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Amazon Fighting FTC Over In-App Purchases Fine
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."
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.
I think Amazon's problem is going to be that just refunding the purchases doesn't help the parents. If the kid maxes out the credit-card on in-app purchases, the parents have to deal not just with those purchases but the fees and interest from over-limit charges on the card and/or the additional costs associated with any declined charges (eg. if I pay a bill on-line using my card and the charge is declined, I get hit for late fees and possibly service disconnections). Having this happen when you're out-of-town (eg. the kid does this while the family's on vacation, and when you go to check out of the hotel you can't pay your hotel bill and you have to figure out why without being able to check your accounts on-line to see what unexpected charges are there). The only acceptable way of handling things is what Amazon should've done from the start: once parental controls are turned on in an app, all actions that would cause a charge or affect parental controls always require a PIN (and ideally there'd be an option to say "don't allow charges period until parental controls are turned off again").
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
The problem here is that parents/kids don't have enough authentication to block purchases being made by the wrong person... there really should be better security like face recognition to say "Uhm, kid, that costs money!" or "Parent, you can't spend your kid's money for them!"
Partially agree with you here. It's a new age and these 'expensive toys' are quickly becoming the needed tools in life; teaching your kids how to use them and the consequences of their actions is a great lesson for any child. Teaching yourself how they are, and can be, used is an even bigger lesson; one that a lot of parents fail at and then blame someone else. Who, in their responsible mind, would give a child a device that can be used to spend money? Yes, there's some checks and balances in place, but those checks and balances fail all the time (which is why my un-signed credit card can be used to purchase things without asking to see my Id 95% of the time). If you give your kid a credit card and put them in a candy store, they're going to max it out. Is that the store owner's fault? No! If you want your kids to be able to purchase those in-app purchases, set up an account for them with a specific amount on the card (Google Wallet is a very good option with its Master Card option). It's called an allowance, a concept that's been around for hundreds of years. You don't give an allowance by writing and signing a blank check. People (who most parents are) need to start learning the technology they use, where its downfalls are and how to get around them. If Amazon's in-app purchase policy is 'enter your pin and it's OK to purchase for 15 minutes', learn to deal with that or use a different system. If Amazon's updates cause resetting of in-app purchase flags, learn to deal with it. Part of dealing with it is to inform Amazon that their policy is broken, but it's their policy to make; if you don't like it, move on to the next or learn how to deal with it to fit your needs.
I opened my apple account with an iTunes gift card. That way my maximum loss is limited to whatever is left of the £15 balance on the card. I have purchased a couple of apps with some of the credit.
We didn't give our son a credit card. We didn't give him a cell phone. We gave him a Kindle Fire HD, and had no idea that by default he would be able to buy things with real money without our needing to put our password in.
After getting a huge charge from in app purchases I complained to Amazon and was immediately and cheerfully given a refund, with instructions for how to turn on the setting to require password for in app purchases.
Amazon knew what it was doing when they made the default setting "no password required for in app purchases". I'd be happy to see them get a massive fine for that greedy and disgusting decision.
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!