My god, Sony’s legal team is earning its (significant) coin right now, huh?
I feel like there’s a new suit emerging every day, and let me tell you, I have the headaches to prove it. (Seriously, have you ever tried reading legal documents? They suck.)
This one pertains to what I’ll colloquially refer to as Trump’s Tariffs™, as a case filed on 6th May argues the Japanese giant stands to “double dip” on refunds related to them.
Effectively, Sony increased the price of its PS5 consoles in the United States on 20th August, citing a “challenging economic environment”. In other words, the tariffs imposed on imported goods by the US government.
However, on 20th April this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that these were unlawful, and the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) created a tariff refund website to facilitate affected importers.
This latest suit argues that Sony stands to gain a “double recovery windfall” here, because it was able to charge consumers more money for its products, and then it’ll get money back from the US government.
The case argues that those tariff refunds should go to affected customers instead – i.e. anyone who bought a PS5 console after its price was increased due to the tariffs.
But I think this is going to be difficult to prove.
For starters, Sony never explicitly cited tariffs as the reason for the price increases, and so it can easily pin a “challenging economic environment” on a variety of different factors.
Furthermore, consumers weren’t forced to pay the new price of the PS5. Sony’s obviously free to charge whatever it likes for its products, and it’s up to the market to determine if it’s worth the price of entry.
For what it’s worth, Nintendo is also facing an identical lawsuit, so this is probably going to hit most major electronics manufacturers. It seems opportunistic to me.
The case is far too early to draw any conclusions on what kind of refunds customers may receive should it be successful, but you’d probably be looking at a few dollars once the money’s been distributed equally and lawyer fees have been accounted for.
