Sony need to fire their web development team

[WeprCZ]

Are you even surprised, when they still did NOT fix the bug that makes you unable to buy anything with card (bug as old as PS3).

[baboon_overlord]

8 minutes ago, Honor_Hand said:

Oh, the new PS store is pretty poorly optimized and thought out, that's a given. There's no discussion about that. I've been having my fair number of issues as well with it. What gets me the most from it is how little information you're given on any given product when browsing. The design itself is dreadful and very counter-intuitive to navigate too, at least in my opinion.

 

Anyways, in regards to the problem you're having. My PSN account is in the US and whenever I try to access it from a search engine (say, Google), I always get sent to PSN Spain. What I do to avoid this is simply search specifically for the US site and then bookmark it to access directly without having to search for it. In regards to the emails, well I never receive any promotional emails from Sony and my.playstation.com is not something I use, so I'm not sure how I could help you out on that. In regards to their support chat, I had a talk with them about a month or two ago for a refund. I thought I'd have to use a VPN to get in contact with them because I'm in Latin America (Venezuela, specifically), but no, that wasn't the case. I got in contact via text chat with a representative in the US and the guy was super helpful in solving out my problem.

 

Bookmarking the site should solve the issue for you. Whenever I access PlayStation services from that link, I always get sent to the appropriate US site. Also, make sure to log in so that your PC or whatever device you're using can store the cookies for this site. You may want to clear your old cookies before doing this.

 

If you're still having issues with the site redirecting you to a version of the store that you don't want to use, I'd second @Masamune's suggestions in regards to the VPN. You can usually unlock most sites with them and have them show the information you want for any specific region. The easiest one I could recommend is getting one that acts as an add-on for any of your browsers. In my case, I use Hoxx VPN on Firefox (I think it is also available on Chrome). Plenty of well-known countries can be used for free, including the UK. Alternatively, one other good VPN I can recommend is SoftEther VPN. It was developed as a project from the University of Tsukuba, Japan. It's free, open-source software that works extremely well. It has proved its worth to me where other VPNs have failed (including the paid ones), the only downside is that it does require a bit of tinkering to set up, and the availability of public IPs you can connect varies over the day.

 

Let me know if works for you or if there's anything else I can do to help you out. Cheers! =)

 

 

Thank you very much for this Honor-Hand. I will take a look at those VPNs. I've tried several free VPNs and they either get blocked by websites entirely since the IP ranges are banned, or you can't get into the sites at all because Cloudflare blocks you. I tested a bunch of free UK VPNs/proxies earlier today and they all had the exact same issue. You can't even access this website using them, Cloudflare boots you off.

 

I don't have this problem with any other website, except poorly coded news websites, as I mentioned earlier. Redirecting to sites based on country IP address is prehistoric. I'm not paying yet more money on top of a PS+ subscription just for the "privilege" of using all the features I could use before, due to some idiot at Sony not understanding how the modern Internet works. 

 

I've just made some videos to demonstrate the problems. I'll get them on YT so everyone can see what the problems are. As I've already stated, this issue must be affecting a lot of people. There are an estimated 1 million - 2.25 million British people who live in the EU, to give just one example.

 

 

[Masamune]

1 hour ago, baboon_overlord said:

 

Thanks Masamune, but that won't help. I need a proxy/VPN for the UK. I also have protonmail and their free VPN but the UK VPN isn't free. The issue is that the support, my.playstation, email links, PS+ renewal (probably more) now forward you to the store of your countries IP. So if I had a US IP, I still wouldn't be able to use anything as it seems everything is locked to a subregion for accounts.

 

Try using an IP for another country via proxy/VPN and go to https://my.playstation.com/ - if your experience is anything like mine it will just go round in circles in an infinite loop and never let you log in.

Oh yeah, UK servers are premium (sorry, just assumed you were trying to get to the US site ), & the proxy site doesn't even seem to work with my.playstation. Guess you'll just have to see if you can find a VPN with a free/working UK server... I think Windscribe has one, but I've never used that one before, so don't know if it's any good or not.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Masamune

[Dr_Mayus]

The same thing happened with the ps3 where someone "fixed" the store and made it completelg broken.

 

You know what is more fun than a keyboard? Scrolling through letters til you find the right one. 

 

Hey you bought the game of the year edition...we are going to make every piece of dlc a separate item so you have to scroll through hundreds of items to find the game.

[baboon_overlord]

35 minutes ago, Masamune said:

Oh yeah, UK servers are premium (sorry, just assumed you were trying to get to the US site ), & the proxy site doesn't even seem to work with my.playstation. Guess you'll just have to see if you can find a VPN with a free/working UK server... I think Windscribe has one, but I've never used that one before, so don't know if it's any good or not.

 

Thanks Masamune, I will take a look at that as well.

 

My point here isn't really that I'm complaining about what is happening to me (there are workarounds, although the support issue could be a problem) the general point is that this is all really bad for Sony and us gamers. If we allow them to cut corners and do stupid shit like this, then what else are they going to do?

 

At the moment the web-store works (just about) but what if they start auto-redirecting it as well so I can't use that either? What if they start doing it for the phone app and console stores? I just don't get what they are trying to achieve.

 

I know this is the definition of a "First World problem", but I work in IT and there is no way I would allow stuff like this to go live. I'm just a small entrepreneur, we are talking about a billion dollar multinational corporation. It's insane.

 

Anyway, the videos are uploading and I'll post them in the morning with explanations so you all can see what I'm talking about. 

[PostalDudeRus]

3 hours ago, baboon_overlord said:

now automatically redirect to the country site for your IP address.

Thing was always like this for Russia, so I feel your pain.

[baboon_overlord]

7 minutes ago, PostalDudeRus said:

Thing was always like this for Russia, so I feel your pain.

 

Interesting, can you elaborate please? So if you traveled to another country it would always auto-redirect, or something else?

[baboon_overlord]

15 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

In my case, I use Hoxx VPN on Firefox (I think it is also available on Chrome). Plenty of well-known countries can be used for free, including the UK. Alternatively, one other good VPN I can recommend is SoftEther VPN.

 

Unfortunately the Hoxx one charges 50 dollars a year for the use of their UK version. I'll try the SoftEther VPN over the weekend. Thanks again for your help.

Edited January 29, 2021 by baboon_overlord

[baboon_overlord]

Here are the videos I made, so you can see what I'm talking about.

 

First, My PlayStation. As you can see, I'm logged into the UK Store (you can see my avatar in the top right and I have something in my cart). Prices are in Pound Sterling £.

 

I click on Friends and that then takes me to the French version of my.playstation. I try and log in and it just infinitely redirects back to the same page with no way of logging in.

 

 

Next, Support. Again, you can see at the start that I'm logged into the UK Store. I go to the Live Chat and it says I can't use it because I'm not in the UK or Ireland.  

 

 

Next, trying to renew PS+. As before, you can see I'm logged into the UK Store. I click on the monthly option and it instantly redirects me to the French site. You can see the orange box in the top right corner that says "S'abonner a PS Plus" (Subscribe to PS Plus). You can also see I'm logged into that page. So not only does it redirect to the French version, it doesn't even recognize that I'm already a member.

 

 

Finally the email issue. The start of the video shows the email content in Outlook. You can see the free games for February. When I click the "find out more" button, instead of going to a UK page like it used to, it now redirects to the corresponding French version. Which, in this case, hasn't even been updated yet and is still showing the games for January.  

 

 

As I stated, these problems are all new, everything worked before, even when the new version of the Store came out. There is literally no need for this and it's extremely frustrating.

[Honor_Hand]

7 hours ago, baboon_overlord said:

 

Unfortunately the Hoxx one charges 50 dollars a year for the use of their UK version. I'll try the SoftEther VPN over the weekend. Thanks again for your help.

 

Hey there. That's weird. It doesn't show any cost on my side. There are both Free and Premium options available. Among the free ones, I can see and connect to one in the UK with no problem. Check this out.

 

 

 

 

Now, I saw the videos and noticed that you're always getting redirected to the French site. It's definitely trying to assign that store to you based on your IP and current location.

 

I did some testing on my side here. Logged out from the website and deleted cookies, cache, and everything on the playstation.com website. Upon reentering to it again, it'd always sent me to the Spain version of the site. However, upon signing in, it automatically sent me to the US version of the site. I also noticed that down below there's an option that allows you to change the country/region of the website. You can use that to change the store to the respective version that you want. However, it doesn't work when you're in the actual store section of the site. On that point, it'll always default to the store of the country of your PSN account (US in my case).

 

If you're not logged into the website, you can change that country/region option as well on almost any page of the website. On the store, however, it seems to default to a store that's dependant on your IP location. In my case, it always shows me the Spain store for some reason. Even if tell it that I want to use the US or UK website when logged off, it always sends me to the Spain version of the site when navigating around.

 

But I'm seeing in your videos that regardless of you being signed into your UK account, it always sends you to the French site. What the hell... Could it be the cookies? A damaged cookie is the only thing I can think that could be causing that. Did you try login out and deleting all of your cookies, cache, and any temp files associated with the site? I know that's like standard stuff, but it's the only thing I can think of. Delete all that, go to the UK version of the site, accept the new cookies, and sign in to your account. Do that for all of the devices that you use to access playstation.com.

 

If it still keeps failing after that, I don't know man, the website just sucks... It's just very poorly made overall.

 

One other thing, are you using an ad-blocker by any chance? I had to turn off mine to be able to navigate the store correctly after the update. Otherwise, I'd get all sorts of network errors on it.

[PalaceOfLove706]

I hear you, brother. I’m here to listen to you, to validate your story, and to let you know that it is going to be ok. It may not be ok today or tomorrow, but it will be ok. Take good care.

[baboon_overlord]

On 1/29/2021 at 9:06 PM, Honor_Hand said:

 

Hey there. That's weird. It doesn't show any cost on my side. There are both Free and Premium options available. Among the free ones, I can see and connect to one in the UK with no problem. Check this out.

 

 

 

 

Now, I saw the videos and noticed that you're always getting redirected to the French site. It's definitely trying to assign that store to you based on your IP and current location.

 

I did some testing on my side here. Logged out from the website and deleted cookies, cache, and everything on the playstation.com website. Upon reentering to it again, it'd always sent me to the Spain version of the site. However, upon signing in, it automatically sent me to the US version of the site. I also noticed that down below there's an option that allows you to change the country/region of the website. You can use that to change the store to the respective version that you want. However, it doesn't work when you're in the actual store section of the site. On that point, it'll always default to the store of the country of your PSN account (US in my case).

 

If you're not logged into the website, you can change that country/region option as well on almost any page of the website. On the store, however, it seems to default to a store that's dependant on your IP location. In my case, it always shows me the Spain store for some reason. Even if tell it that I want to use the US or UK website when logged off, it always sends me to the Spain version of the site when navigating around.

 

But I'm seeing in your videos that regardless of you being signed into your UK account, it always sends you to the French site. What the hell... Could it be the cookies? A damaged cookie is the only thing I can think that could be causing that. Did you try login out and deleting all of your cookies, cache, and any temp files associated with the site? I know that's like standard stuff, but it's the only thing I can think of. Delete all that, go to the UK version of the site, accept the new cookies, and sign in to your account. Do that for all of the devices that you use to access playstation.com.

 

If it still keeps failing after that, I don't know man, the website just sucks... It's just very poorly made overall.

 

One other thing, are you using an ad-blocker by any chance? I had to turn off mine to be able to navigate the store correctly after the update. Otherwise, I'd get all sorts of network errors on it.

 

Thanks again Honor_Hand, and sorry for the delayed reply. I will definitely try a few things you suggested re: cookies etc. As I said before these problems are all new, but I will try nonetheless. It seems to me that the new versions of the other subdomains (support, my., etc) have been made by a different department but that's just a guess.

 

I'm not sure what is going on with Hoxx, the UK one was definitely not there the other day but is now. Maybe I needed to clear the "rate us" dialogue box that I just got first? Anyway, that at least gives me an option.

 

Thank you so much again for all the suggestions, I will let you know how I get on.  

On 1/30/2021 at 10:53 PM, PalaceOfLove706 said:

I hear you, brother. I’m here to listen to you, to validate your story, and to let you know that it is going to be ok. It may not be ok today or tomorrow, but it will be ok. Take good care.

 

Thank you brother. I do feel like it is going to be ok too. 

 

This must be what it feels like, when doves cry. ☺️

[AJ_Radio]

I don’t know how I missed this thread earlier. 
 

I’ve resorted to using @NathanielJohns pages and using the old PlayStation Store. It doesn’t contain anything really regarding the PS5, but that’s okay as I generally wait a couple years down the road in purchasing a new console. 
 

The stores via the consoles are cumbersome and always have been. I suppose Sony at one time had a decent store for the PS3 and Vita but that was long before I started using them. 
 

Their store is embarrassingly awful. They have joined Forbes, Yahoo and other websites which all suffer from bad design. 
 

I miss the early - mid 2000s when websites on the internet had far more convenient, simple, easy to use and easy to understand interfaces that didn’t bog the user with giant graphics or boxes that took up most of the computer screen. 
 

Modern website design is shit. Nobody can come up with an original logo, it’s more about presentation than it is about accessibility.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 1:11 PM, baboon_overlord said:

Sent an email a week ago and nothing. Honestly, in this day and age when it comes to big corporations trying to get the peons to do anything is impossible. Even when the person you are talking to 100% agrees that you are correct and something should be done to change a situation, they tacitly acknowledge that there is no mechanism for them to articulate to higher-ups, even if they think you are in the right.

 

The reason for this is because they hire low life interns and people who have little to no credentials to their record because it's easier than to find a guy who has the experience. A lot of call centers for companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Dollar Tree, Walmart etc etc hire people who are paid minimum wage. It's not uncommon to call a support line only to get somebody from India who is clearly reading off of a script. I've had so many instances where a representative from India or Jamaica cannot solve the most basic of problems, someone as simple as turning a switch on and off they can't fucking figure out. Very few American companies anymore hire actual Americans for call centers as those jobs were mostly shipped overseas. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the agreement made back in the 1980s, has done a lot of damage to take away jobs from Americans and ship the jobs that were once plentiful overseas. Reason being? Corporations don't have to spend as much money on half assed morons who can barely speak English, let alone know how to follow simple instructions.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 1:11 PM, baboon_overlord said:

I work in IT. I regularly report bugs, suggestions for site improvements, ways things could be improved and it always goes nowhere. It's a complete waste of time. If you do it with smaller companies they often implement your suggestions, but for faceless corporations like Sony? Never going to happen.

 

Your only chance is to find a manager who is higher up who can help relay the information. A lowly worker at a call center or an inexperienced web designer isn't going to get that job done for you.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 1:11 PM, baboon_overlord said:

It's why I hate multi-nationals. I've been headhunted for a few high level jobs by some of these companies in the past and I always tell them "not only no but hell no".

 

By a few high level jobs you mean an executive like position?

 

I remember a few months back you were saying on these forums that you turned down jobs from Microsoft and various hi tech companies in the Silicon Valley. Working for those companies requires a great deal of credentials, the least of which is a Master's Degrees with several years of experience. Something that I don't have, and will probably never have as broke as I am.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 1:11 PM, baboon_overlord said:

I've worked with many of the companies as partners/suppliers over the years and I know how they work. The best people leave and the unproductive cretins get all the promotions. This has been known for at least two decades and dozens of books have been written on the subject.

 

It's American capitalism and it is progressively getting worse. Most of the financial businesses in New York City and elsewhere only know how to make sheer profit at the expense of everything else. Longevity, long term growth and long term success are not part of their business strategy.

 

It's interesting that these same books that you're mentioning basically point out the CEO's salary. Within half a century it has exponentially increased several times. My Baby Boomer parents had very good jobs with excellent benefits when they only had a Associates/Bachelors Degree to their name. Nowadays getting jobs like they did so long ago is almost impossible. The job market is all in favor of people having very high credentials, and yet the cost for training is so high you end up with bums well in their 30s who have no skills to their name. In order for me to get a Master's or Doctorate in the field of computing I have to spend an absurd amount of money, which I have to pay the universities and graduate schools tuition fees which get most young students drowning in debt.

 

Going back to Sony, it just boggles me that much needed changes that are really just relatively simple for most adequate web designers and IT people are just not possible with them. Jim Ryan just furthers proves to me that CEOs and executives in this day and age are practically useless, for reasons you've already stated.

 

I shouldn't have to use a VPN, use somebody's version of what should be the actual PlayStation Store, or revert to the old version through a posted link on this website to buy the games I want. But I have to, because the store Sony cooked up is horrible, like everyone else has said.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Spaz

[baboon_overlord]

On 1/29/2021 at 9:06 PM, Honor_Hand said:

 

I did some testing on my side here. Logged out from the website and deleted cookies, cache, and everything on the playstation.com website. Upon reentering to it again, it'd always sent me to the Spain version of the site. However, upon signing in, it automatically sent me to the US version of the site. I also noticed that down below there's an option that allows you to change the country/region of the website. You can use that to change the store to the respective version that you want. However, it doesn't work when you're in the actual store section of the site. On that point, it'll always default to the store of the country of your PSN account (US in my case).

 

If you're not logged into the website, you can change that country/region option as well on almost any page of the website. On the store, however, it seems to default to a store that's dependant on your IP location. In my case, it always shows me the Spain store for some reason. Even if tell it that I want to use the US or UK website when logged off, it always sends me to the Spain version of the site when navigating around.

 

But I'm seeing in your videos that regardless of you being signed into your UK account, it always sends you to the French site. What the hell... Could it be the cookies? A damaged cookie is the only thing I can think that could be causing that. Did you try login out and deleting all of your cookies, cache, and any temp files associated with the site? I know that's like standard stuff, but it's the only thing I can think of. Delete all that, go to the UK version of the site, accept the new cookies, and sign in to your account. Do that for all of the devices that you use to access playstation.com.

 

If it still keeps failing after that, I don't know man, the website just sucks... It's just very poorly made overall.

 

One other thing, are you using an ad-blocker by any chance? I had to turn off mine to be able to navigate the store correctly after the update. Otherwise, I'd get all sorts of network errors on it.

 

Hi Honor_Hand, I just want to say a massive thank you again for the effort you put into your posts. You're a star. ☺️

 

You gave me quite a lot of ideas to test and it's been a very busy week, but I just ran through everything you posted. I'm partially replying to you and partially writing this for other people who have the same problems.

 

Firstly in regards to Hoxx - it works! Thank you. I've tried so many crappy free VPNs and this is the first free one that actually does what it is supposed to. It is pretty slow, so anyone thinking they can watch iPlayer is probably going to be disappointed, but for my purposes it's perfect.

 

This has fixed:

 

- Support page issue (I am going to waste yet more of my time and talk to someone on support chat tomorrow about this issue)

- PlayStation Plus renewal page (now goes to UK version of the page)

- Emails - fixed (which is good, I actually read most of them - you have to click the link to see the content)

- my.playstation.com - no idea what is going on with this. I can now access the UK page (yay!) but it still does the infinite loop thing (boo!). I followed your advice and nuked all the cookies and also disabled all three of my ad-blockers (only way to get rid of taboola ads and their ilk) and it still doesn't work. No biggie, three out of four is good enough for me.     

 

Just regarding the region/language settings, that is only on the main Store page (in my case https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/home/games ). The geniuses haven't given that option on any of the pages I was having problems with (which you would normally do if you were using a redirect based on country IP address, so you don't annoy people). As I said in one of my earlier posts, this is either laziness or incompetence. No competent web-designer would do this, and it seems to only be for sub-domains, which makes me think maybe they outsourced those pages or a new team did them?

 

Anyway, thanks again. You rock.

Edited February 4, 2021 by baboon_overlord

[Honor_Hand]

Awesome @baboon_overlord. Glad to hear at least 3 of the 4 issues were solved. And yeah, I forgot to mention that the free version of Hoxx VPN is kind of slow, but eh, for the use that you need to make out of it, it should work just fine.

 

Regarding the region/language settings, yep, it doesn't work at all inside the store. As you said, it works on the main page, but it's not possible to change your settings once you go deeper into the store. Why it is like that I have no idea. Sony's website redesign has only brought forward a lot of problems and, in my opinion, it was probably done by someone that lacks a bit more experience and know-how in practical web design. It could've been either a new inside team or an outsourced team, but in both cases the lack of expertise is apparent.

 

Anyways, happy to have been of help. Cheers!

[MidnightDragon]

Been using PSPrices as my web store. 

[Shua_J]

On 1/28/2021 at 3:26 PM, baboon_overlord said:

In addition to making their entire web-based store a complete and utter broken mess (in a move no-one asked for) the geniuses have now randomly decided that anything outside of the Store (my.playstation.com, email links, PS+ extensions, support chat) must now automatically redirect to the country site for your IP address.

 

As I live in France, that means I cannot use my.playstation.com at all (even if I wanted to use the site in French, which is doable, I can't login because my credentials aren't set up for that sub-region).

 

Just got an email with next month's PS+ games - Control, Concrete Genie, Destruction Allstars. Click link. Nope! French version of course dummy!

 

Tried to renew PS+ last night. Redirected to French version of the site. Impossible to renew via web.Had to do it via the PS4 instead.

 

Tried to get hold of customer support via live chat to tell them this is stupid (yes I know, that's not going to do anything) but (and you will never guess what happened next) - You cannot use this support chat because you are outside the UK and Ireland!

 

If I wasn't logged in and was unable to use the UK store, then that would be one thing. But I'm literally logged in. And can use the UK web-store no issues (for now).

 

What are Sony trying to do here? Are they just complete brain dead idiots? Do they suddenly think that no-one ever leaves their country and goes somewhere else? This was never a problem before. I do not have this issue with any other website (except maybe some crappy news sites but who cares about them anyway).

 

Seriously Sony, sought this out. Either your IT team is completely incompetent or they don't care. I don't actually know which is worse.

 

INB4 use a VPN. Yes, I would love to spend 25-50 euros a year for a UK IP address for the sole purpose of using the PS website with no problems like I have done for the past several years....  

Baboon...I seriously feel for you in this situation. I don't know if they are trying to force growth in terms of corporate reach in regions they feel are not as lucrative in comparison to their cashcows...but...having said that...this is ridiculous for you to not be able to plug-and-play. Especially when you WANT to pay for the service. It has to have something to do with long term gains over short term gains...otherwise I totally have to agree with you that they are just dropping the ball due to bloat. Sorry my friend.

Edit: Nevermind. I just saw the update post. Glad things are working out better.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Shua_J

[Kolm]

@baboon_overlord: I have the same problem since I live in border area I presume, but I just fix it by changing the region in the URL of the page.

If I go to store.playstation.com when I'm not logged in, it redirects me to the URL: https://store.playstation.com/nl-nl/latest which is the Netherlands.

Then I change this to my region: https://store.playstation.com/nl-be/latest which is Belgium.

After that I login and the store stays on nl-be until it decides to log me out after a few days/weeks.

But if I select PSPlus in the store, it redirects me to the nl-nl page of PSPlus, I have to manually change the URL to nl-be again. No way around that.

 

I don't have problems with my.playstation.com but maybe that's because I was already logged in to the store first before I decided to do something on my.playstation.com.

 

If your account is UK then you would need to change it to 'en-gb'.

 

This avoids installing all kinda programs of which you're never sure what they exactly do...

 

But I agree: Sites should stop trying to be smart about your location... Luckily so far it still works for playstation. I had other sites where it was completely impossible to get the version for the right region.

To add some more frustration about the PC version: There's no add-on section like on playstation itself or the app. No PS3/PSVita. I mean... they already have a PS4/PS5 filter, adding the other filters again but just default them to not ticked... it shouldn't matter that much. Or did they have complete different databases for this? Even then... makes no sense to me as a software developer. Now less people will buy old stuff while you barely have to do anything to keep them buying it.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Kolm

[baboon_overlord]

On 2/3/2021 at 7:35 AM, Spaz said:

I don’t know how I missed this thread earlier. 
 

I’ve resorted to using @NathanielJohns pages and using the old PlayStation Store. It doesn’t contain anything really regarding the PS5, but that’s okay as I generally wait a couple years down the road in purchasing a new console. 
 

The stores via the consoles are cumbersome and always have been. I suppose Sony at one time had a decent store for the PS3 and Vita but that was long before I started using them. 
 

Their store is embarrassingly awful. They have joined Forbes, Yahoo and other websites which all suffer from bad design. 
 

I miss the early - mid 2000s when websites on the internet had far more convenient, simple, easy to use and easy to understand interfaces that didn’t bog the user with giant graphics or boxes that took up most of the computer screen. 
 

Modern website design is shit. Nobody can come up with an original logo, it’s more about presentation than it is about accessibility.

 

 

The reason for this is because they hire low life interns and people who have little to no credentials to their record because it's easier than to find a guy who has the experience. A lot of call centers for companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Dollar Tree, Walmart etc etc hire people who are paid minimum wage. It's not uncommon to call a support line only to get somebody from India who is clearly reading off of a script. I've had so many instances where a representative from India or Jamaica cannot solve the most basic of problems, someone as simple as turning a switch on and off they can't fucking figure out. Very few American companies anymore hire actual Americans for call centers as those jobs were mostly shipped overseas. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the agreement made back in the 1980s, has done a lot of damage to take away jobs from Americans and ship the jobs that were once plentiful overseas. Reason being? Corporations don't have to spend as much money on half assed morons who can barely speak English, let alone know how to follow simple instructions.

 

 

Your only chance is to find a manager who is higher up who can help relay the information. A lowly worker at a call center or an inexperienced web designer isn't going to get that job done for you.

 

 

By a few high level jobs you mean an executive like position?

 

I remember a few months back you were saying on these forums that you turned down jobs from Microsoft and various hi tech companies in the Silicon Valley. Working for those companies requires a great deal of credentials, the least of which is a Master's Degrees with several years of experience. Something that I don't have, and will probably never have as broke as I am.

 

 

It's American capitalism and it is progressively getting worse. Most of the financial businesses in New York City and elsewhere only know how to make sheer profit at the expense of everything else. Longevity, long term growth and long term success are not part of their business strategy.

 

It's interesting that these same books that you're mentioning basically point out the CEO's salary. Within half a century it has exponentially increased several times. My Baby Boomer parents had very good jobs with excellent benefits when they only had a Associates/Bachelors Degree to their name. Nowadays getting jobs like they did so long ago is almost impossible. The job market is all in favor of people having very high credentials, and yet the cost for training is so high you end up with bums well in their 30s who have no skills to their name. In order for me to get a Master's or Doctorate in the field of computing I have to spend an absurd amount of money, which I have to pay the universities and graduate schools tuition fees which get most young students drowning in debt.

 

Going back to Sony, it just boggles me that much needed changes that are really just relatively simple for most adequate web designers and IT people are just not possible with them. Jim Ryan just furthers proves to me that CEOs and executives in this day and age are practically useless, for reasons you've already stated.

 

Hi Spaz, how are you? Sorry again for my tardiness.

 

I agree that a lot of modern web design is useless. Google still doesn’t know how to make an intuitive interface, every single one of their products is an exercise in illogical layout and menu design. I don’t use Google Search anymore, DuckDuckGo is way better, but when I do occasionally use Google, the site design looks ten years out of date on PC. I don’t use Facebook either, but when I see their web design I start laughing. It’s like 2008 called and asked for their web design back. ☺️

 

I quite like the old Store, it could have been improved for sure, but at least it was usable. The new version has so many bugs in it. For example, you constantly have to accept cookies, sometimes the price/add to basket button doesn’t load and you have to do a hard refresh, when you add an item into your basket it says “Try again” but the item is actually in the basket. It’s actually embarrassing.

 

https://platprices.com/ is awesome, I use it every day. A really excellent site and a massive upgrade on what Sony have produced.

 

I hear you on the customer service stuff. The last time I contacted Sony UK support I was having a weird issue with Uncharted 1 on the Remaster on PS4. Naughty Dog’s forums are now a joke, so I couldn’t contact them. The UK support told me to contact the publisher, to which I replied “that is what I am doing now”. It beggars belief that Sony support staff don’t know that perhaps the biggest PS IP is published by the company they work for!

 

My other recent horror show was with EA. I bought Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition secondhand because doing that actually worked out cheaper than buying the DLC I wanted from the Store. There is a known issue that one of the DLCs isn’t on the EU version of the disc, so EA support are supposed to give you a code. After being passed from pillar to post, I eventually got yet another person who asked me to supply all the information again, even though it was all clearly in the email thread. In the end I just bought the DLC off the Store. Dealing with their support was a complete and utter waste of my time.

 

Yes, I have a post-graduate diploma in marketing, it’s equal to a Master’s Degree. You know that there are tons of 100% free courses offered online these days, right? For example, I wanted to brush up on my contract writing skills, so I took a free course from Harvard Law School. There are loads of courses here - https://online-learning.harvard.edu/catalog/free

 

It’s just an example but you don’t need to spend a fortune on these things these days. My post-graduate diploma only cost about £200, plus about £50 on books, from my local college (although that was quite a long time ago now to be fair).

 

The problem isn’t really capitalism, it’s this disgusting crony capitalism that we now have. Big Tech, Wall Street, etc all pay obscene amounts of money in the form of campaign contributions, speaking fees and lobbyists. As a consequence, no-one uses anti-trust legislation to break these companies up, like they should do.

 

The problem is then compounded by central banks printing trillions in fake money, lending it to these corporations for peanuts, which is then used to buy back stock. This makes the stocks completely overvalued by any normal metric (P/E, EPS, dividend yield, etc) which in turn makes the CEO look like some kind of genius.

 

Just on the books, I bought several books on the subject a few years ago. I think what happened was that Scott Adams wrote The Dilbert Principle and several writers/journalists set out to see if he was correct (he was). There are also modern books on the Peter Principle, which is a similar but older concept. 

 

Basically, there are several theories but the one that made most sense to me was that innovative, entrepreneurial people tend to try new things. When things don’t work out, that’s a negative on their reputation, so they tend not to get promoted, and then leave the company. The people who never try or never do anything productive don’t have any negatives associated with them, so they tend to rise through the ranks.

 

The other problem with these corporations is that management literally spend all day in meetings. They never do any work. When I’ve managed teams in the past, I would only use “Japanese meetings” where everyone stands. A one hour meeting “mysteriously” only takes ten minutes that way.

 

I sincerely doubt that Jim Ryan has even looked at the new website, or maybe he looked at it for ten seconds and was asked if he liked the design.    

 

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I shouldn't have to use a VPN, use somebody's version of what should be the actual PlayStation Store, or revert to the old version through a posted link on this website to buy the games I want. But I have to, because the store Sony cooked up is horrible, like everyone else has said.

 
100% agree, great summary.

[baboon_overlord]

On 2/5/2021 at 2:53 AM, Shua_J said:

Baboon...I seriously feel for you in this situation. I don't know if they are trying to force growth in terms of corporate reach in regions they feel are not as lucrative in comparison to their cashcows...but...having said that...this is ridiculous for you to not be able to plug-and-play. Especially when you WANT to pay for the service. It has to have something to do with long term gains over short term gains...otherwise I totally have to agree with you that they are just dropping the ball due to bloat. Sorry my friend.

Edit: Nevermind. I just saw the update post. Glad things are working out better.

 

Thanks Shua. I think it's important that Sony address things like this because all that is going to happen is Microsoft is going to beat them into a pulp. I'm not saying MS don't do stupid and/or crappy things all the time, because they do, but they must be laughing their asses off right now looking at the new PS Store. Let's not forget that Sony have lead the charge for $70 games (the prices of some of the new EA/Ubisoft games for the "enhanced" versions is an absolute joke quite honestly), so the "For the Payers" meme that people use for us Sony gamers is becoming more relevant with each passing week.  

[baboon_overlord]

22 hours ago, Kolm said:

@baboon_overlord: I have the same problem since I live in border area I presume, but I just fix it by changing the region in the URL of the page.

If I go to store.playstation.com when I'm not logged in, it redirects me to the URL: https://store.playstation.com/nl-nl/latest which is the Netherlands.

Then I change this to my region: https://store.playstation.com/nl-be/latest which is Belgium.

After that I login and the store stays on nl-be until it decides to log me out after a few days/weeks.

But if I select PSPlus in the store, it redirects me to the nl-nl page of PSPlus, I have to manually change the URL to nl-be again. No way around that.

 

I don't have problems with my.playstation.com but maybe that's because I was already logged in to the store first before I decided to do something on my.playstation.com.

 

If your account is UK then you would need to change it to 'en-gb'.

 

This avoids installing all kinda programs of which you're never sure what they exactly do...

 

Thanks Kolm. I haven't had any significant issues using the Store itself in relation to country IPs (I will be seriously pissed off if they do that next though). 

 

So I can use https://store.playstation.com/en-gb no issues, it's when I go to another subdomain (/support, my.playstation, etc that I lose access). Also, that is a new thing, it probably changed about three weeks ago. 

 

I think the reason you have no problems with my.playstation.com is because your "sub-region" (my term, I don't know what it is officially called) is nl, regardless of the language.

 

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But I agree: Sites should stop trying to be smart about your location... Luckily so far it still works for playstation. I had other sites where it was completely impossible to get the version for the right region.

 

Fortunately, sites that do this are few and far between. Crappy news sites, spammy sites like paid surveys etc do it. I really don't think Sony have any excuse for this. 

 

Quote

To add some more frustration about the PC version: There's no add-on section like on playstation itself or the app. No PS3/PSVita. I mean... they already have a PS4/PS5 filter, adding the other filters again but just default them to not ticked... it shouldn't matter that much. Or did they have complete different databases for this? Even then... makes no sense to me as a software developer. Now less people will buy old stuff while you barely have to do anything to keep them buying it.

 

Removing Vita and PS3 was really stupid. There was no reason to do it, you should make it as easy as possible for customers to buy things. I can kind of understand cleaning up the Store since the PS5 is backward compatible with PS4, but considering how botched the launch was and how few people actually have a PS5 right now, the timing made no sense at all. 

 

Not sure if you know this or not, but the old Store is still accessible: https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/home/games?PlatformPrivacyWs1=all&psappver=19.15.0&smcid=psapp 

 

As you said above, just change the en-gb part and it should work for nl-be. Ironically the catalogue for the old Store seems to be up to date (e.g. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is on there, that game was released on Friday) which makes the whole thing even more bizarre.

[Kolm]

6 hours ago, baboon_overlord said:

 

Thanks Kolm. I haven't had any significant issues using the Store itself in relation to country IPs (I will be seriously pissed off if they do that next though). 

 

So I can use https://store.playstation.com/en-gb no issues, it's when I go to another subdomain (/support, my.playstation, etc that I lose access). Also, that is a new thing, it probably changed about three weeks ago. 

 

 

It's only a few weeks that the store redirects me to nl-nl when I'm not logged in. Subdomains like for psplus are doing it since the overhaul of the store even when logged in. I always have to change the URL to get them back to work.

 

Quote

I think the reason you have no problems with my.playstation.com is because your "sub-region" (my term, I don't know what it is officially called) is nl, regardless of the language.

 

In nl-be 'nl' is the language (Dutch/Nederlands) and be is the country (Belgium).

In nl-nl the second nl stands for the Netherlands.

The first part is the language code and the second part is the country code.

 

So in my case the language is always the same but the country changes. In your case they both change indeed. 

 

Weird thing is that my.playstation.com doesnt have a region code but if I click on the 'home' button it redirects to playstation.com/nl-nl/ and if I click on 'Friends' again it shows them as expected.

 

Fair warning: If you call/mail/whatever to PS Support, never say you live in another country than the one of your account. Just say you're temporarily working/studying abroad or something and having problems when you're in that country. Sometimes they can act weird if certain things don't match up like birthday and I can see them doing the same for region of an account.

 

Quote

Fortunately, sites that do this are few and far between. Crappy news sites, spammy sites like paid surveys etc do it. I really don't think Sony have any excuse for this. 

 

The news sites I can partially understand because they often only have the rights for the video in a certain country. But it's still annoying. I had it with a retail chain that existed in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Behind the curtains of the brand name, it's 2 different companies so the one from the Netherlands didn't deliver to Belgium and vice versa. But there was no way to change your region to the correct one if it didn't detect it correct. It would just redirect you back to the domain of the country it detected.

 

Quote

Removing Vita and PS3 was really stupid. There was no reason to do it, you should make it as easy as possible for customers to buy things. I can kind of understand cleaning up the Store since the PS5 is backward compatible with PS4, but considering how botched the launch was and how few people actually have a PS5 right now, the timing made no sense at all. 

 

Not sure if you know this or not, but the old Store is still accessible: https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/home/games?PlatformPrivacyWs1=all&psappver=19.15.0&smcid=psapp 

 

As you said above, just change the en-gb part and it should work for nl-be. Ironically the catalogue for the old Store seems to be up to date (e.g. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is on there, that game was released on Friday) which makes the whole thing even more bizarre.

 

I was aware of the ability for the old store but thanks for mentioning!

To me it just proves that they can fix their front end to include everything again.

They just want a so called clean and modern look with huge blocks so you only see 1-2 blocks on your screen and have to scroll way too much on PC.

 

The last few years a lot of sites started to use a mobile look on their PC version. I understand that mobile wants big letters on a small screen and big blocks so you don't have to be pixel perfect when tapping a button, but on PC this look is just so annoying...

 

"Oh look, I have a 27 inch screen... I still only see the top header image, menu and just the top half of the banner of the news article. Let's scroll a page... Oh look, I can see the bottom half of the banner and the title. Scroll another page: Finally some text! Only 5 lines though, gotta scroll for the next 5 lines..." *sigh*  

 

Sometimes I wonder: Am I getting old for still using a PC to browse the internet??

Edited February 8, 2021 by Kolm

[baboon_overlord]

1 hour ago, Kolm said:

 

It's only a few weeks that the store redirects me to nl-nl when I'm not logged in. Subdomains like for psplus are doing it since the overhaul of the store even when logged in. I always have to change the URL to get them back to work.

 

 

In nl-be 'nl' is the language (Dutch/Nederlands) and be is the country (Belgium).

In nl-nl the second nl stands for the Netherlands.

The first part is the language code and the second part is the country code.

 

 

That's very interesting. So you are having the same issues as me and the timeline confirms it. Thanks for confirming

 

Yes you are correct. Sorry I obviously didn't think what you wrote through, en (English), gb (sub-region). "Belgian" language obviously makes no sense since you have French, Flemish, German, Walloon and many other (dialects?) as languages. I knew that didn't sound right. ☺️ 

 

I'm not even sure why they don't just have the UK Store as "gb". I sincerely doubt they have Scots, Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish or Manx variants of the Store!

 

 

Quote

Fair warning: If you call/mail/whatever to PS Support, never say you live in another country than the one of your account. Just say you're temporarily working/studying abroad or something and having problems when you're in that country. Sometimes they can act weird if certain things don't match up like birthday and I can see them doing the same for region of an account.

 

Thanks. I didn't get around to contacting PS UK on Friday as planned. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. I know it is a waste of time anyway.

 

Quote

I was aware of the ability for the old store but thanks for mentioning!

To me it just proves that they can fix their front end to include everything again.

They just want a so called clean and modern look with huge blocks so you only see 1-2 blocks on your screen and have to scroll way too much on PC.

 

The last few years a lot of sites started to use a mobile look on their PC version. I understand that mobile wants big letters on a small screen and big blocks so you don't have to be pixel perfect when tapping a button, but on PC this look is just so annoying...

 

"Oh look, I have a 27 inch screen... I still only see the top header image, menu and just the top half of the banner of the news article. Let's scroll a page... Oh look, I can see the bottom half of the banner and the title. Scroll another page: Finally some text! Only 5 lines though, gotta scroll for the next 5 lines..." *sigh*  

 

Sometimes I wonder: Am I getting old for still using a PC to browse the internet?

 

There is a simple solution to this. It's called responsive web pages. But that isn't true of the PS phone version, because it's an app.

 

Ironically, the app seems to have eschewed the all-white version of the new Store because it's all very dark. Maybe you can change it to day mode or something, but I absolutely despise smart phones. I only own one because I have to use various apps for business. 

 

PCs are completely superior to mobile phones in every way imaginable. Apart from the fact that "smart" phones are making everyone go blind, they are completely locked down so there is no way of fixing anything outside of what is permitted by Google or Apple, and they are completely shit. Because I am very tech-savvy, I often get people asking me to fix their phones (for a fee). I often succeed but quite honestly, the best option in most cases would be to take a shotgun and shoot the phone into a thousand pieces, eat your loss and buy a computer instead. 

 

I fucking hate smart phones. I also hate the fucking companies that make their Operating Systems. An open source OS with no walled garden and amazing support would crush the market if someone could come up with such a thing.

 

So no, you aren't getting old. I think people are just becoming more stupid quite honestly.

Edited February 8, 2021 by baboon_overlord
clarification

[DaivRules]

2 hours ago, Kolm said:

Fair warning: If you call/mail/whatever to PS Support, never say you live in another country than the one of your account. Just say you're temporarily working/studying abroad or something and having problems when you're in that country. Sometimes they can act weird if certain things don't match up like birthday and I can see them doing the same for region of an account.

While it’s none of Sony’s business why someone might be in another country, someone having their birthday wrong is a red flag on a whole lot of levels and something any company responsible for data security as well as age enforcement responsibilities should absolutely pay attention to. 

[Pumpkin Head Cthulhu]

i use NordVPN and have not had any real issues with it plus you can choose the country the vpn uses. I would also suggest Surfshark VPN.