Topic: "I Bought A Banned Playstation 3 On Craigslist"

[Chozo Ghost]

Alright, this is an old article from June 2010 but it is worth keeping in mind when you're buying a used console from someone. The system might work fine in every other respect, but it could be permanently banned for whatever reason. I also wanted to post this article because I saw something in it which is really funny.

http://consumerist.com/2010/06/i-bought-a-banned-playstation-3-on-craigslist.html

I purchased a ps3 from craigslist. Played it and even got online before I bought it to make sure it worked. I have never owned a ps3 before so I went to sign up for a playstation network account and it gave me a message saying "you cannot use playstation network from this account". So I spoke to a very friendly customer csr and she told me that the console had been banned from the PlayStation Network and that it was impossible to remove the ban. Of course the Craigslist person is not returning Emails which doesn't surprise me. I offered to do anything asked to prove it wasn't me and if it was some sort of monetary issue I would be willing to resolve it. I was told it was like buying a used car as is. The problem with that analogy is that I test drove the console and it mechanically works perfectly.

Although I take issue with the seller, I can't believe Sony would instill a policy that leaves people wide open to getting scammed when they are buying a 100% working console. I just sent a follow up Email pleading for help but I have not gotten a reply yet. Am I wrong in thinking this is an unthinkable policy?

Believe it.

[ShyGuy]

I bet One-eyed Morari the Pirate King could fix that for you.

[Chozo Ghost]

I bet One-eyed Morari the Pirate King could fix that for you.

Which goes to show that real hackers and pirates aren't being hurt by this, because they will just figure a way around it. The only people being hurt are everyone else.

[BranDonk Kong]

360s are like this too, you can't find out it's banned from XBox Live until you try to connect.

Oh...and I have 4 PS3s now.

[broodwars]

I bought a used 80 GB PS3 a few years ago off Ebay, which was supposedly "refurbished" and in perfect working order.  The first month I had it, the Blu-Ray drive failed.  A year later, Yellow Light of Death, which I had to pay to fix.  A few months later, I got the Yellow Light of Death again, and after multiple attempts to repair it, I had to leave it for dead and transfer the data to a new 160 GB Slim PS3.

Moral of the story: buy your system new and buy it from someone you trust, because you don't know where these systems have been or how they've been treated.

[Mop it up]

Buying a used gaming system is never worth it. There's just no way to know how much it's been used and what kind of problems it will have in the near future, so it isn't worth the money you might save. I'll buy used games when I can't find them on a decent sale, but, I'll never buy a used system if I can avoid it.

[broodwars]

Buying a used gaming system is never worth it. There's just no way to know how much it's been used and what kind of problems it will have in the near future, so it isn't worth the money you might save. I'll buy used games when I can't find them on a decent sale, but, I'll never buy a used system if I can avoid it.

Well, the big reason I rolled the dice back then is that I had (and still have) a fairly large library of PS2 games I was trying (and am trying) to work through, so I wanted a model with Backwards Compatibility.  Those models simply aren't being made anymore, so Used was my only choice unless I wanted to hold onto my PS2.  While I wish I had kept my PS2, I still got a lot of enjoyment out of that PS3 before it died.

[Chozo Ghost]

You can probably run your PS2 games on your PC through an emulator. That's legal as long as you only do it with the games you legally own. Anyway, for as powerful as the PS3 is supposed to be there should be no reason Sony couldn't offer software emulation for PS2 games. They do that with PS1 games.

[BranDonk Kong]

I would never buy a PS3 that old, even if was still new in the box. The old systems will get the YLOD, no matter what, just like the old 360s and the RROD. It took a while for SONY to catch up, but I would bet a fair amount of money to say that SONY's failure rate is just as high as Microsoft's, if not higher. One reason you don't actually see that many failures is because the PS3 sold pretty poorly until the slim unit cam out.

[Ceric]

I would never buy a PS3 that old, even if was still new in the box. The old systems will get the YLOD, no matter what, just like the old 360s and the RROD. It took a while for SONY to catch up, but I would bet a fair amount of money to say that SONY's failure rate is just as high as Microsoft's, if not higher. One reason you don't actually see that many failures is because the PS3 sold pretty poorly until the slim unit cam out.

I've got one of the old ones and its still going strong being used on average at least 4 hours a day every day consistently.  I don't even know what YLOD is.  Though I had heard they ran hot before I bought mine and made it a point to get the Pelican cooler for it.

[BranDonk Kong]

YLOD (Yellow Light of Death) is actually a generic hardware failure, though 9/10 times it is a cold solder joint under the RSX chip (GPU), which is also the number 1 cause of the RROD on the XBox 360. You know you have the YLOD if you try to turn on your console, the light flashes green, then yellow (very briefly), and then in blinks red and shuts off. With the Xbox 360 you can always find a secondary error code by holding the sync button and pressing eject 4 times, the number of blinking lights changes with each press, then goes back to RROD after the 4 digit code is received, and this will tell you exactly what is wrong with your console. With the PS3, there is no such option, and you have to basically assume that it's a cold solder joint and try to reflow the RSX chip. Really your best bet is to pay SONY $100 to fix it for you, because there is absolutely no guaranteed fix for the YLOD. In both consoles, the issue is generally caused by the process of the system warming up when in use, and then rapidly cooling when not in use, which causes the solder under the BGA chips (the CPU, GPU, RAM, southbridge, etc) to expand and contract and become brittle. While heating and cooling is what causes the YLOD and RROD in general, it actually (contrary to popular belief) has basically nothing to do with anything actually overheating, it's just the day to day hot-cool process that makes the solder joints go bad, which would not be an issue (or nearly as much of an issue) if Microsoft and SONY were allowed to use lead solder in the BGA joints. They can't, and have to use lead-free, which is much more brittle and susceptible to failure. Hope that helps.