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Kid Racks Up $5,900 Bill Playing Jurassic World On Dad's iPad (pcmag.com)
theodp writes: For Mohamed Shugaa, the scariest Jurassic World creature is perhaps Apple CEO Tim Cook, not the Indominus Rex. That's because Shugaa discovered his 7-year-old son had managed to rack up a $5,900 bill playing the Jurassic World game on his iPad in six days. "Why would Apple think I would be spending thousands of pounds on buying dinosaurs and upgrading a game," Shugaa told The Metro. "Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them. How much longer would it have gone on for?" Shugaa discovered his son's 65 in-app purchases when a payment he tried to make to a business supplier was declined. His son had upgraded dinosaurs using the game currency 'Dino Bucks' without realizing it was charging his Dad in real money. The good news is that Apple has decided to refund the money, so the kid doesn't have to worry about Apple making him work 8,500 hours for $5,980 to settle the debt. Btw, before you developers get too excited about the possibility of using In-App Purchase to take kids to the cleaners at $6,000-a-pop, remember that Apple call dibs on the first $1,800!
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Instead, the Dad should take responsibility for letting a child use a device without knowing how and for what purpose that child is using the device.
This is nothing but a lack of parental responsibility.
Dad: "Hey VISA, I didn't authorize this. Charge back." There. Now it's someone else's problem.
Honest question: doesn't it work like this? If the app or the OS (whatever's in charge) is both storing the credentials and also not taking common-sense measures to authenticate people who try to use those credentials, I'd think chargebacks would be an extremely common occurrence. Isn't this happening? If not, why not?
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I totally agree. Would you give your kid your credit card, pat him on the head and then send him to the arcade? That's what this clueless putz did.
I used to administer a billing system for mobile phones back from the late 1990s into the early 2000s and even back then we used to get calls from irate parents with this exact problem. Back then it was mostly kids and teenagers racking up $1000 plus bills with SMS lottery games and occasionally even back then through excessive internet use while on vacation etc... Dealing with some of the complaints we got thought me three things. Firstly, you would be amazed at the size of the bills kids and can rack up on mobile devices if you put them on a subscription based service (I remember one in the region of $11000). We solved this problem by programming the billing system to cap spending at a low default value forcing people to turn up and explicitly have the spending roof lifted. Secondly, having seen a hard nosed manager insist on payment I can tell you that you are better off waiving these bills or refunding because the parent's second call is always going to be the local tabloid or TV station. For some reason some hard nosed managers seem to have to learn that lesson the hard way. Thirdly, nothing teaches a child or teenager fiscal responsibility quicker than giving them a budget and letting them figure out for them selves that they can't have everything and must prioritise and if they want more money they'll have to get a job mowing lawns or down at the supermarket stuffing plastic bags and collecting shopping carts. So in light of my experience I would suggest:
a) Never give my kid your own personal iPad/Android Tablet.
b) Buy a used iPad/Android Tablet for the kid to use they are not *THAT* expensive.
c) Give the kid an allowance and make him/her buy gift cards to finance their gaming and give him/her a prepaid subscription they have to fill from their allowance for their internet and telephone needs.
The real WTF is that you can possibly run up a bill that large in just 6 days with a free to pay game.
And that's why I'm not advocating abolishing these games, just setting reasonable limits on the gouging that can go on.
Know what your kid is doing on the computer/tablet/etc. It's not a trained babysitter.
Yet as a parent, I get it. We're fairly conservative, we limit screen time but it's a HUGE magnet for kids and it's easy for non-technical parents to not realize their kids can spend real money or how to block it, and kids aren't stupid, they can guess passwords. Our son figured out my wife's password (observing her typing) and ran up $90 on iTunes before we caught it. Kids are impulsive.
That being said, we paid it and made him pay us back through extra chores accounted on a big sign on the fridge and a loss of access to the iPad. We didn't ask for a refund because we owned the problem and of course getting the refund would be a time consuming headache in and of itself.
That being said, in-app purchases are bullshit. They degrade the quality of all apps by masking their true cost and lack of basic quality. Apple's controls are really weak, especially for parents, and there should be a way to set spending limits that protect the parent and the kids.
The $6k refunded by Apple is bullshit compared to the thousands of parents who have paid the $90 like us, and I'm sure Apple just knows a lot of people eat $$$ in unwanted in-app purchases and it's part of the model. They don't *want* more controls.
I'd like to see Apple eliminate in-app purchases completely. Developers should price their apps up front, release multiple versions if they want multiple price points. Shitty apps and especially games that do nothing without a ton of in-app purchases should die. I don't even bother with games at all anymore because they're all rigged to be mostly unplayable without upgrades, and I tend to avoid apps of any kind that flog upgrades via in-app purchases. It's a crappy racket.
Not to mention that as anyone who's used an iPhone with the fingerprint reader knows, that thing works maybe 90% of the time. The rest of the time it refuses to work and then you have to enter your passcode.
Can you imagine a gunman breaking into your house, pulling your gun, and having the fingerprint reader refuse to recognize you? "Hey, please don't shoot me, I need to unlock my gun. Stupid thing. Fine, I'll enter my pass--" BANG! (thud)
Anyone who's used any fingerprint reader knows enough to know that they absolutely are not reliable enough to put on a gun.
They could trivially add a config UI element to set purchase limits.
Or, even more easily, they could just email you a receipt every time a purchase is made. That would have put a stop to this way before the kid racked up a $5,900 bill. Instead, Apple queues up purchases for days or weeks on end before running one big charge, presumably to save on credit card transaction fees. Only then do they finally send you an email informing you that you've been charged.
I purchased the ad-free version of Words with Friends on December 23rd so I could play more while riding on a road trip for the holiday. I didn't get a receipt until New Year's Eve. That's unacceptable and is contradictory to how any other ecommerce venture operates. If I order something from Amazon, they don't bill my card until the item ships, but they sure do send me a receipt immediately so I know what's happening on my account.