UK Boy Leaves Family With £2000 iTunes Bill

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officeguy

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mother said he was sad when he was told he couldn't play the game anymore because he was about to reach level 26 and fight the Dark Monster.
I would be pissed if I got up to lvl 26 and couldn't fight the Dark Monster. I would swipe the Ipad when no one is looking and find another credit card just to beat the Dark Monster and then I would be done :)
 

tolham

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"he was sad when he was told he couldn't play the game anymore because he was about to reach level 26 and fight the Dark Monster."

was this game developed by Pierce's dad from community?
 

steve360

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Don't blame the kid - youngsters have absolutely no comprehension of the consequences of their actions. The onus is on the parents/grandparents to unlink or remove their credit card information so it would not be misused like that.
 

Au_equus

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I think there's more cases of kids buying movies, in game materiel and such using a mode of unprotected payment than parents would like to realize. That being said I think the surprise here is not the 2000GBP spent, but the fact that apple gave them back the money!
 

Hspito

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and they didn't know?
when you do an in-app purchase there is a window that pops up asking you "CONFIRM YOUR IN-APP PURCHASE do you want to buy xxxxx for $x.xx?" and you need to input the password at least one time then you can buy all you want whitin a few minutes without typing the password again. so either they gave the password to the kid or they where typing the password for him.
 

d_kuhn

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Those mobile games are just a stupid tax... but since kids don't understand they occasionally will put a spotlight on the idiocy. The fact that a kid COULD spend 3 grand in-game... in ANY game... is proof positive that P.T. Barnum was a genius.
 

halcyon

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[citation][nom]steve360[/nom]Don't blame the kid - youngsters have absolutely no comprehension of the consequences of their actions. The onus is on the parents/grandparents to unlink or remove their credit card information so it would not be misused like that.[/citation]
Oh...but he would after this ...I guarantee it.
 

deksman

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[citation][nom]steve360[/nom]Don't blame the kid - youngsters have absolutely no comprehension of the consequences of their actions. The onus is on the parents/grandparents to unlink or remove their credit card information so it would not be misused like that.[/citation]

Sorry, but no.
Children can comprehend the consequences of their actions if they are exposed to such education from the get go and not cuddled into the mentality 'oh kids are too young to learn this'.
That's just a simple cop-out.
They are human beings like everyone else... so if you want them to understand something, TEACH them.
Same thing with adults.
A human adult wouldn't be able to comprehend the consequences of his/her actions if they were never taught them in the first place.

On the flip side of things - this IS the grandparents fault for syncing up the credit card in the first place, and not checking in regards if the game will require purchases or not.

Apple is a different beast though.
Their applications and games do have a tendency to 'quietly' charge various purchases if you synced up your credit card.

There's a lesson to be learned here:
Educate yourselves on what the heck you are doing on the device.
If you will give a child the device to play with, educate them on how to use the thing in the first place to AVOID this sort of stupidity in the future/first place.

Thinking that children are 'too young' to learn is an idiotic nonsense.
 

Hspito

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[citation][nom]deksman[/nom]Apple is a different beast though.Their applications and games do have a tendency to 'quietly' charge various purchases if you synced up your credit card./citation]

WHAT? False.
I bet you don't even have an iTunes account. Comments like this are what people hear and then form an opinion of something based in somebody else's false comment.

Just like when people say you don't own the music you buy in iTunes. Guess what I can burn it in a cd and rip it in any othe program or computer.
 

lamorpa

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[citation][nom]memadmax[/nom]This is why I don't buy anything that doesn't come on a cd/dvd and will continue to work offline >_>[/citation]
What do you do when you get bored with of the 7 games and media that are still available this way?
 

ice_melted

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InApp purchase are simply a deceptive measure for price hiding and should be eliminated altogether. Think about it, you go to the Top Grossing section in the app store and they are all free.

The price should be clearly listed on the store page.

Single price: $4.99

Single price plus recurring: $0.99 + recurring for vitrual goods or recurring for subscription.

and the consumer should be able to set a cap on the recurring fee. People just don't have infinite money and most of us have to live on a budget.


 

willard

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[citation][nom]steve360[/nom]Don't blame the kid - youngsters have absolutely no comprehension of the consequences of their actions. The onus is on the parents/grandparents to unlink or remove their credit card information so it would not be misused like that.[/citation]
I think the onus is on Apple and Google to figure out how to stop this kind of thing. I've heard of half a dozen identical cases over the last couple years, and there are probably more.

If in-app purchases required you to enter a password, we'd never hear about this again. I think a tiny inconvenience is totally acceptable to fix the problem once and for all.
 

razor512

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not sure if the iOS has a proper file manager now but with those games, you can generally get extra credits or food or other crap by finding the save file, then using one of the many free hex editors, then fins the values of the food and just give your self a few million of them.

I have seen some games targeted at kids where they will charge like $20 for some virtual food, and that is a single player offline game, how many berries your character eats has 100% no effect on the company that made the games.


Those parents should have removed the credit card info, then handed the kid a computer and a hex editor and tell him to make more food instead of buying it.
 
Who gives a young kid an expensive device with a credit card synced, that's just asking for trouble. If I had a kid I wouldn't risk 600$ when they could drop and break it so easily or mishandle it.

Kids should not have phones or tablets till their mid-teens; childhood should be something you're spending time outside and using their imaginations, not becoming mindless zombies at that age texting and playing terrible games with touch controls.

I feel bad for today's kids though, they start off with junky games on their phones and tablets when they are young; they will never experience the joy of playing on an Atari, Nintendo, old dos games, etc.
 

one-shot

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@JMcEntegart
Sadly, things didn't work out so well for Will. His mother said he was sad when he was told he couldn't play the game anymore because he was about to reach level 26 and fight the Dark Monster.

You should change the wording of this sentence. Upon first reading, I read it as he was sad he couldn't play because he was about to reach level 26 and fight the Dark Monster. The wording should change.

Here is a suggestion. "Will's mother said he was sad because he was not able to reach level 26 and fight the Dark Monster due to the bill he incurred."

Do you see how much more that makes sense? This suggested sentence makes the reason he was sad more clearly understood.
 

ghent123

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Just had to make a comment on this one. I work for a Major Bank where I live in the credit card area. And you wouldn't believe how often this happens. I would say a min of 5 calls a day I get to do with itunes purchases normal on the ipad or the iphone.

Most ask if we can reverse the charges and we simple say no we can't. Simple put the law in Canada says you give out your card info(They can charge it after given out the first time) and you are given the product in question the purchase is allowed and legal.

So many people setup their itunes account with a CC tied to it and then get charges and wonder who is committing fraud on them. Normal we direct them back to Apple customer servies to talk to them about seeing if can get refund for it and to remove the CC from the itunes account.
We do disputes about them, but 99% time we won't reverse the charges due to it being a normal and correct charge.

Most of the charges range from 1 to 10 dollar amounts. Had one customer same issue young child playing with ipad and bought a bunch of things through itunes. Only came up to 100 but still customer was upset. Always fun trying to explain to a customer to contact Apple and talk to them on how to avoid it happening again and seeing if a refund could be done.

Not to just say it's an Apple issue but it's an issue with all devices that have online access and a CC tied to them in some way. Just really is a user issue not fully understanding how their devices work with online purchases.
As Willard said a password put into place by the device for a password before any online purchase is made would solve this issue very quickly. Just as long as they don't allow 000000 passwords.

TYTL, happens all the time and should be looked into putting safe guards from device makers. Is a user issue.
 
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