child spending money on playstation.

halibut2209

My 5 year old can work his way round a games console menu system with ease. He doesn't understand what money is. He sees a pretty picture he likes, and keeps pressing a button til it comes up.

Your theory that if you can work a menu, you can understand that you are paying real money is flawed.

powerful_Rogue

Hintza wrote: »

On a one off case that about sums it up. If the child had ongoing issues then social services would become involved.

So taking your example to the extreme - The Jamie Bulger killers didn't know what they were doing was wrong?

powerful_Rogue

halibut2209 wrote: »

My 5 year old can work his way round a games console menu system with ease. He doesn't understand what money is. He sees a pretty picture he likes, and keeps pressing a button til it comes up.

Your theory that if you can work a menu, you can understand that you are paying real money is flawed.

Theres a big difference between a 5 year old and an 8 year old.

halibut2209

That's not what you said.

"If he's capable of navigating the Playstation store and deciding what he wanted, he's capable of reading that it cost money."

powerful_Rogue

halibut2209 wrote: »

That's not what you said.

"If he's capable of navigating the Playstation store and deciding what he wanted, he's capable of reading that it cost money."

Yes, I was talking about the 8 year old as that is what this thread is about.

suki1964

Thank your lucky stars it was so little

Dgs aged 7 spent £760 on hubbies iPhone Easter Monday.

That was after hubby put his password in so be could download " free" games. Seems he needed coins to continue playing and just hit yes everytime

Thankfully apple refunded us the whole amount and taught hubbie how to protect his account

And where as DGS does know the difference between free and costing money, he didn't understand he was making purchases as said before in this post, he only understands real money and certainly doesn't understand amount higher then the notes and coins he can see

halibut2209

So an 8 year old is capable, a 5 year old isn't. Where's the boundary?

bossymoo

I'm not sure about the playstation menus but with iTunes / apple AppStore there are reams of in-app purchases and ads pop up all the time. Now my devices are password protected but I know just how easy it is for kids to just tap away without even looking, trying to get to the next thing and before you know it, a new screen has opened that wants to be paid for.

Yes children should be supervised but it's not possible to do constantly (here just press pause while I go to the loo / make a cuppa / answer the door), and yes they should be educated to not buy (even if the option isn't usually there), and no, adults should not leave their account details unlocked.

I doubt very much the boy ran up this bill on purpose, and can kind of see why the bil (if he has no children) didn't think to remove the card details. So if none of it was deliberate, and Sony won't remove / reduce the bill, then I think in this case I'd offer to go half with the bil.

I personally feel it would be unfair to punish an 8yr old boy to the tune of £200+ unless I was certain he had done it purposefully.

rustyboy21

Another worrying thing though, is what types of games has he downloaded? If the payment system has been left wide open to abuse, then have the parental controls been set? ( 18+ games bought by 8 year old)

robatwork

Hintza wrote: »

Yes we could follow your argument that the 8 year old is using the Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model to generate extra pocket money on the financial markets and is a budding criminal genius. But I suspect not.

I doubt the Giggs-Scholes model will be much more successful.