 0,99€ instead of the planned 99 cents. I find this tactic absolutely disgusting and that's all I have to say.

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