PSN is offline (so is this thread)

[TenderRondo]

Sir, have you considered the possibility that it may have been Nintendo? With their recent announcement of Project Café, they could be trying to kill off their competition to put themselves in a greater light.

(Super excited for Café by the way )

When I think of Nintendo's Cafe, a cheap latte at a local McDonalds comes to mind.

[Mr. Spencer]

Just to give you an idea of how we dealt with those responsible for this lapse in security, just watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h47cmkO4b7g

[CrimsonElder]

Actually I could say the same about Emma, one of her arguements for disliking the PS3 is the fact that it "has no gaems". Which was the case about five years ago, it's also ironic since the PS3 probably has more games than the 360 at this point. With all the focus on churning out Kinect titles, I feel as though the 360 has abandoned the hardcore gamer. There's Gears of War 3 but that's all I can think of right now, unless that Halo remake is real. But it's always the same franchises, I see nothing new or different.

On that note, Alan Wake is one of the few games that appeal to me. Everything else is typical bald space marine supersoldier fare, designed to cater to the college frat boy mentality that is inherent to the 360 userbase. Sony have made the same retarded mistake too with the Killzone series.

Amen. Alan Wake is the only reason I'l whip the dust off that crap bucket. Unless I fancy having the sound of a jet engine inside my room then it also comes in handy. Lack of games on Ps3? Wtf Yeah maybe for the first year it was out but then Xbox had a decent head start so of course there would be less games. Have you never heard the saying Quality not Quantity. I'd take Blu-Ray, Blue Tooth, Internet Explorer and a ton of other goodies over a few extra crappy games anyday of the week. We waited abit longer but boy was it worth the wait. So what the Psn is down for a couple of weeks whoopdie fucking do its free. Not like I'm paying £30 a year. Man the 360 fanboys are loving this shit. Cant wait till Xbox goes offline again I'l be the first person on here taking the piss and dont say it wont happen cause you bet your ass it will. It went off last Christmas for nearly 2 weeks and again you pay £30 for it.

[Mr. Rod]

I fucking loathe console fanboys.

Anyway, any solid date yet for when the service is finally restored or just assumptions like the past weeks?

[Enetirnel]

Nope, still no solid date sadly.

They also haven't said anything about the EU users' deal of getting to pick 2 PS3 games out of a selection of five, 2 PSP games from a selection of 4.

I don't know if you can pick four if you have both a PSP, PS3 registered to your PSN account or if you can only pick two. I was going to call Sony as Australia's blog feeds and the like including the iTunes official PlayStation app linked to it on the blog/news feed for Australian users.

I should call and find out though, just lazy and not particularly wanting to deal with Sony's customer service reps again after being on hold for an hour only to get laughed at and told to not use my card on the service despite that I have a credit account linked to my normal debit account and can use it on every other damn thing, but to instead by PSN cards, which come in other quantities despite the factor that here they ONLY come in $30, $50 amounts off the top of my head.

The dumb excuse they gave me is that it's hard for them to process it with banks and told me that their service is out-dated in that regard, I asked why they don't upgrade it or implement a better method of payment outside of buying PSN cards if I can't add money to my PSN wallet with my card, if let's say I lived in the middle of fucking nowhere and couldn't get any PSN cards to use for their service.

Or, as to if I checked with my bank before using my card on the PSN as to whether or not it would process fine, AND called support and got a confirmation that it would be possible to use it.

And that I also asked as to why there isn't an actual notice in regard to their out-dated system being unable to properly process things when it REMOVES MONEY FROM MY ACCOUNT AND I DON'T GET WHAT I'VE PAID FOR.

To which the response was "LOL. IDK. Tee-hee~ *Transfers me through another three service departments that had the same goddamn reaction*".

Sony Australia's support service is fucking shocking to be blunt.



Apologies for the slight shift-key overuse, just a little bit of irritation with the customer service especially after being run through a total loop regarding money missing a short while ago, but if it happens again then I'm certainly going to shout and demand to speak to a supervisor again if the reps' can't even transfer me to the proper department for matters or lie about it despite proven otherwise.

Will see if Sony release anything else in regard to updates on the PSN status or the Welcome Back programme. If not, then I'm going to call the support line for Australia and see if they've got any information.

[Dracarys]

They said this week just over a week ago, then said 'soon' two days ago maybe.


I wonder, I have 2 UK accounts on my PS3, does each account get 2 games to choose? What about my US and Japan accounts?

[Enetirnel]

And then, they said maybe another week. Other reps have said the end of May, some said it could take even up to June.

Overall, stringing people along again with "more details soon" without any sort of actual time-period as to when it'll be up, or how long it might take for them to get the PSN entirely up (including the store) over time or as to when exactly they're going to implement the identity theft programme, Welcome Back programme and the like.

[Dracarys]

Please post me a link to anyone from Sony saying end of may/june.


I find it very hard to believe they would say a week then take a month or more.

[Enetirnel]

It was in a phone call with one of the Sony customer service reps and it was quoted on a few news articles. I know there's a few uploaded phone calls with various ones, but I can't get the link as it was in one of the IRC chats for one of the sites running a PSN status page. PS3junkies.co.uk it was posted on if I recall correctly.

I think one of the reps' name's was Jessica, from SCEA.

I was talking to Smiley the other day but my laptop kept crashing so I haven't got it in my history I'm afraid, I'll have a look and see if I can find it, though I've seen people mentioning on forums' with SCEA, SCEE calls placed getting differing possibilities, though they were also encouraging more people to call to try and find out a more exact date in that manner of finding out what their reps' were commonly saying in terms of when it would be online.

Overall, they don't seem to know from varying time-frames given by different country's service reps.

However, the full service may not be up until the first of June according to what a SCEA rep was told by her supervisor whereas others have continued to say the end of the week, others by next week and some saying it could be the end of this week or it could possibly take months to secure and get the full service running smoothly but they didn't want to be quoted on that.

I'll be calling the Australian one tomorrow to hear what they say about it and implementation of the announced programmes though.

[Dracarys]

Sony customer service

I'm gonna have to take the word of Sony's president over this.

[Enetirnel]

I'm gonna have to take the word of Sony's president over this.

And they need their customer service, to actually handle shit instead of posting something extremely vague which is what Sony's president has actually done.

Considering that a president is essentially a figure-head for the company, their customer service team should actually have up-to-date information regarding matters as to relay to any person wanting information (could be a member of the press doing a review of their service, or any ombudsmen to check that they're sticking to all policies within their region), confirmation regarding a variety of questions - that is what PROPER customer service is, and a good service will have good PR relations with customers publicly.

I should know as I've grown up with my Father being awarded repeatedly by large companies for having the best customer service, customer retention rate whilst he was handling the franchise in Australia, New Zealand and was offered to start taking over offices in America on top of what he already was.

Just like how some stores will have the CEO/President of the company post blogs, or even provide videos - they are simply a figure-head that has mainly a yes or a no as to suggestions provided by a multitude of teams.

That is why I would expect that the services reps and the supervisors' of their customer relations offices and/or head offices should have the proper information.

If there's no proper information, time-line provided to staff then it's no better than a building full of headless chickens, misinformation and further public disbelief caused by the lack of actual information by the company, of the company AND are more likely to lose customers due to shitty customer relations.

So, considering I got the run around recently from the head office of a travel credit card company and I had to shout and demand to get transferred repeatedly up the chain of command to have the issue corrected as it was mishandled, I was misinformed and so were my relatives who were assisting with the matter from the main head office located in the UK, as well as the Australian head office, the insurance company also mishandled matters - I think I'm more inclined to hear an actual answer than getting some figure-head saying something vague as to avoid a total public relations fail with incorrect dates/times.

Oh, wait. Sony already did that by announcing a date, then delaying it because they hadn't listened to a previous security expert regarding firewalls for their servers and only realized the attack was of a much larger scale than what they thought.

And to make to matters worse, they then removed the date from when it was said and now the customer service reps have been told that it might be in June that the service may be fully operational but they most likely aren't allowed to give a general time-frame as that could be taken as further misinformation, or in some places as false advertising.

In reality to handle the actual scope of the situation they should have set up a proper online and phone customer service page, possibly like what EA have and for them to provide actual information instead of practically rewording what has already been repeatedly said - "We're sorry it's down, it was a big attack, more details soon, maybe".

Shit happens, but trust needs to be won back with some fucking good customer service considering they were aware that they had inadequate security measures with outdated Apache servers, without firewalls.

Seriously, I don't see how they could have servers WITHOUT FIREWALLS.

Overall, that lack of regard in terms of security is a big, gaping public relations sinkhole that is being spread around the globe and is steering people away from their products and the like and it could easily be countered by some actual customer service instead of figure-heads making announcements that we don't even see any proper information regarding, legal documentation in regard to the situation, the identity theft/fraud protection service and how that will work other than it's apparently coming, but we don't even know where, or even WHEN it will be coming.

And it's not like they could provide their own page as to where/when the PSN service is being regionally restored.

Seriously, a map like the Facebook PSN app would easily suffice and stop any fake information on when it's being put back online slowly.

I like Sony but since about 2005 or 2007 the customer service/relations has been utterly shit and even less believable considering their DRM malware scandal that happened with TWO separate types that anti-virus companies had to actually write a removal piece to get the shit off without damaging the user's system unlike Sony's officially provided measure to remove it, which simply hid the files and pretended they were gone. Oh, and if you tried to get rid of it yourself, it would kill your CD/DVD drive.

That's only one of the things I could list that any person could look up as to why other than the PSN/SOE breach as to why they should or shouldn't place their trust in Sony and their products.

So overall, they need to do something that can make the consumers' put their trust in the company again.

[Mr. Spencer]

I fucking loathe console fanboys.

I wonder if you're referring to me? : D

[Alexia_Ashford]

Makes me laugh when people find it horrifying when the "no games" argument is used (even though it's true for me as none of the exclusives interest me but the 360 ones do), yet all the PS3 fanboys use bullshit arguments like "red ring of death" and "noisy" which were also issues when they very first came out. Bias much? And remember guys, Microsoft didn't release your details to the criminal underworld. Console war arguments/argumentative jokes/jokes are getting boring now Spencer, because obviously some people here aren't taking your comments in the manner intended.

It's gone from being an inside joke between the two of us to ZOMG, PS3 HAS NO GAMES, WTF IS THAT ABOUT, 360 IS A JET ENGINE. I don't think anyone has posted in here seriously with the intent to take the piss out of the PSN outage because although I'm glad it's pissed Sony off, I don't like the fact that some people haven't been able to play in 2+ weeks and the fact that my details are now on the black market more than likely. And CrimsonElder, if the 360 did go out and you posted with the intent to just take the piss and piss people off, try it and see what happens.

[Mr. Spencer]

You're on Sony's blacklist, Emma.

[Alexia_Ashford]

Expect a package full of turd through your letterbox from Microsoft.