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Apple Offers Refund After British Boy Spends $2500 on In-App Purchases in 15 Minutes
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the prices for in-app add-ons are down right criminal and just shows sleaziness on the part of the developers, there is no reason for 1000 virtual gold coins to help you play a game for a few more hours worth more than the price of a full featured console/pc/heck even mobile game
OMG, people get so off tangent here. Nobody is talking about the parents in question being "bad parents", we're talking about parents being irresponsible and playing the poor victim and getting Apple to refund them something they really shouldn't be refunded for. It's not like there was no way of preventing this.
Isn't it possible they just called Apple and told them what happened and nicely asked if there was anything Apple could do and Apple removed the charge. No muss - no fuss. No complaining. No trickery. No ranting and raving.
It says a lot though that you leap to those assumptions. Even more that you believe they shouldn't be refunded.
They SHOULD be refunded, if for nothing else then solely on the grounds that Apple lied to them (and us) when they said IAPs would be password-protected and separated from the 15-minute window, which they are not.
There's no problem with "society" at large so much as a problem with those specific (and a few other) parents.
You do have to type in your password and CONFIRM in app purchases at least for the first one. There's nothing sneaking about it. Price is shown to confirm the amount you are about to pay.
parental controls are not on by default. and if you don't know about them or where they are - that, to me, is a broken system. Or at least one where Apple places itself in the position to be more inclined to have to return purchases in order to avoid issues.
If the reverse were the case, Apple could and would have decent standing, in my opinion, to refute having any chargebacks.
Yeah, we're all raising that kid... and when he goes outside to cross the street and gets hit by a car.... it's the neighbors fault... Mom & Dad are only PARTIALLY responsible for that kid.... we ALL take the blame when a child in this world does something dumb.... sure, yeah, right !! The parents are to blame--- FIRST AND FOREMOST.
And I wasn't defending the Corporation... mearly stating that companies are entitled to make money... (legally of course)...
For something like Order & Chaos you can do an in-app purchase and buy game currency. With that game currency you can then buy game items. I highly doubt they could/would do that.
It is still surprising that in app purchases are enabled by default.
And another annoying thing is making you type your password in for app updates. I have a password on there so my kids can't install new apps or buy them.
But I could care less if they update apps on their own.
Seems to me these things will be changed eventually.
And actually why not just update apps automatically during the wee hours of the night? Not like I am vetting the gazillion apps on my system every time I update them.
And another annoying thing is making you type your password in for app updates. I have a password on there so my kids can't install new apps or buy them.
But I could care less if they update apps on their own.
Seems to me these things will be changed eventually.
And actually why not just update apps automatically during the wee hours of the night? Not like I am vetting the gazillion apps on my system every time I update them.
It just goes to show that proper supervision on kids shouldn't be restricted to computers only, but I still think that the parents have themselves to blame by not regulating every app that their kids are using.
You would go nuts if your kids ran up a huge phone bill, so what is the difference?
Its just common sense.
You would go nuts if your kids ran up a huge phone bill, so what is the difference?
Its just common sense.
what? is that what really happened?
to try to make better use of your bad analogy, what's happening is more along the lines of:
store owner says "give me a dollar and your kid can come in here and smash everything"
but the owner has an item on the shelf that says "well, everything except this.. it's going to cost your parents a hundred if you touch it"
5 yr old kid can't even read the sign and of course he's smashing the item a lot because it makes neato sparkle effects when it drops"
I'm not convinced one bad analogy deserves another but there you have it
You would go nuts if your kids ran up a huge phone bill, so what is the difference?
:
well, I think one difference is that a 5 year old kid couldn't run up a $2500 phone bill in 15 minutes.
Something's wrong with a parent who gives a password to a 5-year old. I guess he was too busy to supervise his child.
Big difference...society's not part of this problem, it's the software vendors and the parents to a much lesser degree.
Maybe some sort of parent/child tethering would be in order, a child could have an iTunes account, with federal agreed privacy security, but instead of a credit card, it would have parental Apple ID (mum, dad, step xxx, etc). Any purchase by a minor would send a push notification to all responsible and they have to authorise it, whichever authorises first is charged, it could also give responses for declined like the 'Do not disturb' feature which would also go out to the others, such as 'no, you need to do your homework first'. It could also let the others know if one of the others authorised it. This way would push the responsibility to the parents who need to take responsibility, lets face it, the app is aged for higher than 5, so the parents chose to ignore that in the first place :S
I guess you were too busy to read the article? He didn't give his child the password. Here - let me help you since you were too busy to read the article.
Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, was using the family's iPad when father Greg put in a pass code, believing his son was downloading a free game.
The next day the Kitchens received emails which itemised successive £69.99 purchases, but they were believed to be sent in error and dismissed.
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Agreed
well thats not hard... maybe they had the apple store quick purchase setting on and he went in and ordered a MBP on the apple store... thats $2k/+ in a fews mins.
now if he knows their password, thats a seriuos parenting problem
I use 1password, so my password is very complicated on the older version when you copy the password it stays in the memory so as long as the battery doesn't run out you can paste the password several days later.
My youngest knew how to paste or magnify glass as he calls it and used up my credit* buying coins in the first temple run game, as my oldest showed him when he got a free game.
Its not a case of bad parenting as your implying, i'm guessing you don't have children, its just one of those things. I take responsibility for this incident but i'm reasonably tech savvy compared to the average person and it caught me out.
* This is why I use iTunes cards and haven't registered my credit card with Apple, the amount was around £12
Ah, I see, so even though the user knows what they are doing when the are making in-app purchases and they know they are being charged since the in-app purchase states how much the item in the game costs, it's still Apple's fault for not protecting the customer from stupidity. Got it.
