The PlayStation Store has long been one of the last bastions of thoroughly outmoded and downright anti-consumer refund policies for digital content, but that finally changes (slightly) today.
Where before, digital PlayStation content purchases were offered on a pretty rigid ‘no refunds’ basis (save for whatever ‘goodwill’ one could coax out of their call centres), a new policy as outlined in the ToS now states as follows:
You can cancel a digital content purchase within 14 days from the date of purchase and receive a refund to your PSN wallet, provided that you have not started downloading or streaming it.
Digital content that you have started downloading or streaming, and in-game consumables that have been delivered, are not eligible for a refund unless the content is faulty.
You can cancel your purchase of a season pass within 14 days from the date of purchase and receive a refund to your PSN wallet, provided that you have not started downloading or streaming any digital content (e.g. game add-ons) included in the season pass.
It’s important to note that the terms state clearly that no refunds are offered once content has been downloaded, unless it’s ‘faulty’, meaning this won’t help you if you simply don’t like a game that you’ve purchased. It seems to be primarily aimed at accidental purchases, faulty products or change of mind for digital preorders, though there is a level of ambiguity around the restrictions so if uncertain it’s probably worth contacting PlayStation support anyway.
That said, we tested the new procedure today with a digital game preorder and thought it might be helpful to include a quick rundown of how that went and how to do it:
So, let’s say you’ve preordered a game on PSN and closer to launch you start to see previews and impressions that make you think perhaps this isn’t what you wanted. In this case I’d preordered ‘Dangerous Driving’, a Burnout clone by some ex-Burnout devs that I no longer want to play right away.
The game is already available to pre-load now, and I’m fairly certain my PlayStation 4 will have already downloaded it automatically, but I figured I’d give this a go anyway. The next step was to go to this link:
https://www.playstation.com/en-au/get-help/contact-form
And fill out the contact form using the ‘refund request’ drop-down option as such:
In this case, I received a full refund for the preorder back to my original method of payment within an hour of filling out the contact form, so it seems the system works.
Let us know about your experiences with PlayStation games and refunds, past or present, in the comments!
