Yeah ....
I'm honestly not too surprised. On one hand, Apple keeps pushing the iPod Touch as a great little portable gaming system (so kids are getting them left and right), yet on the other, they make it a big pain to prevent a kid from purchasing unwanted software on it.
I know first-hand, because my g/f used to work for Apple, and got refurbished iPod Touches for both of her young kids, after they were constantly borrowing her iPhone. My own daughter got a refurbished Touch last Xmas as well.
I thought I'd be slick and create a whole new iTunes account for my kid that wasn't linked to any credit/debit card at all. That way, she can only purchase FREE apps unless I pre-load her account with some money from a gift-card first. (My g/f didn't do this, and her 3 year old started buying herself quite a few games one day! Until then, she just assumed said 3 year old wouldn't even be capable of navigating the App Store on her own and doing it!)
But then I realized all the little games we bought and put on my iPhone a long time ago were not going to be transferable to her iPod Touch without re-purchasing them. No way I was going to re-buy them, and she was getting all upset she had stuff on my phone that wasn't on her Touch. So I wound up redoing her Touch so it shared MY iTunes account. Not happy about that though, and sure enough, despite my warnings, she bought about $10 in software one time!
Apple really needs to re-think the way this stuff works. I'd be all for something like Android's store apparently does where you can request a refund for anything you download within the first 24 hours.... but frankly, some people will still abuse that too. (They'll start using it as a "free rental" service, grabbing things for a day and then requesting refunds.) So maybe a setup where you can refund apps up to 24 hours later up to the first X number of times, and then the account reverts to only giving refunds within the first hour or 30 minutes?
haha, this makes it onto MR?
My little cousin purchased $2,820.75 from the app store on an iPod Touch. And Apple wasn't going to refund any of it until a transcript from an internal chat was somehow included in a email to my Aunt that consisted of very rude talk behind her back.
I have the emails, but my aunt and uncle aren't finished with the fiasco with Apple's legal team, so I can't show them.