Apple IPad App - Mall Girl - Costing £250 a week

tkd2013

I recently bought an Apple IPad for my wife to use. I accepted that she and my daughter would download apps within reason both for work and pleasure and some of them would incur some manageable costs.
My daughter downloaded one called Mall Girl by the developer Toy Box. It purported to be free, but as the games went on, it must have certain features that incur costs. As we had registered my wife's debit card to pay for some of the apps, when my daughter clicked on a continuation of the game, the continuous payments kept going through.
I check the bank statements regularly, but didn't see anything untoward in a couple of Apple charges appearing on the statement. However, a couple of days later, I noticed there were six transactions in one period. When I checked the e mail receipts that Apple were sending to my wife's e mail account, there were 17 for Mall Girl totalling £250 in a seven day period.
I contacted Apple who told me to go back to my bank if I wanted the continuous payments stopped. I spoke to the bank who told me they could not stop Apple taking money from the account and that the only option was to stop the card.
The reason I'm posting is that I don't want this horrible situation to happen to anybody else. There are a variety of ways this could happen. The most likely is that my 9 year old daughter got carried away with the game and didn't know that actual money was needed to reach the different levels of the game.
Two of the others are quite unpalatable. One is that Apple and Toy Box are complicit in exploiting the continuous payment method on their apps to deliberately mislead people about what is being charged for. You only realise when your bank statement comes that you are paying 100s of pounds a week for an app and by that time the damage is well and truly done.
The other is that the Apple account has been hacked with the knowledge that the bank can't stop payments going out of your account.
Please be careful with this Apple apps.

vuvuzela

The bank lied to you. They definitely can stop a continuous payment authority - the rukles changed in 2009. See http://www.fsa.gov.uk/consumerinformation/product_news/banking/know_your_rights/payments for details, specifically "In most cases, regular payments can be cancelled by telling the company taking the payments. However, you have the right to cancel them directly with your bank or card issuer by telling it that you have stopped permission for the payments. Your bank or card issuer must then stop them – it has no right to insist that you agree this first with the company taking the payments."

Also see the Payment Services Regulations 2009. Reg 55:
(3) The payer may withdraw its consent to a payment transaction at any time before the point at which the payment order can no longer be revoked … (4) …the payer may withdraw its consent to the execution of a series of payment transactions at any time with the effect that any future payment transactions are not regarded as authorised for the purposes of this Part.

fluffnutter

Firstly, your bank is lying to you. They do have the ability to cancel continuous payment authority. They're not liable for any charges already made, but they can prevent more being taken.

Go back to your bank and tell them that, in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations of 2009, they must prevent a CPA if their customer asks them to do so. If they're still reluctant advise them that this has been featured in many consumer rights forums recently; The Guardian, Money Box on R4, You and Yours on R4, Which magazine to name a few.

Secondly, sorry to say it, but perhaps your daughter is too young for unsupervised internet access.

poppy_f1

you can disable in app purchases in the settings on the ipad so this doesnt happen

Kingsd316

No child of any age should have access to your apple store password otherwise you are just asking for trouble!

meer53

fluffnutter wrote: »

Firstly, your bank is lying to you. They do have the ability to cancel continuous payment authority. They're not liable for any charges already made, but they can prevent more being taken.

Go back to your bank and tell them that, in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations of 2009, they must prevent a CPA if their customer asks them to do so. If they're still reluctant advise them that this has been featured in many consumer rights forums recently; The Guardian, Money Box on R4, You and Yours on R4, Which magazine to name a few.

Secondly, sorry to say it, but perhaps your daughter is too young for unsupervised internet access.

These aren't really CPA's though are they ? They're payments which are authorised by whoever is playing the game on the Ipad, individual purchases, confirmed each time one is made. They're not regular payments for a service.

fluffnutter

meer53 wrote: »

These aren't really CPA's though are they ? They're payments which are authorised by whoever is playing the game on the Ipad, individual purchases, confirmed each time one is made. They're not regular payments for a service.

Aah, then it's all down to preventing the daughter from going crazy on the iPad then... sorry, OP, if she's paying per play then she needs to be better educated in precisely how much she's costing her dad.

InsideInsurance

Need to look at what really is happening. In the normal situation they are CPA.

The purchases are made via Apple and Apple charge at regular intervals using their CPA you given when you register your card with them.

If the device is jailbroken then matters are different because the apps themselves arent restricted by Apple and so can allow direct in app purchases which may or may not be via a CPA