PSN hack, system activation/deactivation and a foreboding of DRM restrictions to come.

Question

I have had an ongoing issue since yesterday which has now escalated due to the terrible customer service at sony's call centres. My account has clearly been tampered with in some way and no one seems to believe me at customer support.Let me start by stating that this is my ONLY ps4. I purchased it 2 weeks ago and  activated it as my primary console upon initilisation. There are no other users accessing it at any time, no sub accounts or otherwise. i am the SOLE user. According to the ignorant staff member i spoke to and i quote 'you have activated consoles 60 times in the last week. several ps3's and 2 ps4's' alarmed by this i replied; 'Well clearly that shows evidence of account tampering as i am categorically stating to you that i have only 1 ps4 and 1 ps3 and have only activated devices of any kind once for almost 2 years; That being my ps4. There are no other users on my PS4 or psn account, no friends or family accessing my content in any way. My ps4 is currently listed as not being the primary in my account details. So obviously there is either an error on your end or someone has hacked my account. Could i please gain assistance with shutting down whoever has manipulated my account privelages? So far no unauthorised transactions have been made as i updated my security details almost immediately after this occured. But as this is a recent circumstance i do not feel comfortable about my account security.' the rep was attempting to interrupt me the entire time despite not having a grasp of the full situation. ultimately his response, condescending throughout was: 'As i have just explained several times, your ps4 has been deactivated on one console and activated on another as a primary. As no fraudulent purchases have been made i conclude that no one has tampered with your account and that you have deactivated your console and activated another. You need to have an active connection to the internet to play or use any digital content purchased through PSN, regardless of whether you are the primary user or not. We are going round in circles so unless you have any other questions pertaining to anything that does not relate to this subject or PSN i will have to terminate this call.' Firstly, you do NOT have to have a constant connection to PSN to play your games. This is one of the deciding factors in me actually purchasing this over an x box ( slowly regretting this decision). DRM only takes effect if a SECONDARY ps4 is trying to access content downloaded on the primary with your account. So not only did he attempt to misinform me in order to shut the call down, he outright refused to take my issue further, simply repeating his earlier statement as a default response to pretty much anything i suggested. Secondly. You DO NOT hang up on a customer simply because you personally are refusing to solve the problem. I wasn't rude or inflammatory towards him in any way, which was difficult to accomplish with just how ignorant and stand offish he was behaving ( unacceptable behaviour from someone who represents a company that just received over 600 pounds worth of money from a loyal customer once again).When i asked him if i could speak to a senior staff member or if i could be redirected to another department he simply stated:'I will not be doing that, my decision is final and you will not be able to change your activation for the next 6 months.' when i suggested that it's highly unusual for ANYONE to activate/deactivate multiple consoles 60 times within one week he replied with; 'no that's not unusual at all, either yourself or someone in the household has done this. I am terminating this call.'  Seriously, i have never received such flagrant, atrocious customer service in my life. By some miracle after my 3rd phone call i got through to someone named Arctur who was extremely helpful. Instead of assuming i have 50 consoles he actually used his brain and assessed the details with common sense. he concluded that someone HAD in fact been on my account and had locked me out as the primary user in order to gain access to privelages and ultimately shut down my account entirely. He deactivated the 'fake' ps4. Which according to the rep from before they had no power to do (go figure). And apologised to me personally.  is this the future of SEN? DRM policies convulted to the nth degree, content lock for games i've purchased with MY money unless i am connected to the internet? and customer service staff refusing to adhere to thier own job roles? I don't feel secure enough to even sign in at the moment let alone purchase anything else from this company. I've never experienced such an awful situation as this when i had my ps3. 2 weeks after i purchase my ps4 this happens.  I never paid much credence to all the transcripts online of people having constant problems with PSN and PS4. I just assumed the stories were either over exaggerated or there were just disgruntled customers using twitter as a knee jerk reaction to an interruption in thier service. But after yesterday/today. I really think Sony need to slow down the aggressive marketing wagon and reallocate some funds to hire competent staff members for both thier online security/customer service. If this happens again i will be getting a full refund for this and simply returning to my PS3. I'd rather have a secure last -gen console than a next-gen one that's about as secure as a straw house.  Being inadvertently 'locked 'out of all digital content that belongs to ME due to this issue has me seriously doubting Sony's assurance that the 'always online' ideology will be far from restrictive. If your servers are soo easy to breach, then surely you should allow your customers to verify themselves and thier ps4 through it's serial ID and simply waive the 6 month restriction on deactivation no? Instead i get locked out of my own content for your failings to fix your errors or protect your company from online attacks.i could play anything on my ps3 anytime i wanted, internet connection or no. So whichever way you look at it, this is a step back, not forward.  I truly believe issues like this need widespread coverage so that new customers know exactly what they could potentially be getting into. it's unnacceptable that a decent portion of your consumer base gets ignored just because the majority face no problems. 

Answer 1

Is anyone still having this problem? I had a similar experience this afternoon, I was logged out of my system because another PS4 had been logged in with my credetials. I phoned the two people in my family who's PS4s I've logged in on and one had already deleted the account months ago and the other was not at home.When I updated my password it still happened, so I updated my email address aswell, within a minute of updating my email address I receive a PSN message from an account I don't know saying they were named Denis, 10 yrs old and could the please play my games.