Topic: At my wits end trying to appeal a ban

Hi everyone, I'm really hoping someone here can help me out with advice, because everywhere else I've tried hasn't been able to help. Here's my problem:

I created a PSN profile for my son and as soon as we tried to log in to the PSN it said the account was permanently suspended for violating the terms of service. This is impossible, he never even used it! I created it, tried to log him in to play online, and he was banned. We are in Australia and there doesn't seem to be any way to contact Sony to resolve this. They did not explain via email or any other way specifically why it was banned.

All the help and support pages on Sony's sites come down to telling me that if I'm in North America or Europe I can call them or use LiveChat. The LiveChat links are always broken or take me to a page saying that LiveChat is "currently down." I found a page saying I could email them at [email protected]. Which I did, two weeks ago and I still have no reply. I then found a page saying that if the ban met certain criteria (e.g was unexplained and less than six months old) I could appeal it. I saw that all the criteria were met, but when I put in the account ID and password it just came up with a red page saying "this suspension is unable to be appealed at this time."

It's driving me crazy. His account was just... banned, with no reason given and no way to appeal it. Does anyone have any idea what I could do to get it unbanned? If it was me I'd just cut my losses and make a new account, but he's a kid, he spent ages choosing his ID and wants to keep it. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Thanks in advance

The console is probably stolen , so i guess any account that signs into psn from it is probably auto-banned

other than that , i have no idea ; im just a regular person .

@nomither6 thanks, that's not a bad suggestion. But we got it from my sister who bought it new. And my wife and I can log in fine, it's just my son's account that got insta-banned

Part of your son's username could be considered offensive @beet-ronin? Only thing I can think of that could be wrong for it to get insta-banned without it even being used

My only idea would be that either the PSN ID or any of the entered data (name and such) are the things that violated the terms, since you never even got a chance to do anything else - but you would probably know about that if it was you who set it up. No clue.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy and @Voltan, yeah I thought maybe it could be that? But it seems inoffensive to me, and it let us create the profile with that username and join the PSN. You'd think if it was a banned word or something it would have not let me create it?

So does anyone know a way to contact Playstation and expect a reply? Like I said their LiveChat seems to be down, the email address they give on their site ignored me, and the phone number is in the US (I'm in Australia). It feels like they get to choose when and if I'm allowed to contact them. I've only had the PS for a month or so and I've never dealt with Sony before. I'm used to companies being pretty easily contactable and helpful when something's not right.

@beet-ronin Couldn’t you create a new one & see if it happens again? I’m assuming you don’t have any purchases linked to that account as it happened instantly.

It must be the username.

@beet-ronin Have you tried the support twitter account https://twitter.com/AskPS_ANZ? Might be worth a shot. I used the UK one a while back and as mine was a hardware problem they couldn't help but they did respond to me quite quickly.

@Fight_Teza_Fight yeah I did actually, and it did happen again. I now have two banned profiles for my son on my Family Management page :/

@render thanks, I don't have Twitter but I might sign up and give that a go.

So any new account you make is insta-banned?? It sounds to me like a stolen system.

@Tasuki no, just child accounts! Regular accounts work fine, but whenever I make a child account for my son it gets insta-banned as soon as I try to log it into the PSN.

Hey just thought I'd let you all know I got it fixed

I joined Twitter and contacted them on there, and they linked me to their support page on account suspensions, which had an Australian phone number at the bottom that I swear wasn't there before. I was on hold for about an hour and then a rep unbanned the account in a couple of minutes.

He said it was a security measure because when people steal a PS they often make a bunch of accounts and then they'll make a child account to make purchases through? Dunno why. Anyway he said their security system often bans child accounts mistakenly because of that. I just tested it and it's all good now. So thanks again for the suggestions and I'm glad it worked out in the end.

@beet-ronin Hey that's great news!! Can't believe that's something that they've got automated but then they don't actually check up on it to make sure that it's making the right decisions. Glad to hear that you've got it sorted though