With Sony PlayStation, Your Consumer Rights Are Limited - What You Need To Know

david_moody

I am a long-time Sony PlayStation consumer. I have one PS3 and two PS4s and am waiting (like many) to buy a PS5.

I am also an avid Karaoke “performer” and have bought quite a lot of Singstar content over the years.

It’s a tradition in our house to put on Singstar at birthdays, Christmas and New Year, and we did just that in June 2021 for my daughter’s birthday.

To our dismay, we discovered that Sony had discontinued Singstar and you couldn’t buy any new songs from the Playstation Store. So, after exhausting the classics, we had a quick look at what Sony had replaced it with…

That’s when we came across Sony PlayStation’s Let’s Sing!…

As there was no demo available, we had to buy it from the Playstation Store. I paid for it using my PayPal account. It was £30 ish. 

We downloaded it and started singing the first song…

With karaoke, you’re supposed to hear how bad you sound as you sing. That’s what Singstar does. 

Let’s Sing! does it too, only about 10 seconds later, making it unusable!

We tried one more song and got the same result, then immediately deleted it. I then emailed Sony and asked for a refund.

They refused, and instead wanted me to help them diagnose the problem by doing a number of tasks that included rebuilding the system, taking videos and so on. I reckon these steps would have taken me a day or so to complete, and as I didn’t have the time (and Singstar worked perfectly well on the same system), I pushed for a refund. They refused.

I argued that I was I a long-time Sony PlayStation consumer and that this was the first time in fifteen years or so that I’d asked for a refund (which was true). They didn’t care.

I then asked PayPal to recover my money. They were successful. But Sony suspended my account.

I am now between a rock and a hard place. Either I pay for the digital content to allow me to access all of the other content I’ve bought from them, or I open a new account and lose everything I own. This seems incredibly unfair.

But it would appear that the law is on Sony’s side. As per the Money Saving Expert advice on consumer rights for digital content, consumers do not have any automatic rights for a full refund within 30 days (or even 24 hours).

Basically, if it doesn’t work, you have to spend time proving it doesn’t work to Sony before they will decide whether to give you your money back.

My thoughts?

• Think twice about buying digital content online. If you’re like me, you could end up losing access to all your online purchased content.
• Before you buy a game, look for a demo or trial first. There was none for Let’s Sing! and I suspect this is because it has known issues.
• The law needs to change. My view is that consumers have less rights if they buy a game online than if they buy it in a store on DVD or Blu-ray.
• Sadly, Sony don’t appear to value loyalty, which is a shame. I guess I won’t be buying that PS5 after all…

Your comments / thoughts are welcome!

 

custardy

Ever heard of reviews?
A great way to get a flavour of a game. 
A quick scan online doesnt raise the issues you encountered which tells me you should have tried the fault finding route

[Deleted User]

Not having given them the chance to resolve the problem, you're pretty much out of options.

Is it worth losing access to your account for the £30 you owe them?

MattMattMattUK

The PlayStation Store had a refund procedure, you did not follow it, then initiated a chargeback, as far as Sony are concerned you still owe them the money. 

You have two choices, lose your account and any previous purchases related to it (you might also find the consoles that were using that account are black listed), or pay the £30 and regain access to your account, then, depending on how long it was since your purchase, you might be able to follow the correct refund procedure and get the £30 back from Sony.

david_moody said:

• Think twice about buying digital content online. If you’re like me, you could end up losing access to all your online purchased content.

Any digital content is theoretically always a risk, however you did not lose access because of an issue directly with digital content, but because you did not follow the correct procedures.

david_moody said:

• Before you buy a game, look for a demo or trial first. There was none for Let’s Sing! and I suspect this is because it has known issues.

Or read a few reviews, look on MetaCritic etc. which pretty much universally say that Let's Sing! is not a great game, although not quite with the lag issues you describe.

david_moody said:

• The law needs to change. My view is that consumers have less rights if they buy a game online than if they buy it in a store on DVD or Blu-ray.
  

The law does not need to change, the protections are actually quite good, but you have to follow the process, which you refused to do. 

david_moody said:

• Sadly, Sony don’t appear to value loyalty, which is a shame. I guess I won’t be buying that PS5 after all…

Generally they do, the same as Amazon etc., if one is a high spender then you get more flexibility, they will repair controllers and sometimes even consoles when out of warranty, but again, you have to follow process.

You caused this issue by not following the proper process, if you had they would have refunded you. This is the same with retailers (online or in-store) who have return procedures, financial institutions which have complaints procedures etc. These things are actually reasonable well regulated, most companies exceed the regulatory requirements, but you have to follow the process. You caused this issue, not Sony.

pinkshoes

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face...

It's £30, which isn't that much if you can afford a new PS5...

So pay for it, then follow the instructions of what you need to do to get it working, and if it still doesn't work, THEN use your consumer rights to get a refund. 

jon81uk

As others have pointed out the time to do research into the product you are buying is before purchase. Reading reviews would have helped no matter what you buy.
Also even if you bought the disc version once the packaging is opened you still wouldn't have got a refund.

I'm also curious why the delay is a big deal? Its a game and you normally get the results of a song afterwards don't you?

mattyprice4004

A day to complete? Come off it. You'll literally need to set the PlayStation downloading things again once you've reset it - it's not like you have to watch it during the whole process. 
You have a choice - follow their steps or pay up.