Right. I've got good news and I've got bad news.

Good news is that my ps3 replacement has arrived already, I only bothered sendin the broken one off to them on monday :P and it's arrived today (thursday). Also it's a brand spanking new and shiny 60gb with all the BC etc, which is what I was lookin for.

Bad news is that I hadn't realised that on the one I sent off, I should have de-activated my psn account on it. There wasn't anything in the manual about it and only a short mention in the faq on their website (which I didn't see until now). You can only De-Activate an account on the console. So my Account and two of my friends accounts have lost a share spot. But what makes things worse is that I had already shared my own account with 4 of my friends so when I switch my new replacement console on, I can't download anything I've purchased!

I'm gonna have to ask one of my friends to de-activate my account from their console and in the mean-time ring sony and talk to them about this problem. It needs to get sorted cause I feel bad about the losin my friend's share spots.

Hopefully this warning will prevent anybody else from making the same mistake I did.

moral of the story. Don't share all 5 downloads

De-Activate your account? Don't Sony reformat the PS3s before they ship 'em out, anyways?

Apparently formatting it doesn't work, the MAC address sits activated in one of their servers. But then that should mean that sony can de-activate it if you ring them up.

Assuming they have a giant database which keeps track of which system ID's have hooked up to which PSN accounts it wouldn't be the same. Reformatting would just remove the PS3's reference.

Oh, wait, sorry, I just thought you were worried about someone else getting ahold of your details.

Dude I got the answer to your problem, Just call up Sony and explain the situation to them. Leave out the part that you have it on 4 friends PS3s, though. Tell them that you sent in your PS3 for service, and they sent you a new one and you forgot to deactivate your account on the old one. They can do a mass reset on your account at their level. Which means every PS3 that has your account will get deactivated. Then your friends can go and manually re-activate your account on their PS3s.

I have already done this, since, I have 2 PS3s and my brother has one and I have been through a couple PS3s myself. So let me know if you have any questions.

EDIT   They can only do this once, they will mark it on your account, so from here on out you will have to remember to deactivate it yourself, or pick your least favorite of the 4 friends.

@Vetteman94

That sounds like an awesome idea, it'd free up a couple of sharing with m8's brothers and friend's friends without havin to ring them :D Just wipe the lot. tnx! xD

 Its like I said though,  just be careful on how you word "the story", and that you can only do it once.

how did you get a new 60gb?