My 7 year old spent $550 in 15 minutes.

[troutman]

My 13 year old son was offered a "sponsorship" by a mountain bike company.

My son is certainly not a professional rider. It is really just a way for them to sell him stuff at a "discount". They throw in a few cheap free things.

He gets mad when I tell him he is not really being sponsored and they are just selling stuff to him.

It is a slimy marketing technique IMO.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Winnie

The problem is that many of these games are clearly designed to make it very, very easy to shell out more money. In many cases, I have a hard time figuring out whether a certain click is for something free or paid - so good luck with a young kid figuring it out. Like many folks have said, kids have racked up big charges in minutes. Even if they are having 2 hours of game time a week, this could (and does) happen very easily unless you're literally hovering over them the entire time. For me it's not really an issue about supervision (though I'm sure it is for some people), rather one about making sure to set all the proper restrictions.

At the same time, it was a great opportunity to teach my son about the internet/ITunes, etc. along with how the world is filled with people trying to separate you from your money.

I absolutely agree that many companies attempt to swindle users using confusion, not unlike a casino (which is the business model many of these developers are emulating). That being said though, to have a device in your house with children and not have it set to require a password for every purchase is playing with fire. I don't even have mine set to download free apps without a fingerprint/password from either myself or my wife. As somebody mentioned before, put the kids on the family plan so you have to authorize everything. My kids accidentally hit the buy button on tons of popups, but they're always stopped at the password.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by rubecube

F it, I'm getting a vasectomy.

good

[Byrns]

I just turn off in-app purchases. Are there apps that circumvent this?

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/...s-iphone-ipad/

[polak]

Originally Posted by troutman

My 13 year old son was offered a "sponsorship" by a mountain bike company.

My son is certainly not a professional rider. It is really just a way for them to sell him stuff at a "discount". They throw in a few cheap free things.

He gets mad when I tell him he is not really being sponsored and they are just selling stuff to him.

It is a slimy marketing technique IMO.

That's genius.

[Winnie]

Originally Posted by Russic

I absolutely agree that many companies attempt to swindle users using confusion, not unlike a casino (which is the business model many of these developers are emulating). That being said though, to have a device in your house with children and not have it set to require a password for every purchase is playing with fire. I don't even have mine set to download free apps without a fingerprint/password from either myself or my wife. As somebody mentioned before, put the kids on the family plan so you have to authorize everything. My kids accidentally hit the buy button on tons of popups, but they're always stopped at the password.

For sure - lesson learned on the passwords/restrictions, etc. In my naivete (not being familiar with the world of IPads, in-app purchases, etc.), I wasn't aware of the extent of the in-app purchases in these 'free' games. My bad for not understanding that.

It's sad that these company's business models are built on taking advantage of people rather than offering something of value. It's bordering on fraud. Apple obviously knows that it's greasy as well given how quick they are to refund people's money.

I probably sound old.

[Derek Sutton]

Originally Posted by Winnie

For sure - lesson learned on the passwords/restrictions, etc. In my naivete (not being familiar with the world of IPads, in-app purchases, etc.), I wasn't aware of the extent of the in-app purchases in these 'free' games. My bad for not understanding that.

It's sad that these company's business models are built on taking advantage of people rather than offering something of value. It's bordering on fraud. Apple obviously knows that it's greasy as well given how quick they are to refund people's money.

I probably sound old.

Everyone from restraunts to car dealerships follow a similar model. If they ask you a question and you simply say yes, you can pretty much count on paying for something, be it sweet potato fries or power tailgates. You pay for everything in the end.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Winnie

For sure - lesson learned on the passwords/restrictions, etc. In my naivete (not being familiar with the world of IPads, in-app purchases, etc.), I wasn't aware of the extent of the in-app purchases in these 'free' games. My bad for not understanding that.

It's sad that these company's business models are built on taking advantage of people rather than offering something of value. It's bordering on fraud. Apple obviously knows that it's greasy as well given how quick they are to refund people's money.

I probably sound old.

I would argue that the money is refunded because Apple realizes you're never going to buy another Apple product again and you're going to tell all your friends about the negative experience unless they fix it.

It's a tough spot to be in. On one hand, it's very easy for money to exchange hands in the Apple environment and that can result in kids and certain types of people getting hammered for money. On the other, it makes legitimate purchases that we want to make easier and more enjoyable.

The process of buying things on the phone is fairly well explained, and I don't find many people pay by accident. People certainly get prompted, and kids get tricked, but I don't think there's too many people that accidentally buy things.

Where I have a hard time with all this is where game makers enlist Casino tactics designed to prey on those with problems. The same person that will drop thousands of dollars into a VLT will likely buy thousands of dollars in "gems" in a game that doesn't ultimately yield anything. They just have a wonky circuit, and that feels wrong to me. What's more, I don't really see a way out of it. We all take responsibility for our decisions... it's not the task of the Candy Crush developers (or Apple) to be our life coaches.

[Winnie]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Everyone from restraunts to car dealerships follow a similar model. If they ask you a question and you simply say yes, you can pretty much count on paying for something, be it sweet potato fries or power tailgates. You pay for everything in the end.

It was definitely my mistake for not understanding how easy it is for kids to buy things through these apps. Obviously, once you provide your credit card info, the default setting allows people using your account the ability to buy whatever they want without approval for each purchase. Maybe it's because I don't do too much online shopping/payment, but I'm just not used to a scenario where I provide a credit card and it's open season on who can charge things to it unless I specifically state otherwise. In the case of these in-app purchases, it was my 9 year old kid that said yes to those specific purchases, not me.

If we're at a restaurant and my kid asks for 200 orders of sweet potato fries when I'm in the washroom, I would expect a restaurant for my approval when I came back to the table - not just to throw them on the tab.

I also wouldn't expect a car dealership to add power tailgates to my new truck because my kid told the sales guy that we wanted them them when I wasn't listening.

With that said, it's obviously buyer beware. I just think it's really greasy and questionable to rely on fine print and default settings to make money.To me it would make more sense if the default was that all purchases have to be approved.

[Swift]

To be fair, in those two scenarios, it's clear that a child is asking for the request. The phone doesn't know whether there's a child or an adult playing.

[Winnie]

Originally Posted by Russic

I would argue that the money is refunded because Apple realizes you're never going to buy another Apple product again and you're going to tell all your friends about the negative experience unless they fix it.

It's a tough spot to be in. On one hand, it's very easy for money to exchange hands in the Apple environment and that can result in kids and certain types of people getting hammered for money. On the other, it makes legitimate purchases that we want to make easier and more enjoyable.

The process of buying things on the phone is fairly well explained, and I don't find many people pay by accident. People certainly get prompted, and kids get tricked, but I don't think there's too many people that accidentally buy things.

Where I have a hard time with all this is where game makers enlist Casino tactics designed to prey on those with problems. The same person that will drop thousands of dollars into a VLT will likely buy thousands of dollars in "gems" in a game that doesn't ultimately yield anything. They just have a wonky circuit, and that feels wrong to me. What's more, I don't really see a way out of it. We all take responsibility for our decisions... it's not the task of the Candy Crush developers (or Apple) to be our life coaches.

I agree Russic. I'm really just referring to the scenarios with kids for the most part.

I think Apple knows that a situation where kids are racking up all sorts of charges is not right (even if they could probably legally justify it because folks clicked on 'Accept'). They even had standard refund form to fill out for these situations, which indicates how often it happens. Like you said, the same model creates a lot of convenience for people who are making legit purchases, which probably outweighs the problems in Apple's mind.

With that said, part of the problem in how the games make it so difficult to decipher the difference between free upgrades and paid upgrades. Seems to me that this is specifically aimed at deceiving kids given the nature of the games, which is (as Bubbles would say), greeeeaassssyyy.

[HotHotHeat]

I have to say that I'm amazed parents are still unaware of this risk in 2015.

[Rod Hockey]

And now I can see how he can afford this house.

http://www.businessinsider.com/minec...n-home-2014-12

[Eagle Eye]

Little off topic from the original post, but how do all you parents handle iTunes with your kids? My son is 12 and daughter is 8, how do I have separate ITunes accounts but still have the ability to see what they are doing (they get iTunes cards for birthdays now and I don't really want to combine it all into one).

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

Little off topic from the original post, but how do all you parents handle iTunes with your kids? My son is 12 and daughter is 8, how do I have separate ITunes accounts but still have the ability to see what they are doing (they get iTunes cards for birthdays now and I don't really want to combine it all into one).

I think I have the perfect solution. My wife has hers set with the kids so hers is full of the junk they buy/add. Mine is separate and uncontaminated.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

Little off topic from the original post, but how do all you parents handle iTunes with your kids? My son is 12 and daughter is 8, how do I have separate ITunes accounts but still have the ability to see what they are doing (they get iTunes cards for birthdays now and I don't really want to combine it all into one).

I mentioned it on the previous page but family sharing works awesome for our house. Boys 11 and 9. They each have accts but I approve every purchase. If they get an iTunes card they load it on their device and that's what gets billed for their individual purchase, but I still have to say yes.

It still shares content, so if I have purchased a song or an app they can access it, and vice versa. Between themselves too.
The protection is it is still subject to restrictions on the device settings - ie if they can't download explicit songs by their device settings, then I can't accidentally say yes

Hope that helps

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Rod Hockey

And now I can see how he can afford this house.

http://www.businessinsider.com/minec...n-home-2014-12

Minecraft is getting a bit of an unfair bad rap in this thread. For the record, there are no in app purchases in Minecraft.

Probably the OP's kid bought minecraft and then within 15 minutes bought stuff in other games or bought other games.

[MillerTime GFG]

Yes, that is correct and I meant to clarify. He downloaded some other game, which he then bought all the add ons for. It wasn't Minecraft where the charges were incurred.

[sharkov]

This happened once with one of those Kardashian games. I don't think the parents got their money back in that case.

[Wormius]

I was lucky and my son only spent $15 on his hand-me-down iPod because I had an old credit card attached to my iTunes account. I quickly removed all of my credit card information and set up restrictions that require any app store or iTunes downloads to have to be approved by me.