An Experience With Playstation Live Chat

Note: There’s no place (that I could find anyway) to leave feedback support. So I’m using my own platform to leave support feedback. Also, I’ve only used the Live Chat option. Every time I’ve checked the phone call wait time, it’s at least thirty minutes. Aint nobody got time for that.

Dear Playstation,

Several years ago, when I first got my PS3, I registered the PSN handle PureGeekery. I changed the email on that account, and then I could no longer get in. It was frustrating, but no big deal since I had no trophies or anything at that point. I also wasn’t a huge gamer at the time. So I created Pure_Geekery.

Fast forward to now. I’m now more of a gamer. I hate underscores. I figured I may as well get a name that fits with my new online identity. I registered PurelyNicole. Played some email juggling. Noticed it had my join date as 1/1/2013, which was weird. But moved forward. Verified the email on PurelyNicole and….I couldn’t login. Tried to reset the password. And my email doesn’t exist.

I…what? Again? I contacted Playstation support to get this straightened out. Turns out, you have to have an email to verify the account. So they can’t get my username back because the email doesn’t match. I can’t use a security question. I can’t use a physical address. They can’t call the phone number on my account. They can’t do anything but email.

I really considered going with the Xbox One over this whole thing. But that damn PSTV is too enticing. Plus, my coworkers and cobloggers are all PlayStation people. And gaming is a great way to connect. But I’m very weary of buying anything else from Sony going forward. What if a TV has an issue? Or a phone? Or a tablet? It’s just not worth the risk. And buying games through the store is certainly out. I don’t trust their system, so I’ll want to have the physical disk.

Sony, this is unacceptable. You need multiple ways for your customers to recover accounts. You need to be able to help your customers. You need to be able to escalate to tier 2 support. You need to have features that every other tech company has. And you need to maintain your service. (And really, you should have satisfaction reviews after every live chat as other companies do. How else will you know there’s a problem?)

Disgruntledly yours,
Nicole