After Valve, Sony‘s European branch also got a slap on its face from down under – they did not obey the rules, so they have to pay.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (which we will shorten to ACCC onwards) won a court case against Sony, meaning the „blues” have to pay 3.5 million AUD (about 2.4 million USD) for misleading customers.

The case was initiated by four customers because they were refused refunds for either downloading digitally purchased games (in other words, acquiring them via the PlayStation Store), or for requesting a refund more than fourteen days after the purchase. Both policies are not in line with the consumer laws of Australia. Therefore, ACCC grabbed Sony by its ear, took the company to the court, and there, it promptly kicked it in its ass, causing the fine to fall out of Sony’s pocket.

„Consumer guarantee rights do not expire after a digital product has been downloaded and certainly do not disappear after 14 days or any other arbitrary date claimed by a game store or developer. What Sony told these consumers was false and does not reflect the consumer guarantee rights afforded to Australian consumers under the Australian Consumer Law. Refunds under the consumer guarantees must also be given in cash or money transfer if the consumer originally paid in one of those ways unless the consumer chooses to receive store credit,” said ACCC chair Rod Sims.

We intentionally mentioned Gabe Newell’s company in the beginning! In April 2018, we wrote about how Valve has also lost a case against ACCC for their misleading refund policy. (In other words, Sony has repeated Steam’s mistake.) Thus, we can say that Australians are not to be messed with – at least two companies did not obey their rules, resulting in their hefty fines. Why Europe? Well, Australia has previously used the PAL standard as Europe did (while North America and Japan used NTSC).

Source: VG247

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