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[spindoctor]

Not buying that he didn't get credits and yet kept trying for two months straight.

The mother is lying and going for the sympathy play.

 

[SmokyDave]

The day I read one of these stories where the parent doesn't wilfully hand over their bank details will be the day I have a shred of sympathy.

There's just no excuse. Predatory ya-ya, notifications blah. Ultimately if you allow a kid unsupervised access to your credit / debit card, that's on you.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

You know OP if you're going to quote an article don't miss the most important fucking part out:

A Google spokeswoman told Guardian Money that having looked at Nick and Penny’s case again, it would now be refunding the family – but it will not be refunding the bank charges incurred. It is still trying to work out what exactly happened.

Bank charges are a mess as there is burden of proof. I've been in the situation of overdrawn not due to my fault, due to pending charges for failed transactions with the Nintendo eShop and its stupid invisible daily spending limit. As it was pending changes and my actual balance was always above 0 (the available balance was not) they were able to refund. This however is a bit different.

It is really sad you have to go to a bloody newspaper to be taken seriously with these things.

As for most of you going "transactions are infallible google is my god, the Kid is a LIAR. I know because I was an 11 year old once." /s

This happened to me too, but from apple. I tried buying the gold bars for AdVenture Capitalist. I paid for it, but didn't receive the gold bars. I assumed there was a problem so I tried buying again and still I didn't get the gold bars. So I gave up.
The next day I received a receipt from apple stating that I purcchased 2 IAP goods from the game.
But luckily, I contacted apple and they refunded my money.

It happens.

 

[Haunted]

My nephew who is 8 managed to guess his mothers password and spent £500~ on IAP just the other month, thankfully apple support refunded it all after checking transaction history.

You can say "use a password, dummy!" but sometimes it's not enough, the whole online structure for IAP sales needs to be limited in a time frame.

A password should be enough. It should be impossible to guess by a fucking 8 year old. That's why people need to be educated about password security instead of picking shitty passwords ("but they're so easy to remember!").

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

 

[Mr-Joker]

Assuming that Play Store would realise the error and rectify it, Nick’s grandfather Tom contacted Google, only to be told the payments were correct and nothing could be done. Instead of the refund he says he was simply “invited to think happy thoughts”.

That's pretty insulting to say to a customer, regardless if it's their fault or not.

Honestly the mother shouldn't have given her son her credit card but on the other hand this could have easily been avoided if "Free to Play" games are behind a password lock or out of the reach of minor.

 

[mclem]

So the credits didn't even appear in the game which prompted him to keep trying? They deserve a refund here of that is true.

Independent of the other foolishness in this story, they certainly should get refunded if they didn't actually receive what was paid for. Although we do only have their word for that, don't we?

 

[Yagharek]

Who doesn't check their account over 2 months?

Who didnt read the OP

 

[JP]

Like thousands of other parents, Penny Wrinch handed over her debit card details...

I really hope that is incorrect, I struggle to believe that parents would do something this naive. If you really are giving kids money via a card like this then common sense tells you that you need to give them a pre-paid card rather than the means to make you overdrawn as has happened here.

If Google have done something wrong this stupidity doesn't excuse it any way but people really need to use common sense before giving other people the ability to freely spend their money.

 

[justjustin]

From the title I assumed the parents told their child to think happy thoughts because that's all he could rely on after they sold all his possessions to pay the bill.

 

[Nokterian]

A password should be enough. It should be impossible to guess by a fucking 8 year old. That's why people need to be educated about password security instead of picking shitty passwords ("but they're so easy to remember!").

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

To think that every single year they do a top 10 of password still using today. Using complex passwords is the best solution.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

For whatever it's worth, I had access to my parents's credit card at that age. Although, I'm also quite positive I would have known better than to spend thousands of dollars on it, or click to make a purchase over and over again if it seemed like it wasn't working.

 

[Who]

F2p games are fucking gross. Fucking. Gross.

 

[marrec]

As much as I hate the predatory gaming style of some F2P games, handing over a debit card to the age group that is specifically targeted by this kind of transaction is the height of ignorance.

I don't had my bank card to my son while he's watching Saturday morning cartoons.

If what is claimed is true (the transactions didn't post) then they're entitled to a refund however.

 

[Usobuko]

Sure, technically savy and trustworthy.

I had seen so many parents / grandparents who never fail to complain to anyone about their kids / grandchildren addicted to electronics devices when in actually reality, they are secretly proud that their descendants could navigate slightly better than them in this technological-driven world. Old fogies never pass up any chance to brag about these.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

For point of reference if your knee jerk reaction to this story is "wow fuck google and fuck f2p"

 

[travisbickle]

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

Oh shit, better change my passwords!

 

[Hans.Gruber]

This is why these exist

Yup. I'm not victim blaming here (f2p games especially target lower-income households, where IT knowledge is often pretty small and money for a dedicated device is short), but kids that young must never receive a blank check or VISA either.
Hope Google cuts them a deal!

 

[Visualante2]

Obviously take the side of the mother here, but I have to imagine that there is more to it than a simple game error. Either way Google put their foot in it with the happy thoughts bullshit. They're gonna have to cough up a partial refund, in particular the repeat payments.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The issue here is that the kid hasn't got what he paid for, or at least claims thus. He "didn't realise" he was spending the money because he wasn't getting what he was supposedly paying for and so assumed he wasn't being charged.

If that's the legit truth, I don't see any issue with the parenting. Anyone would click again if they thought a transaction hadn't gone through, child or not.

Yeah, shouldn't the publisher be at fault for a broken f2p system? If I buy virtual currency, my virtual wallet should swell or you ripped me off.

 

[Lanrutcon]

Parent is naive, kid is manipulative, company can only do so much.

 

[grumble]

I'm sorry, is there supposed to be sympathy here somewhere?
I see a dumb ass parent who needs a lesson taught and this seems like a start.
The kid can not magically input bank information without an adult giving it to them or helping them, so it aways comes back to the adult being a dumb ass and not reading or taking the time to look into what their child is doing.

NO, google should not refund them.
That is asinine.

If Google refunds it, it just keeps happening because someone can always keep pointing to these instances.
Take ownership of your idiocy, and be responsible for your own screw ups unlike most of society these days who always try and find an out or someone else to blame.

Didn't read the op? There was a technical error with the store.

 

[The Boat]

As for most of you going "transactions are infallible google is my god, the Kid is a LIAR. I know because I was an 11 year old once." /s

It happens.

I find it highly unlikely that purchases weren't showing up for different apps during two months.

 

[ICKE]

This would not fly in Nordic countries, citizens can not waive their consumer rights and young people can not make such purchases with credit cards.

Mom should definitely be refunded. Also F2P advertisement is deceptive when everything revolves around these transactions (especially so when young children and mobiles are involved). I asked about this from the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, they said that Apple and Google have promised to comply with the European norms so one would expect them to come around.

EDIT : They were already refunded. Good

 

[CouchMaster]

A password should be enough. It should be impossible to guess by a fucking 8 year old. That's why people need to be educated about password security instead of picking shitty passwords ("but they're so easy to remember!").

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

Dammit I thought qwerty was not so common.

 

[mclem]

Didn't read the op? There was a technical error with the store.

Careful: they are *claiming* there was a technical error. If there was, they absolutely should be refunded. But we only have their word for that.

 

[maxiell]

Did no one read the article? Google already refunded the family.

Google spokeswoman told Guardian Money that having looked at Nick and Penny’s case again, it would now be refunding the family.

 

[Palette Swap]

Careful: they are *claiming* there was a technical error. If there was, they absolutely should be refunded. But we only have their word for that.

To be fair, they were refunded by Google (minus the bank charges) :

A Google spokeswoman told Guardian Money that having looked at Nick and Penny’s case again, it would now be refunding the family – but it will not be refunding the bank charges incurred. It is still trying to work out what exactly happened.

It's just that OP is missing some pretty important info in its quotes.

Edit: well, beaten.

 

[Diablohead]

A password should be enough. It should be impossible to guess by a fucking 8 year old. That's why people need to be educated about password security instead of picking shitty passwords ("but they're so easy to remember!").

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

I'm not sure how he guessed her password but I know for sure it was not anything like that, most likely a string of names or items.

I disagree with you, there should be server side caps on buying IAP to stop £500 being spent in such a short time.

Careful: they are *claiming* there was a technical error. If there was, they absolutely should be refunded. But we only have their word for that.

I once bought some skins for mass effect 2 on xbox live and it errored out and took my microsoft points, I had to talk to someone for an hour for them to refund me the coin because on their end the transaction went through.

 

[jimi_dini]

These are the actual most common passwords out there

3. 12345

1, 2, 3, 4, 5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

 

[SwordStruck]

"I can’t believe that Google don’t have processes in place to stop this happening."

Well, I'm not sure what she expected after giving an 11 year old free reign over her credit card. Even if there was a technical error there was a huge mistake on her part.

 

[ArtHands]

To be fair, they were refunded by Google (minus the bank charges) :

It's just that OP is missing some pretty important info in its quotes.

Edit: well, beaten.

Google refunded for goodwill sake at the moment. They are investigating, but seeing how ridiculous that the parent has been acting so far, its a small loss to quickly end the matter there.

The 'technical glitch' is just the family's shaky claim here thus far. To quote the lady in the article, they "suspect that when nothing happened he kept clicking ‘buy’", which means there's no firm acknowledgement of a technical glitch from their side as well.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

A password should be enough. It should be impossible to guess by a fucking 8 year old. That's why people need to be educated about password security instead of picking shitty passwords ("but they're so easy to remember!").

These are the actual most common passwords out there

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345
4. 12345678
5. qwerty
6. 123456789
7. 1234

Scary, I know. And if "family member name" would be consolidated as one password, I'm sure it'd be among the most popular as well.

Why is it scary that those are the most common passwords? The unique passwords that are well made are not going to show up for that very reason, so of course these are the most common.

 

[pompidu]

Google and Apple do a shit job explaining this inapp purchase environment. I'm not saying it absolves the parents/kids for doing something like this but Google and Apple do a shit job explaining these types of "whale" systems.

 

[witchedwiz]

Technically savvy and trustworhty @11?
Golden goose kid, lal..

I wasn't allowed any sort of credit card until i hit 18 (can i go back to 18 plox?), earlier than that i had a prepaid visa electron where my parents put money on a monthly basis and where i would put the money i got from vg magazines as a minor....

Seriously f2p is bad for gamer as is for bad/disinterested parents

 

[King_Moc]

I still find it amazing that it's even possible to spend this kind of cash on these incredibly simple mobile games. The Witcher 3 cost me £30 for all of it. It makes no sense at all.

Still, the kid's 11, he should know better.

 

[Spwn]

I understand the company's stance if they refuse to refund. It would open the flood gates of people who would abuse the goodwill by trying to get refunds after getting their fill of a f2p game by claiming all the purchases were made by their kid.

I do sympathize the parents, though. My mom was very trusting of me ordering stuff online back in the day with her card. I know she would've been devastated if I ever abused that trust.

 

[jay]

Funny thread. You can easily tell who read all of the OP and who did not.

 

[Copenap]

I'm not sure how he guessed her password but I know for sure it was not anything like that, most likely a string of names or items.

I disagree with you, there should be server side caps on buying IAP to stop £500 being spent in such a short time.

I'm not sure where you're going with this but I can assure you that it was either a dumb password or she told it to him but didn't remember otherwhise he would not have known it. You cannot simply guess passwords, we're not living in a hollywood movie.

To your second point, why do you need to make it more inconvenient for people to spend the money who also want to only because there is a small amount of naive parents thinking their kids are different or rather nit thinking at all.

Now if you're thinking in the direction of addictiveness prevention, that's more reasonable.

 

[Maximus P]

Who didnt read the OP

Elobarate

Penny says £3,000 was paid to Google Play over a two-month period

On 2 March alone, 21 payments of £3.99 and a further nine of £1.49 disappeared from Penny’s account. The next day Nick tried again to buy the credits and the same thing happened – with 18 payments being made to Google. A week later 27 payments of between £2.99 and £6.99 were all debited.

1 week they account for £300 tops so when did the rest get taken?

 

[Astrates]

No excuse for ignorance in my opinion.

 

[Molemitts]

As silly as it was for the parent, no one deserves to lose £3K for a harmless mistake. I seriously hope no one here actually thinks they deserve to lose that kind of money.

 

[kswiston]

I still find it amazing that it's even possible to spend this kind of cash on these incredibly simple mobile games. The Witcher 3 cost me £30 for all of it. It makes no sense at all.

Still, the kid's 11, he should know better.

Virtual currency and P2W (or pay to progress quickly) tactics. You can do the same thing in FIFA or any of EA's other sports titles.

 

[Diablohead]

I'm not sure where you're going with this but I can assure you that it was either a dumb password or she told it to him but didn't remember otherwhise he would not have known it. You cannot simply guess passwords, we're not living in a hollywood movie.

To your second point, why do you need to make it more inconvenient for people to spend the money who also want to only because there is a small amount of naive parents thinking their kids are different or rather nit thinking at all.

Now if you're thinking in the direction of addictiveness prevention, that's more reasonable.

Well I did say it was most likely a string of names but it wasn't 1234 or abc she's not exactly dumb.

The negativity in here against parents is brutal, i'm out.

 

[Kinyou]

That f2p games have no limits is kind of scary. Probably a ton of people out there who ruined themselves with those.

 

[Pancakes R Us]

"Like thousands of other parents"...?

I'm sure thousands of parents hand over their debit card details to their 11 year olds. Yeah, right.

 

[KiDdYoNe]

It's kids and money, this never goes well. I had my thing with "ringtones from magazines" back in the day, but it was about $10 or so. Lesson learnt tho.

Also, these times this can happen every day. If you want to make your kid happy, there's always virtual cards where you can put the right ammount.

 

[Skux]

But did he win at Clash of Clans? This is the only way to find out of it's pay-to-win or not.

 

[Kubera Leez]

Parents need to monitor their kids activities as well as not allow them access to their credit card info. It is unfortunate, but the parents should have been more responsible.

 

[Somnid]

I think there need to be default limits, like if you're spending a couple hundred dollars in a short amount of time they need to enforce a cooldown or require some sort of additional check to override it because that's usually indicative of fraudulent behavior.

 

[UrbanRats]

If the transactions were broken and seemed like they didn't go through, they should give the money back, good parenting or not.

I'm really puzzled by some of the answers in here.

I think there need to be default limits, like if you're spending a couple hundred dollars in a short amount of time they need to enforce a cooldown or require some sort of additional check to override it because that's usually indicative of fraudulent behavior.

This, too.