I find myself surprised by the amount of panicked “PSN account ban” posts I see almost daily while scouring the web. It’s frustrating to have your account banned, and there’s a tendency to blame Sony, “corporate greed,” etc. etc. But in a vast majority of the cases, the problem lies on the customer’s end. Your PSN account was suspended because of you.
A large number of PSN account bans stem from the same cardinal sin: chargeback
Over the past week, I spotted dozens of new threads on Reddit alone, where people complained of a PSN account ban following a chargeback. Sony’s terms of service are crystal clear on this: a chargeback indicates “suspected fraud or account take-over” and your account will be temporarily banned.
This player learned the hard way that there’s no “justified” chargeback, and you can’t simply dispute the payment with your bank because you didn’t like the product. This player used their mom’s credit card, and found themselves locked out of their account because mom had the charge reversed. And this player let their nephew purchase some games, then initiated a chargeback in an attempt to refund the games because their nephew misbehaved.
Luckily, you can have the ban overturned by submitting a request to Sony and paying off the debt. But just a word of caution: repeated chargebacks are a surefire way to get permanently suspended.
