Second defective PS5, now out of warranty. What are my options?

Rejusu

So I was lucky enough to be able to buy a PS5 around launch late November 2020. Unfortunately this one was practically DOA, full system crashes after 15 minutes and then it just stopped booting up after a while. I reached out to Sony for a warranty replacement as I wasn't confident in the retailer (GAME) to get it back to me in a timely fashion. Now though, a mere 3 months outside the 12 month manufacturers warranty this second PS5 (provided directly by Sony) is failing. Not as badly as the first one (yet) but still clearly defective. I've tried all trouble shooting steps, checked the vents are clean (PS5 is in an open well ventilated space for what it's worth), but nothing has helped.

Sony are now telling me that there's going to be an out of warranty fee of £240 to repair it. Which considering this is the second piece of faulty hardware I've received from them is frankly ridiculous in my mind. I'm determined to fight it because I don't want to be in the same situation a year from now where this next one has broken and they're trying to charge me for it again. Sony customer support is useless, they keep parroting back the same things at me and repeatedly hanging up on me. I'm still trying to escalate it further but I'm not too optimistic.

Do I have a case for getting a replacement from GAME under the Consumer Rights Act? Or is that a non-starter? One thing I'm tempted to do is pay the repair fee and then make a small claims court claim for it. Best case Sony's legal team takes notice and decides it's easier to just pay it off, worst case I'm out the £35 it costs to file as well as the £240. This isn't really about the money, but I'd rather not pay them for this. It's ludicrous that it's lasted barely longer than a year and that I'm already on my second console.

TELLIT01

It may muddy the water for any claim against GAME as you went straight to Sony and they provided a replacement.  As the replacement wasn't provided by/through GAME they may be able to say it's nothing to do with them.

It may be worth trying to speak to your local Trading Standards to get their thoughts on the matter before wasting time/money if there is little chance of success.

SiliconChip

I think you may have shot yourself in the foot I'm afraid. Outside of the warranty the manufacturer can basically charge whatever they want to. Normally we would suggest getting an independent report to establish that the fault is one that is "inherent" (yes, I know the word itself isn't in the legislation) and then exercising your consumer rights against GAME. However, I think TELLIT is right that they'll say the PS5 wasn't supplied by them or replaced via a claim made through them, and that they have no responsibility for faults with the unit you have now.

I wonder if your best option may be to find an independent repairer to see if they can fix it for a lower cost than the Sony charge.

For what it's worth I stopped buying Sony products over 20 years ago after finding out just how much their repairs were.

MattMattMattUK

Rejusu said:

So I was lucky enough to be able to buy a PS5 around launch late November 2020. Unfortunately this one was practically DOA, full system crashes after 15 minutes and then it just stopped booting up after a while. I reached out to Sony for a warranty replacement as I wasn't confident in the retailer (GAME) to get it back to me in a timely fashion. Now though, a mere 3 months outside the 12 month manufacturers warranty this second PS5 (provided directly by Sony) is failing. Not as badly as the first one (yet) but still clearly defective. I've tried all trouble shooting steps, checked the vents are clean (PS5 is in an open well ventilated space for what it's worth), but nothing has helped.

Sony are now telling me that there's going to be an out of warranty fee of £240 to repair it. Which considering this is the second piece of faulty hardware I've received from them is frankly ridiculous in my mind. I'm determined to fight it because I don't want to be in the same situation a year from now where this next one has broken and they're trying to charge me for it again. Sony customer support is useless, they keep parroting back the same things at me and repeatedly hanging up on me. I'm still trying to escalate it further but I'm not too optimistic.

On that first part have you taken off the side panels and hoovered in the hoover vents? They are specifically designed to be hoovered.

What I find slightly odd is that I have had my PS5 since launch day and it is totally fine and I really dread to think how many hours I have played on it, but it is at least 2,500 and probably more (Yes, I know, I am a geek, but lockdown and...). I accept that devices can fail, but I find it odd that you have had two that have failed. Do you get any power spikes or brownouts at all, I am wondering if there are any supply side issues that could be causing something? 

What are the actual issues, when you said fails to book, to you mean it won't do anything, will it boot to recovery mode? What are the error messages when the system crashes?

Rejusu said:

Do I have a case for getting a replacement from GAME under the Consumer Rights Act? Or is that a non-starter? One thing I'm tempted to do is pay the repair fee and then make a small claims court claim for it. Best case Sony's legal team takes notice and decides it's easier to just pay it off, worst case I'm out the £35 it costs to file as well as the £240. This isn't really about the money, but I'd rather not pay them for this. It's ludicrous that it's lasted barely longer than a year and that I'm already on my second console.

I agree with Tellit on this, there may be a complication in that you do not have the original device supplied by Game, I would advise Citizens Advice, Trading Standards won't speak to you directly any more, but CA can speak to them if needed. 

Rejusu

MattMattMattUK said:

On that first part have you taken off the side panels and hoovered in the hoover vents? They are specifically designed to be hoovered.

Taken off side panels, hoovered and blasted with air from my compressor. Honestly there was a surprisingly small amount of dust. I haven't cleaned the vents in a while but there was barely any build up. I've also tried pretty much everything short of a full teardown. Different cables, different inputs, different TV, different games, rebuilding database, resetting to factory defaults, resetting to factory defaults with a reinstall of the system software from USB. Unfortunately I'm intimately familiar with all the possible troubleshooting steps from the first time I had to go through this.

MattMattMattUK said:

What I find slightly odd is that I have had my PS5 since launch day and it is totally fine and I really dread to think how many hours I have played on it, but it is at least 2,500 and probably more (Yes, I know, I am a geek, but lockdown and...). I accept that devices can fail, but I find it odd that you have had two that have failed. Do you get any power spikes or brownouts at all, I am wondering if there are any supply side issues that could be causing something? 

I think I'd be more prepared to suck it up and just pay the fee if it was my first faulty piece of hardware. The fact it's my second is why this is infuriating. Because if I've had two, what if I end up with a third? A fourth? One failure is a blip, two is the beginning of a pattern. Also customer support told me that they think it's acceptable that the hardware only last the 12 months it's guaranteed for so tells you a lot about the level of service they're willing to provide. As for power issues I doubt that's the case, I haven't noticed any electrical problems and the PS5 is connected to a surge protected extension. I've also tried it in a different power socket with a different power cable in a different part of the house and the issue is the same. I've eliminated pretty much every possible external cause so I'm certain it has to be the hardware.

MattMattMattUK said:

What are the actual issues, when you said fails to book, to you mean it won't do anything, will it boot to recovery mode? What are the error messages when the system crashes?

The one I originally got replaced was the one that wouldn't boot after a while. This one still turns on but I get severe graphical glitches (tearing and artifacts mostly) in a lot of games. In some like Miles Morales I don't actually see any (unless I open the PS menu, this consistently glitches while running the game), games like Elden Ring however:




These are from a video I took. The video makes it look much worse as these things just flicker around the screen constantly. And FF7: Remake, a game which ran flawlessly before, doesn't glitch out but does crash with error ce-108255-1 not long after loading into the game and trying to move around. It still kind of works, but I didn't pay £500+ for a console that only plays some games without issues and renders others either practically unplayable or literally unplayable.

I'm getting a call back from Citizens advice Monday and I should be getting another call back from Sony but I'm starting to give up hope on them. Really annoyed that I might have messed with my rights from GAME by getting a replacement from Sony. But ultimately I think Sony should be responsible for replacing it. Hardly GAME's fault that Sony is giving them defective product to sell.

Even if it might be a waste of time and money I'm still tempted to pursue this in small claims out of spite.

MattMattMattUK

It's a really odd set of glitches, especially as it is not consistent, Miles Morales for example is a fairly taxing game, FFVII Remake is somewhat less (it does not run the RT cores). On PC gaming those would normally be either a power supply issue, the GPU overheating, or some kind of hardware failure, but you would expect that to be fairly consistent rather than in some games and not others providing they were all at roughly the same level of GPU utilisation. 

There is part of me that would want to partially disassemble and run some thermals and voltage checks, but that certainly would not help any claim against them.

theonlywayisup

The issue with expecting Sony to replace is that they are only bound by the terms of the warranty (not law). CEO email or twitter/social media post (you catch more flies with honey....)