Generally if service hasn't been up to par in various industries, it's customary to either give a refund or a credit of some sort. It's exceedingly rare, at least in my experience, that a company, service or whatever will offer the client something they don't want as an apology.
For example if a vegetarian waits forever to get their food at a restaurant it's unlikely that the restaurant will apologize by offering her a free steak, instead they will either cut money off her bill or give her a credit for a future visit. Likewise if DirecTV has an outage of some sort during a football event it's unlikely that they will apologize by offering people a weeks worth of the Oprah channel for free, they will probably give the user credit to use as they want on their tv service. Or if repair on someones Lexus vehicle is taking far longer than expected it's not likely that they would offer the client a Chevy Aveo as a loner car, they will set them up nicely to keep them happy.
In that respect to me what Sony is doing as "compensation" is bizarre. I don't use psn so personally I don't care either way, but I can see how people will be thrown off by being offered stuff they don't want as "compensation". The correct thing to do would have been to give a credit of sorts, that's what every other industry does.
If you want a refund, just imagine Sony payed you back the 0$ you'd pay them for the service. Refund given.
For compensation of perhaps loosing your credit-card or personalia information - take advantage of the offer Sony give you - with the fraud protection programs they offer you, because they currently reached agreements with fraud protection agencies in North america, and 5 biggest euro countries, and currently try to reach agreements with others based in other locations, if any customers want to sign up for it, it won't cost a dime, Sony pays the bill.
Or you could sign up on any of the class action lawsuit, filed against Sony.
If someone steals your identity, it would not help you with free credits on the store.
The games in the welcome back-program you get, are a compensation for not beeing able to get games on PSN, or play on PSN, during the downtime, after Sony took down the Nnetwork. Not for the security breach.
PSN+, subscribers get's 60 days subscription renewal, for the 26 days they lost access to the service.
SoE-games subscribers on both PC and PS3 get the downtime lost added to their subscription + 30 days extra subscription.
You're beeing compensated for your losses, the only thing they can't' give back, is the time lost.
To be frank, the only service wich have experienced similar stuff like this before is Microsoft, with it's XBox live, during a two week outage for their consumer-base, and the only compensation they offered their customers were a 20$ XBLA game.
So in the industry, I think Sony is setting new high standards at compensating their userbase, wich I hope all publishers, and online vendors will notice how much is given/expected now when more and more is getting digital.
