$1000 mistake

[MoeOriginal6]

So my friend had his debit card on play station network, and his little brother got nba 2k19 and thought he was pulling off some glitch and racking in hella coins. Only later when my friend checked his bank account, he realized $1k was missing, he questioned his little brother, and his little brother found out that the "glitch" he found was actually him just using his brothers money for EA coins. To top this all off, he used half of what he bought

 

What is the plan of action, and if the bank is called and told to charge back the money, what will happen?

[Tsuki]

contact sony support

[AntiTrust]

There should be a limit on the playstation account before things like this happen. Letting some little kid spend $1000 on nba 2k19 (by the way its crazy that you can even spend that much in the game) without even asking the account holder to reenter his details or anything is poor design. 

[Ravendarat]

Unfortunately when its Debit you are in trouble. When its a credit card you can just call and have it charged back, Sony would lock the account because of the charge back but at least you wouldn't be on the hook (I went through this when my credit card got charged for a bunch of NBA2k points, a game I don't even own but somehow either the account was hacked or sony f'ed up). When its debit though generally speaking its gone. This is why I never have my debit card attached to any accounts. If I am gonna use it for online its a one time thing and not stored, but in general you are better using credit cards or buying PS cards and loading money into your account so you have a finite limit

[Arika]

The bank can attempt to get the money back, thought as it wasn't fraudulent there is the chance that Sony can turn around and say "no" and provide evidence of the transaction. Then the bank has a decision, either enforce their chargeback rights and pull the money back, or accept the evidence Sony would have to provide. So either your friend will be out of $1000 or their PSN account may be blocked.

 

I would say lesson learned, ban his little brother from using his Playstation ever again and make him pay back the $1000 over time. This is the only way the little brother will learn.

[Andreas Lilja]

Seriously doubt that even if it was credit you could chargeback. 

[vanished]

22 minutes ago, Arika S said:

The bank can attempt to get the money back, thought as it wasn't fraudulent [...]

ah, see that's where I'm not sure about it.  It was used by someone other than the account holder without permission.  That's fraud anyway you slice it imo.

[TetraSky]

7 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

ah, see that's where I'm not sure about it.  It was used by someone other than the account holder without permission.  That's fraud anyway you slice it imo.

Don't you usually need to file a police report for it to classify as fraud for banks? Not many people would basically throw their family members under the bus like that.

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Don't you usually need to file a police report for it to classify as fraud for banks? Not many people would basically throw their family members under the bus like that.

I guess it depends on the rules, what they need to see, etc.  Also the fact that it was a minor, and a family member that was living there with permission etc would complicate trying to make a claim regardless

[Arika]

51 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

ah, see that's where I'm not sure about it.  It was used by someone other than the account holder without permission.  That's fraud anyway you slice it imo.

But due to the cardholder's carelessness they put their own account at risk by having their payment information saved on a device that gets used by multiple people. I'm pretty sure if you have a separate profile on a Playstation, it doesn't keep payment information from another profile meaning they were both using one person's profile. 

 

below is an extract of the Terms and Conditions of the financial institution i work for:

 

Quote

The security of your card, access number, security token, password and PIN is very important. You may be liable for unauthorised transactions which you contribute to by not keeping your card, password and PIN secure

In the above case, the cardholder did not keep their card secure by allowing access to a shared account in which the payment information was already saved to. The bank would have every right to refuse liability should they discover that this was how the transaction occurred, much in the same way the can refuse to dishonour or dispute a transaction made via a shared paypal account (which you should never do)

 

Now if the Little brother sneaks into his room, stole the card, then input the card number into PSN to make the purchase, that's at least plausible deniability.

 

Though even if the Bank does attempt a dispute, all Sony would have to do is show logs of previous payments made to them using the same payment method from the same PSN account and, depending on the Bank, the card type, or payment method, Charge Back Rights could be revoked on that payment and would be up to the Financial Institution to either drop the dispute or write off the amount and refund back to the cardholder out of their own Ledger/Suspense Account to keep a good relationship with the customer. Because in my Experience, Sony, Google Play and the Xbox store are some of the hardest merchants to get funds back from.

 

[vanished]

17 minutes ago, Arika S said:

But due to the cardholder's carelessness they put their own account at risk by having their payment information saved on a device that gets used by multiple people. I'm pretty sure if you have a separate profile on a Playstation, it doesn't keep payment information from another profile meaning they were both using one person's profile. 

 

below is an extract of the Terms and Conditions of the financial institution i work for:

 

In the above case, the cardholder did not keep their card secure by allowing access to a shared account in which the payment information was already saved to. The bank would have every right to refuse liability should they discover that this was how the transaction occurred, much in the same way the can refuse to dishonour or dispute a transaction made via a shared paypal account (which you should never do)

Fair enough, that's more or less what I would expect.  I'd still call it fraud, but I can understand that the bank and so on wouldn't take the same action as if it was stolen.

[harryk]

If his little brother is a legally a minor (under 18 in US) then getting a refund from Sony should be straight forward. Minors are not legally allowed to make purchases without parental consent. This is a common issue with in-app purchases which both Google and Apple have established precedent for providing hassle-free refunds for unauthorized purchases made by minors.

[dizmo]

Guess the lesson here is this: don't have payment methods easily accessible on your accounts that can be used by other people. 

 

It's not rocket science.