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Amazon Fighting FTC Over In-App Purchases Fine

Posted by Unknown on from the right-to-profit dept.

An anonymous reader writes One of the common problems of the smartphone generation has been parents who given their phones to children, who then rack up hundreds of dollars of in-app purchases without the parents' knowledge. The FTC smacked Apple with a fine for this, and Google is facing a lawsuit as well. Now, Amazon is the latest target, having received a complaint from the FTC demanding a similar settlement to Apple's. Amazon, however, is not willing to concede the fine; they plan to fight it. Amazon said, "The Commission's unwillingness to depart from the precedent it set with Apple despite our very different facts leaves us no choice but to defend our approach in court (PDF). The main claim in the draft complaint is that we failed to get customers' informed consent to in-app charges made by children and did not address that problem quickly or effectively enough in response to customer complaints. We have continually improved our experience since launch, but even at launch, when customers told us their kids had made purchases they didn't want, we refunded those purchases."

5 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. It's Intended by lawnboy5-O · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is no doubt in my mind this was part of the ROI model when they were thinking up ways to pilfer your dollars in somewhat covert ways... there is also no doubt they can make this effort much more transparent for the same reason.

    1. Re:It's Intended by JMJimmy · · Score: 5, Informative

      In app purchases should be banned. They're horrible for the industry, in some cases they're no better than gambling (ie: buy tokens to feed into this jackpot like system to win a random digital item!). At the very least they should have a maximum any one user can spend before everything becomes free.

  2. The Amazon AppStore Auto-consent by Frobnicator · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nope, they need the penalty.

    The Amazon AppStore app seems to have an update every two weeks. Every time it updates itself, it resets the values for IAP and parental controls. You need to manually go in after every update, disable IAP and confirm with the password, then manually reset the parental controls and confirm with the password. EVERY FREAKING TIME.

    There was one instance (that I know of) that I didn't reset the parental controls and IAP flags after an update, and sure enough, that was when the kids discovered it and went on a spending spree.

    NO EXCUSE for resetting the flags every update. They know about it. It isn't a bug, it is a feature that enables profits.

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    1. Re:The Amazon AppStore Auto-consent by Greyfox · · Score: 4, Informative

      Glad we didn't have this in the 70's. I don't think my sister or I would have survived the beating.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  3. Re:It's not just the refund by lawnboy5-O · · Score: 3, Informative

    "People aren't willing to accept responsibility for themselves and their kids" Buillshit. The practice is deceptive and industry is play on the ignorance of the consumer.