Man gets revenge with a free trip after PlayStation wrongly banned his account: 'I had the idea of applying for a job so I could get them to fly me out'

Author image for Isabella Penn
Isabella Penn
Apr 23, 2024 11:30 AM EDT

This has to be one of the most petty revenges out there. This man got on his PlayStation one day to find $500 worth of fraudulent charges had been made using his credit card. After going back and forth with customer support, he was told that either he must've made the charges or he shared his account password with someone. Knowing he didn't make the purchase himself and the charges came from another country, he was at a loss. Then it got even worse when PlayStation banned his account, losing all the purchases he had already made on games. So, he came up with the best revenge plot. This man was actually quite smart, as he had a tech job with a decent amount of experience. He decided to interview with Sony and try to get them to pay for his flight, which he was already taking out to San Francisco (Sony's headquarters) for a different reason. Not only did they pay for his flight, but they paid for his room and meals, too. Keep reading to see how the rest of the story played out if he was offered the job at Sony, and what other gamers in the comments had to say about their similar experiences.

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  • 01
    r/pettyrevenge • 2 days ago PaulTR88 PlayStation banned my account after someone fraudulently spent ~$500 from my credit card, so I got Sony to fly me to California
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 02
    So this all took place a little over 5 years ago. I had a PlayStation account and a PS4, but I didn't have 2FA set up (whoops). Anywho, one morning I woke up to $500 in charges to the PlayStation Network on my credit card for that
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 03
    account. I ended up contacting PlayStation Support to explain the situation, and they proceeded to try and gaslight me by saying that I must have legitimately purchased what was a slew of PS3 games (I never owned a PS3), and that I must have shared my
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 04
    password with whoever did the purchasing (turns out the purchase was from Brazil). After a lot of back and forth with them not budging to just refund and remove the games after I changed my password and enabled 2FA, I did a charge back via
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 05
    my credit card, which led to my account being suspended. All-in-all I probably had about $200-ish in digital games that I lost access to. As for a bit of background on me, I'm a software developer in the middle of the US, and 5 years ago the market
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 06
    was ridiculous. I had plans to go to a conference in California a couple months after all of this and was going to buy my own plane ticket, so I had the idea of applying to a job with Sony in their San Jose tech office so I could get them to fly me out for my
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 07
    conference on their dime. Long story short there, I heard back from a recruiter, the phone screen went well, and I was flown to my conference via a ticket provided by Sony. They even took me to lunch and paid for a night at a hotel so I could be in San Jose the
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 08
    day after the event. It actually worked out kind of nicely as I had a FAANG interview planned for not too long afterwards, so it was a good opportunity to just practice interviewing.
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 09
    They ended up offering me a job (pay was a lot lower than what I was making in Denver, despite it being a San Jose-based role), which I turned down, and I'd say I ended up at a net positive of ~$200.
    via u/PaulTR88
  • 10
    • bigbysemotivefinger 2d ago That they did all that and then low-balled you is just the cherry on top.
    via u/bigbysemotivefinger
  • 11
    il_soup • 1d ago One of my accounts had gotten fraudulently charged $200 and when I realized it I couldn't get ahold of the PlayStation support yet because it was hours before they opened so I got in touch with bank first and got the money back, I had to get ahold
    via u/il_soup
  • 12
    of support still for a few other things with the account and they told me they'd issue a refund I told them "no need my banks. done it" and they said "oh no we'll do it and then you call them and give them this code and they'll reverse theirs." We went back and forth on this three
    via u/il_soup
  • 13
    times and I finally said okay cause they would not take no as answer. I didn't get the time to call my bank about it and decided oh well whatever something will work itself out. I ended up with an extra $200 that never got noticed by either PlayStation or my bank. :)
    via u/il_soup
  • 14
    THE DUDE0903 • 1d ago Haha, my father pulled something off similar, he lives in a different city since he got transferred, he visits monthly but air tickets have recently gotten expensive our country, so he mostly schedules an interview and flies here, his job's high
    via u/THE_DUDE0903
  • 15
    yours, so even if paying like yours the interviews go well he has a very legible reason to decline. Works out well for us, we save close to to 300-400 dollars a month :D.
    via u/THE_DUDE0903
  • 16
    Europalox • 1d ago Yeah, sony is a sucker for not issuing refunds. They removed Cyberpunk from their store after it's launch not because it was a crashing mess of a game on PS4 and PS4 pro but because CDPR decided to offer a no questions asked refund and sony got
    via u/EuropaIox
  • 17
    _skank_hunt42 . 1d ago lol I grew up in SJ and my dad. worked for Sony in the 90's and early 2000's. They laid him off and re-hired him 3 times in that period. It sucked. I don't know what they're like now but I'd say you made a good call not working for them. Hope you enjoyed your trip though!
    via u/_skank_hunt42
  • 18
    Starkiller_303 • 21h ago I was really hoping this story ended with: "They offered me the job and I looked at them with steel in my eyes and said, 'I won't work with anyone who doesn't have a sense of Morality in business', then left a copy of my unresolved customer ticket on the table and walked out."
    via u/Starkiller_303
  • 19
    OPTIONS
    via Garrett Morrow

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playstation employee job malicious compliance gaming work Sony gamers petty revenge Tech video games job interview oddly satisfying
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