Sony Fixes PlayStation Plus 'Technical Error' Causing Overcharged Subscriptions to Existing Users

Sony on Thursday announced that it has fixed a "technical error" that caused users to pay more than expected for upgrading to one of the new PlayStation Plus tiers. The issue came into notice shortly after the rollout of the new PlayStation Plus service tiers in select Asian markets earlier this week. Some users complained that they were forced to pay an additional charge for upgrading to any of the new tiers if they had earlier purchased the PlayStation Plus service at a discount.

The official PlayStation support account on Twitter announced the rectification for the issue that was incorrectly charging users for their upgrade from a previously purchased PlayStation Plus membership. Sony called it an error and said that the players who were overcharged would receive a credit.

Some users who were subscribing to the new PlayStation Plus tiers in Asia reported about the overcharging issue. In one particular case in Hong Kong, a PlayStation customer service executive purportedly told a user to pay an additional amount to make up the difference between the standard price and the discount they had previously received before moving to the Essential or Premium tier of the service.

The new PlayStation Plus tiers arrived in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand as a part of their initial global rollout earlier this week. The update is essentially aimed to make PlayStation Plus a stronger competitor against Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass and help Sony generate more revenues. It also comes as a merger of the existing PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now in markets where the latter is available.

Prior to the launch of the new tiers, Sony restricted users from stacking PlayStation Plus subscriptions. It was a strategic move to push people towards the new tiers. However, some users still have an existing PlayStation Plus or PlayStation Now subscription who have started upgrading to — or planning to upgrade to — one of the new tiers. Sony also shared a chart to provide an easy view of how users on the existing subscription will be moved to a new PlayStation Plus tier.

In addition to the incorrectly charged subscription, which has now been fixed, some early subscribers to the new PlayStation Plus tiers reported that there were fewer titles than what was initially teased. Sony has not yet addressed that concern.

The revamped PlayStation Plus service with the new tiers is launching in markets including India, Europe, Japan, and the US in June.