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PS Plus Members in Asia Irate As Sony Wipes Discounts on Tier Upgrades, Demands Upfront Fee for Stacked Subs [UP: Sony fixes error]

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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Let me understand this correctly, people that have stacked Subs when they heard about the new PS+ are being charged the additional fee that they was saving by buying it while it was cheaper?
Is this correct?
 
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ManaByte

Member
Let me understand this correctly, people that have stacked Subs when they heard about the new PS+ are being charged the additional fee that they was saving by buying it while it was cheaper?
Is this correct?

Yes if you bought a few years over Black Friday when SONY was offering PS+ for $40 a year, you now have to pay $20 for each year you have stacked before you can pay the normal upgrade cost to go up from Essential.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Let me understand this correctly, people that have stacked Subs when they heard about the new PS+ are being charged the additional fee that they was saving by buying it while it was cheaper?
Is this correct?
Ya. But only if you are upgrading to one of the higher tiers.

If you stick to the base Essentials plan you are ok. But if you want a better tier, Sony wants back pay on the sale prices you bought subs on before they let you move up a tier. So whatever sales price you got it for will become zero savings as if you stocked up on subs at regular price.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Yes if you bought a few years over Black Friday when SONY was offering PS+ for $40 a year, you now have to pay $20 for each year you have stacked before you can pay the normal upgrade cost to go up from Essential.

Will Smith Thats Funny GIF by MOODMAN

We need someone to put Jim Ryan in this gif 🤣
a213f220-c432-48df-bf1b-10167da4f014_text.gif
 

Fredrik

Member
Ok they were trying to scam SONY!!! I’m sure most people didn’t stack up paying full price for subs yeah? Can we agree on that?

So, I get it, and at the sametime I know the consequences of my actions good or bad. This one just so happened not to work out the way y’all intended and instead of sucking it up and dealing with it, they wanna make this a bad PR nightmare for Sony now!

Sony can’t win for anything even if it’s not their fault.

However the discounted psplus sales being brought back down to compensate for the stacking is ridiculous and from this day forward oriole who get psplus at a discount and want to upgrade later should be going thru this and they should let everyone with a sub no matter what they paid for it just pay the difference and be done with it
Imagine if you were charged the difference between ordinary price and sale price to play games you bought cheap on a summer sale.

- Oh cool, I see you want to play your PS4 copy of The Last of Us 2 on PS5.
No problem. Great game. But wait… I see that you found it cheap at $10 on a summer sale…
That’ll be $60 then.
Why? Can’t have you playing this game for $10 when other people has to pay $70. Of course not.
Oh by the way, if you want to use the higher resolution and framerate you get with your new console you have to pay $30 as an upgrade fee on top of that.
So that’ll be $90 total then.
Have a nice day!
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The thing for me is that I don't see how Sony can tell the difference between a subscription bought at full-price or discounted UNLESS the purchase was specifically sold as a discounted sub.

So specifically like an item was sold as buy this and get X months of PS+ for free*. Which seems pretty specific because typically offers seem to be more commonly presented as item x has y% discount of its standard price and yields the exact same product either bought discounted or not.


*The asterisk linking to a disclaimer that the free period is for the named service only. Thus giving them a clean get-out clause.
 

Rayderism

Member
What concerns me is how they deal with pricing for a few extra months. What I mean is that I always buy a year at a time, but when the tiers go live in USA next month, I'll have 2 years 4 months left on my current sub. I understand the scum tactic of burning you for discount recovery.....I think one of my years was a Sony discount year purchase....but my concern is those 4 months.

As you know, buying 1 or 3 month subs ends up being more expensive over the course of a year than just buying a full year. So, if I was to go to premium, I'd have to pay $120 for the 2 years (plus their scummy discount recovery, if applicable), but how will they do the 4 months? Would they do a 1 month charge and a 3 month charge for those 4 months at the inflated price for those types of subs?

If so, and IF I bother with premium, it would probably be better for me to wait until October, when I'll be at a straight 2 years.

Sigh....guess we Americans will find out just how they plan to gouge us next month.
 

Fredrik

Member
*The asterisk linking to a disclaimer that the free period is for the named service only. Thus giving them a clean get-out clause.
Tbh I don’t doubt for a second that there is some fine print somewhere saying this exact thing could happen.

But they need to read the room and back track anyway because it’s their actual long time fans that are affected, those who were ready to invest for years on their platform. Even with cheap deals it’s an investment to lock yourself onto a platform for several years.

It’s like Valve invalidating Steam Summer Sale prices and charging long time Steam users with huge game libraries for the lost revenue from the summer sale discounts if they want to play the games on Steam Deck.
 
Whelp, this sucks, I was expecting a big corporation to give me a deal and upgrade my remaining years for free.
I guess I shouldn't have expected much from such an entity. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
What concerns me is how they deal with pricing for a few extra months. What I mean is that I always buy a year at a time, but when the tiers go live in USA next month, I'll have 2 years 4 months left on my current sub. I understand the scum tactic of burning you for discount recovery.....I think one of my years was a Sony discount year purchase....but my concern is those 4 months.

As you know, buying 1 or 3 month subs ends up being more expensive over the course of a year than just buying a full year. So, if I was to go to premium, I'd have to pay $120 for the 2 years (plus their scummy discount recovery, if applicable), but how will they do the 4 months? Would they do a 1 month charge and a 3 month charge for those 4 months at the inflated price for those types of subs?

If so, and IF I bother with premium, it would probably be better for me to wait until October, when I'll be at a straight 2 years.

Sigh....guess we Americans will find out just how they plan to gouge us next month.
I imagine that if you originally bought an annual sub then the proration would be based on that. Divide what you paid for that annual sub by 365 to get the daily cost, divide the annual cost of the premium tier you selected by 365 to get that daily cost, add those numbers together and multiply by the number of days left in that subscription. Easy math for the waterfall as it walks through each of your stacked subscriptions.
 
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reksveks

Member
Aren't you a MS shareholder though?
For the lucrative Azure and OpenAi future but yeah, I am.

I still don't think I have defended the shitty commercial moves that Microsoft have made regarding the xbox live gold price double. If I have, that's on me. Can't find a comment from me using the words 'live gold'

I also think you can be a shareholder and still call out the shitty moves from a company. MS and their browser crap always frustrates me.
 
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Fredrik

Member
For the lucrative Azure and OpenAi future but yeah, I am.

I still don't think I have defended the shitty commercial moves that Microsoft have made regarding the xbox live gold price double. If I have, that's on me. Can't find a comment from me using the words 'live gold'

I also think you can be a shareholder and still call out the shitty moves from a company. MS and their browser crap always frustrates me.
I’m a shareholder of both Sony and MS, only makes me more triggered when they do dumb things.
 

Shaukdotdj

Member
I'll wait and see how things turn out for the US launch before I rule this as intentional and not just a combination of lack of foresight mixed with support agents who don't know what they are talking about.
 

ManaByte

Member
I'll wait and see how things turn out for the US launch before I rule this as intentional and not just a combination of lack of foresight mixed with support agents who don't know what they are talking about.

There's literally an official response from Sony posted in this thread. It's just not clueless support agents.
 
For the lucrative Azure and OpenAi future but yeah, I am.

I still don't think I have defended the shitty commercial moves that Microsoft have made regarding the xbox live gold price double. If I have, that's on me. Can't find a comment from me using the words 'live gold'

I also think you can be a shareholder and still call out the shitty moves from a company. MS and their browser crap always frustrates me.
Didn't MS reverse their gold price hike? Should we assume Sony will reverse this too?
 
Hope they backtrack as it seems really stupid (for me). But I understand the situation of who is more important to them

Another Fka Friday GIF by FKA


because we all are

s3 peasants GIF


and they

the princess and the frog animation GIF
 

DaGwaphics

Member
They created such an unnecessary PR nightmare here. However much PS+ time you have should just be valued at the standard price. $60 for every 12 months + whatever is added to cover the remaining months.

For such a big corporation they seem to be counting pennies a little too hard here.

It could backfire if their most active users (that are stacked up to start with) just ignore the upgrade options.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Hi Sony. Here's a quick script to fix your fuckup here.

UPDATE user_upgrades SET 'ps_plan'=1 WHERE 'ps_plan_name'="Black Friday 33% off PlayStation®Plus: 12 Month Subscription"

warning: may reduce short term gains in favor of long term profits. Use at your own risk.
 

Reallink

Member
This is gonna be a cash cow for Sony. They're clearly gonna price control the ever living fuck out of these subs, you will never see them below $60, $90, and $120. Considering >50% of PS+ users have probably never paid over $30 or $40 for their subs, they're literally going to quadruple their revenue overnight from 10s of millions of users.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
This is gonna be a cash cow for Sony. They're clearly gonna price control the ever living fuck out of these subs, you will never see them below $60, $90, and $120. Considering >50% of PS+ users have probably never paid over $30 or $40 for their subs, they're literally going to quadruple their revenue overnight from 10s of millions of users.
Maybe. But perhaps >50% of PS+ users didn't feel like the value of the service was worth paying full price for. In which case, they could potentially lose those >50% of PS+ users.

bold GIF
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Maybe. But perhaps >50% of PS+ users didn't feel like the value of the service was worth paying full price for. In which case, they could potentially lose those >50% of PS+ users.

bold GIF
I’m pretty sure they’ll. And honestly, in 2 weeks, people won’t remember this debacle regardless of the outcome. It’s always like this with these things.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
It looks like Sony applied my earlier proposed fix. Cool cool.

Still kinda sucks that people with years of stacked Essential that want to upgrade have to buy the full upgrade for the full time all upfront... but at least they're not actively screwing over their most loyal customers.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
LOL that was fast... after sending really specific detailed support messages about why it was happening..

Just disappears.

Not shocked they fixed it though, that sweet, sweet backlash.
 

ckaneo

Member
I actually think it's strange that somebody in a suit really thought this was a good idea. Like in what world or country would this kind of thing be acceptable?

Now we just gotta wait and see if they are offering refunds for people who paid the discount back
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
LOL that was fast... after sending really specific detailed support messages about why it was happening..

Just disappears.

Not shocked they fixed it though, that sweet, sweet backlash.
Given how shady the scheme was it had to be fixed. They also have almost 3 weeks to fix it before mass launch of the service. But if it's fixed, good on Sony for doing it fast.

And for anyone thinking it was a system bug, it wasnt. CSR responses wouldn't be so detailed telling the Hong Kong gamer why the charges came up to that. So they were ready to tell gamers what the math is set up by Sony if gamers asked. Systematically planned with CSRs ready to explain.
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
I actually think it's strange that somebody in a suit really thought this was a good idea. Like in what world or country would this kind of thing be acceptable?

Now we just gotta wait and see if they are offering refunds for people who paid the discount back
I don't think they backtracked, they just fixed the issue. Customer service are useless and they just replied whatever 🙄

Ya. But only if you are upgrading to one of the higher tiers.

If you stick to the base Essentials plan you are ok. But if you want a better tier, Sony wants back pay on the sale prices you bought subs on before they let you move up a tier. So whatever sales price you got it for will become zero savings as if you stocked up on subs at regular price.
Any legitimate report, or Twitter warriors claiming it?
I knew you Green rats in-chief were going to be all over this thread as soon as I saw the title 🤣 Thank you for always working overtime in negative PS threads. Manabyte in particular sounded weirdly excited about it 😅
 
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