Dangers of in app purchases and your children..

[Butters78]

Sorry mods that I'm posting this here but I just wanted to get the word out.

As some of you may know my son is autistic. We got him an iPad to play with and for learning apps to help with his speech and other skills. Most of the apps we get for him are free of course. Little games for him to play. The other day I was searching apps for him and found a penguin race type game for him. I installed it with my password of course and let him go at it. Last night I checked my bank balances online. I always do this just incase of fraud etc. Low and behold there is a pending charge for 27.05!

After spending an hour or so the phone with tech support I had to call back today with the order number and luckily they will refund it. I googled this issue and some people were charged literally thousands of dollars. Their children had no idea they were charging their parents credit cards.

It was for 30 extra coins whatever the hell they are for.

Here is what you do with the apple products. Go to settings, then restrictions. You can set the restrictions to not allow in app purchases. I never knew about this. I thought to purchase anything I had to put my password in.

 

[JBL-37]

My 5 year old son did the same thing. Racked up about 45 dollars before I found out. I hate those kinds games, and there are a lot of them.

I was under the same belief, you had to add your password to finalize the deal... Nope, lesson learned.

 

[crxess]

Just remember, you will always have the right to refund. It is illegal to contract any transaction with a minor.
Their catch is people paying without checking on purchases.

Same issue for Year with the phone companies. Their excuse was Government mandated equal right to providers. Nope, I didn't rewuest I'm not liable to pay. Always refunded!

While this may not belong here, I'm glad you posted. A few may learn something new.

 

[Zealous]

It's not just ipads that have this problem. My kids have kindles & my son spent hundreds of $$ of our money in 1 12 hour period (where he got the tablet without our knowledge & spent the night playing games) without knowing he was buying things with real $$. Amazon did refund the money & then told us exactly how to set the settings so this would not happen again. With the kindles this was not a simple process of setting the devices so they wouldn't allow in app purchasing. We also had to change some settings on the Amazon website itself. Now though they also have password protection on everything so in order to spend a dime they have to enter a password which I change frequently (since they're clever & would figure it out lol). Lesson learned.

 

[bhswmc01]

I know that for my tablet & phone, I can choose whether or not a password is required for in-app purchases. This is on Android, but you'd think there would the option for Apple as well?!

 

[jefsview]

This should be in The Lounge. It is not vaping related.

 

[ta2dave76]

Butters my stepson has also has autism. He did the same thing when I let him play AngryBirds on my phone. Went from the free trial to every full paid version they have!!!

One of his favorite things though is Little Big Planet 1 & 2, and the LBP Karting on the PS3. He can create levels and racetracks and all kinds of crazy stuff. Ive often said Id like to spend a day inside his head.

The LittleBig Planet games lets me know what he's thinking alot of the times. Other times its like wth is this!!! Lol!

And AngryBirds Star Wars is pretty bad a**. Couldnt get mad over that one!

 

[Butters78]

This should be in The Lounge. It is not vaping related.

Not everyone goes to the lounge and I wanted people to see it before it got moved. I'm not daft.

 

[Ken_A]

I don't know about the android, but if you are logged int the Game Center on the iPad, you do not need a password for in-app purchase. 4 months of searching, and I have not been able to get rid of it.

 

[CommaHolly]

holy cow,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

when my kids were young, the scariest option was renting a movie on cable for 3.00,,,,,,,,,sheesh.

 

[Oomee]

Butters my stepson has also has autism. He did the same thing when I let him play AngryBirds on my phone. Went from the free trial to every full paid version they have!!!

My nephew did same thing with angry birds .
Gotta watch it as "micro transaction" is the new sales model for games . This is far from limited to angry birds , full FPS shooters now allow you to spend cash (pay to win is the disparaging name players gave it) .

 

[crxess]

Sitting here Vaping on my Sigelei #20 with Strong Mocha and reading up on interesting Forum post.
Relaxing way to spend a rainy day.

Now is it General forum related?

What did you do as you Vaped today?

 

[Butters78]

Sitting here Vaping on my Sigelei #20 with Strong Mocha and reading up on interesting Forum post.
Relaxing way to spend a rainy day.

Now is it General forum related?

What did you do as you Vaped today?

I was vaping during this whole scenario so it is vaping related ha.

 

[CommaHolly]

I vaped so my blood pressure wouldn't rise at just the THOUGHT of my kids doing that,,,,

OTOH, I remember my 3 year old sister making a call to Germany when she was a baby,,,,,,,,,,cost my parents about 60 bucks at the time (roughly 1980)

 

[degnr8]

I used to work for Verizon and would get calls on this issue all the time, sometimes for thousands of dollars. We would always refund the charges the first time and advise the customer to put a data block on the line. If they refused the data block they would be responsible for future charges.

 

[Uno mas]

Moved thread to appropriate Forum....