PlayStation®Network General

[Farrmark]

Still not been credited with my £39.99.....

Are they really this crap at sorting stuff out?

[LittleBigDragonz]

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Bjarno86 wrote:

According to a reply from Ross McGrath to my blog comment in yesterday's Plus update Sony are still actively working to solve this for us (however likely that might sound after more than 7 months...)

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2012/03/05/heads-up-playstation-plus-update-7th-march-2012/

"Posted on 5 March, 2012 at 4:43 pm by Bjarno86
Fantastic update, Ross!
But I’d like to echo Spocker’s comment #45. The people who purchased the Sega Rally offer back in June, will we ever get back access to the 1st year of free Plus content which we rightfully should have still access to seeing as we never have let our subscriptions run out?

Posted on 6 March, 2012 at 11:11 am by Ross McGrath
Hi Bjarno,
This is a tricky one that we are aware of and our San Diego team have been workin on a way to fix this for some time (and continue to do so). We will find a way to get your content back to you and in the meantime I can only apologise for the inconvenience."

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Thing is it's not just people that took the Sega Rally Deal that's being effected. ( Like myself )

[Spocker]

Finally a somewhat positive answer: "We will find a way to get your content back to you". It's the first time that I've seen them say something like that, all other answers has been of the "We're looking into it" kind.

[yaswdk]

Well, even if it gets sorted out, I am not sure I am gonna renew the PSN+, because it is hard to have faith in that something like this will not happen again in a year or two, when they seem to not take this really serious at all.

[Cousteau2009]

on a seperate note... i think i'm gonna have to invest in a new hard drive soon for my PS3...

had the original 40GB and upgraded the HDD to a 160GB.... which was a couple of years ago or so now and was perfectly fine at the time...

now, having a PS+ subscription and getting all these free games (including the ones that have expired and have kept on the HDD still for the time being), my HDD's pretty full now - got about 20GB left on it...

this month we have Sly Raccoon HD, and that's over 5GB in size, another 1.2GB gone with Trine 2 also... lol and what with last month's Far Cry 2 and Res Evil 2 and 3... and whatever else is due to come... Sony's making me splash out more cash... lol

[Furiekins]

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Farrmark wrote:

Still not been credited with my £39.99.....

Are they really this crap at sorting stuff out?

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They must have gotten us mixed up. They cancelled mine when I didn't ask for it (well I did, but only (and I was very clear on this) if they also gave me money back for my first year subscription too).

I suspect that the higher level support is run by badly trained monkeys - it's the only answer.

As for "we'll find a way to get your content back", I just don't think they can.

I think the issue is all to do with the way that they issue the subscriptions. We know that if you "lapse", you lose your content. Now, if the system is hard coded to never "retro subscribe" content, then everyone who has ever lapsed (whether through their own fault or Sony's) will NEVER be able to get it back.

The issue will be compounded because they have to patch this for just a select number of users. They can't just say "now retro subscribe all PS+ users who lapsed in September 2011". Even if that's possible, they would allow everyone who actually did lapse their content again.

So they have to do it on an individual account basis. They also have to do it in a way that matches their current subscription system. I just don't think they have a system that is capable of the error they've caused here.

The time taken shows it's a massively complex issue. If it could be fixed, then it would have been fixed within weeks. I suspect everyone with this issue will get an email in the near future (or a call) saying "we can't do this, we can only offer a refund of this year's PS+ subscription, but it will cancel it". I think that is their only solution other than offering every one of last year's bits of content again to every PS+ subscriber. I honestly don't think they have a solution or ever will have a solution. I think the work they're doing now is simply how to break it to people they've cocked up.

Once again I have to say, exceptionally poor customer service (not the guys on the help desk, they're excellent, but they're tied by the people who make decisions - it's those highly paid chimps I have an issue with).

[SickMick_UK]

My PS+ Sub is running out soon is it right that if I decide to get a new sub say 3 days/months later I might not be-able to access some of my PS+ PSN games.

If so will downloading the full game keys again fix this problem. Or do you lose them permanently 

[Cousteau2009]

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SickMick_UK wrote:

My PS+ Sub is running out soon is it right that if I decide to get a new sub say 3 days/months later I might not be-able to access some of my PS+ PSN games.

If so will downloading the full game keys again fix this problem. Or do you lose them permanently 

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as per the terms and conditions:

If you renew your subscription WITHIN your current subscription period, you will continue to have access to your PS+ content of downloaded games - PS3 games, PSOne Classics and Minis - that you got WITH PS+

if you let your subscription end, and then you renew say 3/5 days AFTER the sub end date, then yes you WILL lose access to all the games you had during your subscription BECAUSE you have effectively ENDED your previous subscription therefore you no longer have access to that old content because it's expired due to you ending your subscription - the games that are downloaded are tagged this way

so no, if you renew after your subscription has ended you wont get those games back and you wont be able to re-download them either.

this is effectively what has happened to us in this particular thread as their system THINKS we lapsed out subscription when we renewed, whereas we DID NOT because we renewed within their subscription EXTENSION period that they gave us for free of 70 days...

had they NOT done this extension (although was kind of them at the time to do so due to us losing 2 months of service last year with PSN went down), then i dont believe anyone of us would have had this issue because we all would have renewed WITHIN the sub period and not the extension period...

[Furiekins]

When you subscribe and download a game through PS+ (only the free software, don't worry about themes and discounted software) it gets given an expiry date. When you renew, the expiry date is also renewed.

I don't know exactly how the mechanism works though. In my first year each bit of software had an expiry date, but this year they don't. So it may be there's a hidden "switch" at Sony that expires the software.

If you press Triangle on the software, then go to properties, down the bottom there's an expiry date. If it says "No Expiry" or something, then you can keep on playing until Sony send a signal through the PSN to disable it.

So potentially, if you don't connect to the PSN, you get to keep the software.

HOWEVER, generally consider any free PS+ software gone if you leave your PS+ account to lapse. Absolutely definitely if you leave it to roll over into the next month and "more than likely" if you let it lapse even just one day.

[Cousteau2009]

@Furiekins

personally, and ive said this from the start, instead of spending all of this time and manpower (at this point) on sorting this out, i'd be happy now to just receive a £20 VOUCHER and buy-back some of the content that i've not got back yet on PSN... we're only talking about a handful of stuff here as some of the games i've been able to reclaim back over december/jan/feb when they re-issued some of the older games (the SEGA ones and during their 12 days of xmas offer period on december).

sure, there's still a ton of Minis games ive not got back yet, as well as full games like Wipeout HD, PAIN, Burnout Paradise, Red Faction Battlegrounds and Castle Crashers, but with a £20 voucher i can be selective then on getting at least a couple of those games back and i'll be happy (there WAS a lot of crap given away during the first year's PS+ period to be honest...it's only really recently since towards the end of last year has the quality of the games offered gotten better)