Xbox purchases made by son. What are my rights?

Money-Saving-King

DCFC79 wrote: »

We got 2 JohnnyD's posting on the thread here, 1 who joined yesterday the other who joined a number of years ago.

I recon he left his laptop on & his son changed the password for the first username so he had to create a second one.

paddyrg

Sell the XBox to pay the debt, all problems solved.

fluffnutter

At 12 years old, I'm assuming kid's old enough to know that he shouldn't be downloading stuff. Plus he must know that parental controls are usually in place too. He's not a baby - you do hear of little ones not really realising what they're doing when they make in-app purchases but I don't believe that's the case here.

OP, you got a discipline problem going on. Sorry to say it.

bod1467

DCFC79 wrote: »

We got 2 JohnnyD's posting on the thread here, 1 who joined yesterday the other who joined a number of years ago.

This was observed and commented on several hours prior to your post.

Geodark

fluffnutter wrote: »

At 12 years old, I'm assuming kid's old enough to know that he shouldn't be downloading stuff. Plus he must know that parental controls are usually in place too. He's not a baby - you do hear of little ones not really realising what they're doing when they make in-app purchases but I don't believe that's the case here.

OP, you got a discipline problem going on. Sorry to say it.

Exactly, my son is 7 and he can grasp the concept and knows not to do anything like that without asking. At 12 I reckon you should have a good enough grasp of money to know that these things cost!

Pelatage

Interesting responses.

We bought an Xbox for our 12-yo son. His account has his date of birth set up correctly. We registered a credit card onto a parental account that we had to set up using my email address. The reason we did this was to purchase an Xbox live account for him - this is an annual payment that allows him to play online games for those who don't know gaming. We also set him up an email account for him just for xbox as we expected a torrent of spam from them.

So, all set up, our son on an account as a 12-yo (i.e. we didn't set him up as an adult) was allowed to bang in a bundle of purchases. Emails were being sent to his unattended email inbox - the one we'd set up just so he wouldn't get spam (not to the account holder, i.e. me).

Now it seems people on this thread have been pretty judgmental so please try not to judge the case on the basis that kids shouldn't play games or that we should somehow have known that a 12-yo would be allowed to spend money on a child's account without my being informed. The default is that the kid can spend, not that he can't.

My son didn't buy games, he just got some points for FIFA that he thought were included as part of his xbox live account. The poor lad has been in tears ever since he realised that he's spent £331 on the account. Are you seriously blaming him for not knowing? He's offered up all his pocket money until it's paid back as he feels it's entirely his fault.

So before rushing to judgment, is it reasonable that the default setting for a 12-year-old's account is to allow them to use their parent's credit account without the parent even receiving an email to tell them that their money had been spent?

mije1983

Pelatage wrote: »

so please try not to judge the case on the basis that kids shouldn't play games

Most people haven't. Most people have said the OP should not be trying to blame Microsoft/the bank for the actions of his son. Nothing to do with him gaming or not. As one poster pointed out, it's just like giving the child his credit card and PIN and then complaining when he spends on it.

Pelatage wrote: »

So before rushing to judgment, is it reasonable that the default setting for a 12-year-old's account is to allow them to use their parent's credit account

Erm, not sure if you actually read the first post, but in it the OP admits to turning off the parental controls specifically to allow his son to buy something previously. So he was well aware of what could happen.

Is this the 3rd account by the OP by any chance?

Pelatage

mije1983 wrote: »

Erm, not sure if you actually read the first post, but in it the OP admits to turning off the parental controls specifically to allow his son to buy something previously. So he was well aware of what could happen.

Is this the 3rd account by the OP by any chance?

No, it's someone with a similar problem thinking that he might get some useful information. I didn't think it was worth starting a new thread (it's frowned on on many forums) so I posted in here.

mije1983

Pelatage wrote: »

No, it's someone with a similar problem thinking that he might get some useful information. I didn't think it was worth starting a new thread (it's frowned on on many forums) so I posted in here.

If it's different circumstances, it would be best to start a new thread.

houseimprover

Pelatage wrote: »

Interesting responses.

We bought an Xbox for our 12-yo son. His account has his date of birth set up correctly. We registered a credit card onto a parental account that we had to set up using my email address. The reason we did this was to purchase an Xbox live account for him - this is an annual payment that allows him to play online games for those who don't know gaming. We also set him up an email account for him just for xbox as we expected a torrent of spam from them.

So, all set up, our son on an account as a 12-yo (i.e. we didn't set him up as an adult) was allowed to bang in a bundle of purchases. Emails were being sent to his unattended email inbox - the one we'd set up just so he wouldn't get spam (not to the account holder, i.e. me).

Now it seems people on this thread have been pretty judgmental so please try not to judge the case on the basis that kids shouldn't play games or that we should somehow have known that a 12-yo would be allowed to spend money on a child's account without my being informed. The default is that the kid can spend, not that he can't.

My son didn't buy games, he just got some points for FIFA that he thought were included as part of his xbox live account. The poor lad has been in tears ever since he realised that he's spent £331 on the account. Are you seriously blaming him for not knowing? He's offered up all his pocket money until it's paid back as he feels it's entirely his fault.

So before rushing to judgment, is it reasonable that the default setting for a 12-year-old's account is to allow them to use their parent's credit account without the parent even receiving an email to tell them that their money had been spent?

1) The cost of the coins are shown directly below the amount purchased so I think your son probably knew more than he was letting on.
2) Is it not your responsibility to make sure that your card won't be charged?
3) Have you read the T&C's from microsoft or did you just tick the box?
4) The default setting is because you allowed it to be so.