Family hit with $3,100 App Store bill after kid goes on Roblox spending spree
A 10-year-old child spent over $3000 on Roblox via the family iPad, charges applied after the child changed the account password.
Roblox in the App Store
Stories of excessive spending in a game by a child regularly surface, with parents complaining about the seemingly unjust charges. In the latest iteration, a 10-year-old managed to run up a bill of more than 2,500 pounds ($3,115) on the game Roblox, without her mother's knowledge.
Georgina Munday of Dyserth, Denbighshire, UK, had allowed her autistic daughter to play on an iPad for long periods, due to struggling in school, reports BBC News. Soon after, she started to see the transactions, and initially believed that the account had been hacked.
"We'd just seen hundreds of transactions, these payment confirmations, so then the panic set in - oh my gosh, whose card is this on?" the mother told the report.
Munday spent a week going between Tesco Bank and Apple to try and get a refund, but both sides refused.
"I rang up Tesco Bank and they said, because it was my daughter, they couldn't do anything about it," Minday said. "So I tried Apple again - they just read me their terms and conditions."
After contacting the BBC, Tesco Bank said she would receive a refund. The bank said there was a "further review" of the case that prompted the refund, and added an additional payment as a gesture of goodwill on top of an apology.
In responding to the story, Apple reiterated previous advice that accounts can have alerts set up so parents could be warned before a purchase could be made. Also, they said that parents should not disclose passwords, avoid adding their child to Face ID and Touch ID, enable Ask to Buy, and to use Screen Time.
Roblox said it "has a robust policy for processing refund requests where there may have been unauthorized payments from a person's account." Parents also have access to parental controls that can limit spending and to issue spend notifications for "increased visibility.
Munday is not keen on allowing her daughter to play the game in future, but admitted while she knew what she was doing in changing the password, "I don't think she understood the enormity of it." The mother asked parents to "be vigilant" and to take note of what children do on their devices.
View our guide on how to set up Screen Time and parental controls on iPhone and iPad.
Read on AppleInsider
Roblox in the App Store
Stories of excessive spending in a game by a child regularly surface, with parents complaining about the seemingly unjust charges. In the latest iteration, a 10-year-old managed to run up a bill of more than 2,500 pounds ($3,115) on the game Roblox, without her mother's knowledge.
Georgina Munday of Dyserth, Denbighshire, UK, had allowed her autistic daughter to play on an iPad for long periods, due to struggling in school, reports BBC News. Soon after, she started to see the transactions, and initially believed that the account had been hacked.
"We'd just seen hundreds of transactions, these payment confirmations, so then the panic set in - oh my gosh, whose card is this on?" the mother told the report.
Munday spent a week going between Tesco Bank and Apple to try and get a refund, but both sides refused.
"I rang up Tesco Bank and they said, because it was my daughter, they couldn't do anything about it," Minday said. "So I tried Apple again - they just read me their terms and conditions."
After contacting the BBC, Tesco Bank said she would receive a refund. The bank said there was a "further review" of the case that prompted the refund, and added an additional payment as a gesture of goodwill on top of an apology.
In responding to the story, Apple reiterated previous advice that accounts can have alerts set up so parents could be warned before a purchase could be made. Also, they said that parents should not disclose passwords, avoid adding their child to Face ID and Touch ID, enable Ask to Buy, and to use Screen Time.
Roblox said it "has a robust policy for processing refund requests where there may have been unauthorized payments from a person's account." Parents also have access to parental controls that can limit spending and to issue spend notifications for "increased visibility.
Munday is not keen on allowing her daughter to play the game in future, but admitted while she knew what she was doing in changing the password, "I don't think she understood the enormity of it." The mother asked parents to "be vigilant" and to take note of what children do on their devices.
View our guide on how to set up Screen Time and parental controls on iPhone and iPad.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Wish the banks and Apple would kick the can down to Roblox more, it's their shittiness that is really enabling these situations to arise. What kids game needs $3000 worth of consumables?
It would be the right thing to do.
If the mom gave her kid the credit card and as a result they bought £2500 of candy on Amazon (or at Tesco - it's also a grocery), nobody would think to blame the candy company or Amazon.
Or the child used the Amazon app or Instacart to buy stuff. Those apps don't have additional protections when making purchases if the credit card is on file, and a kid could just as easily spend thousands. Parents need to figure out these risks before handing the devices over to their kids.
This is a problem with iOS. It's set up to be a single use device, yet people purchase them as family devices. This encourages, if not requires sharing AppleIDs and passwords instead of the proper method of each user having their own ID and password.
Granted, when using a shared device, I typically recommend creating a separate 'family' AppleID that has all of the restrictions in place that requires adult approval for purchases, etc. However, since Apple doesn't have a system in place for family use of an iPad, this puts it more on the onus of the family to come up with this sort of solution. It also means that anyone with access to the iPad can change the password on that AppleID on that pad, including the 10 year old using it.
The AppleTV used to be the same problem. Recently, they've added family features into the device. It's about time that the iPad got the same treatment.
For family AppleIDs, Apple really should let families set things up they way they do with business and school accounts. The parents then could have control of the children AppleIDs, being able to reset passwords, lock devices, etc.
https://www.ssmhealth.com/treffert-center/conditions-treatments/savant-syndrome#:~:text=Savant%20syndrome%20is%20a%20rare,childhood%2C%20or%20even%20in%20adults.
for the sake of all our sanities* can you please add guest accounts to iOS and iPadOS to parents / admins don't have to give out the passcode or worse just leave devices unsecured for various reasons.
Even just an always on Home Screen that has apps that can be used unlocked.
Oh and while touching on kiosk uses for business away to put a web app into kiosk mode without writing a wrapper app would be good.
*not an issue generally I don't have little people I'd trust with my password
Edit to add:
We should be able to have "Device Severance" to complete that us offline from work comms while not at work.