Ps5 player linked steam account lost characters

I started playing day 1 of EA made a few characters and equipped the hands of Xesht back piece. I dont remember why but I linked my steam account to my poe account and log back into the game to find both characters missing. Relogged a few times still no characters so I made new ones its early no problem. Now I have access to my points from purchasing the game and my rewards for purching pack are available, but the hands of xesht or the other twitch drops I just got are not available. I'm not sure if its from linking the steam account but it definately happened at that time.

If you linked a new account it's likely now showing that account as your active one when you login to the game, and since that account has no characters it appears as though they've been deleted. :(

Ok, this should be easy to fix, but slightly annoying...

When you login to the game create a new character with some random name. (It won't matter as we can delete this character afterward.)
Once the character has loaded into the game and is on the beach bring up the pause menu and select the option to go to the character selection screen.

This should take you to the screen where you can see a list of characters on the left and a display of your character in the middle of the screen.

At the very top-left of the screen, above the character list you should see a drop-down UI element. This is where you change between sub-accounts & I suspect it's currently showing your PC one.

If you click the Right Stick it should let you change over to the other account, your PS5 one. If you select that other one your previously created PS5 characters should appear.