Help needed fast!!

fedupparent

windup wrote: »

sell the xbox, pay the man.

you seriously want to dob your own son in it, fraud/police/blame/victims... he's a kid, they make mistakes, it's upto you to guide him.

Bailing out is something you may do for 20-30-40 somethings, not 10-12's.

As I've already stated I am not reporting him to the police.......you do realise the police aren't just out to get us all don't you??? They are happy to go into schools and talk to children about the consequences of crime......i'm simply requesting they have a chat with him. Maybe if we weren't all so scared to hold our children to account these dats the kids of today would have more respect and not disrespect other people and their property with out any regard for the law, just saying

Ben8282

It is not your responsibility to check the second hand xbox to see if somebody had left their credit card details in it. I have no knowledge of Xbox's so I have no idea if the credit card details were actually left in the box or if the box was left signed in to some sort of online account containing their credit card details. Either way though, it is their responsibility.
Did your son actually realise what he was doing? In all probability he thought 'that's nice it's letting me .... (whatever the xbox let him do that he couldn't do before)' without giving much thought to why it was letting him do it.
If you did not personally know the people who sold you the xbox, say you had purchased it in a second hand shop, you would probably have never found out what had happened except that the paid features would just stop working one day when the card started to be declined.
The fact that you know these people personally obviously makes things difficult. I would suggest that you make it very clear to them that what happened was a result of an accident. The xbox was left signed in and it just kept letting your son do things without paying and nobody realised why etc. I don't know if I would offer to pay them or not in this situation; that would depend on a lot of things.
I would like to say again that in your situation I would not choose to take my son to the police.

fedupparent

Thanks again ben,
my only reason to contact our local cso was to teach son how serious this whether we are liable or not. I'm now driving myself to distraction....hence can't sleep thta it will somehow get him a record. i spoke with them on monday and they said they'd be happy to have a stern chat with him, i asked if this would result in anything and they said no as long as a offence hadnt been reported by victim...whose probably liablenanyway, please excuse typing,,trying to do it in the dark as oh asleep not sure whatbto so now as he knows he has an appointemnt at 3:30 tommorrow

Person_one

Your son stole £300 from somebody.

The right and moral thing to do, no question about it, is to give them their £300 back. How you do that is up to you, can you return all of son's Christmas presents? Can he do some work that saves you money over the next months/year and pay in instalments if they'll accept that?

If somebody had left £300 cash sitting unguarded and your son took it, would you still think it was their fault and you shouldn't have to give it back? Its not really any different in terms of the rights and wrongs. The card companies may put a burden of responsibility on the card holder to protect their details (that's to protect the company and minimise their exposure to losses) but that doesn't change the fact that theft is completely the fault of the thief.

I know its rotten to be stung with this unexpectedly, but you are responsible for your son, stealing is stealing and could you live with yourself if you didn't sort this properly? I couldn't.

Voyager2002

The FSA has already given the correct advice: the holder of the credit card that was fraudulently used should report it as fraud, and will be reimbursed. If you want to be nice to them you can write the letter for them to explain what happened, but that is up to you.

The person liable is a child, and so the law cannot do anything either to make him suffer or to take the money back from him. So the limit of your responsibility is to cooperate fully by explaining what happened, as you have done. Neither you nor the holder of the Tesco credit card have any obligation to pay for the 'stolen' games.

Nebulous2

I don't understand what your 12 year old son has or hasn't got for technology? In your original post you say:-

'my 12 year old found the powerline I had bought ready for his new xbox1 at xmas.'

I think it is that xbox, planned for his Christmas, which another poster suggested you should sell.

If you are talking about somebodys grandparent, then it may well be that they didn't appreciate what an online account could do. Lots of people sell computers without deleting all the account information.

What they needed to do though, was raise a case with their credit card as soon as it occurred, rather than refer back to you. That is what would have happened if they had sold it to a stranger.

Their credit card company would then have done one of several different things; insisted on a fraud case being opened, agreed to wipe the charges or argued that the card owner had some liability and continued to try and charge them.

Unfortunately now that the credit card owner knows what has happened (how did they find out?) these options really are not the same. The credit card holder cannot, honestly, go to the credit card company and say there are transactions they know nothing about.

Fundamentally though you have hit one of the great dilemmas of parenting. You cannot trust your son and he has repeatedly shown that. A very harsh response will leave him angry and resentful. A light touch reinforces the view that he has got 'off' with it. You need to find a middle way which does neither.

Facing up to what he has done in some way would be a good start. Does he have any money / savings of his own? One possibility is making him hand it over and apologise to the person who has lost out. If they live nearby, getting him to wash the person's car once a week for an agreed period of time might also be possible.

There also seem to be very blurred or confused boundaries about ownership that need to be resolved. What makes him think he can take a cable he finds in the house and use it? Why did he think it was okay to use his brothers xbox? An apology to his brother would also be in order.

Those are just a few suggestions. You need several different strands to your approach that reinforce the cost over a period of time. I would try to solve it within the family though. I wouldn't have gone with a talk with a policeman, as that is shifting the responsibility. I don't see it doing any harm, but it needs to be only one small part of what happens next.

As far as the money is concerned there are again three main options I see:-

1. You pay it and work it out with your son.
2. The credit card owner reports what has happened, goes to action fraud and the police and that then unfolds as it will.
3. You don't pay, the person doesn't report it, and they carry the cost. That is likely to damage relationships with the people who sold you the xbox in the first place.

All-in-all you are in a difficult place and you have my sympathy, but it needs to be dealt with thoroughly now, rather than continuing to dog your son and by extension yourelves for years. Getting off with taking from somebody else's credit card at 12 is just about possible. It could be harder at 15 and much harder at 18 or 21.

RichL74

I wouldnt give him his new Xbox One to be honest and return that to the store and use the money to attempt to reimburse the stolen money.

If you cant be that horrible at least dont give it him for Christmas make him sweat.

Also, hide all your credit cards, the Xbox One has wireless internet capabilities built in, so God knows what you are going to do save changing all the router and log in passwords...

Robin9

I am sure your son is learning a lesson the hard way.

Do continue with the appointment at the Police Station but follow it up with some penalty at home - perhaps hold back half of his pocket money

SnooksNJ

fedupparent wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.
As you said 12 year olds know what they are doing and the 'informal' chat with a PC will hopefully make him see you can't break the law and just get away with it, as mom and dad will bail you out.
My biggest problems aside of the irresposibility and selfishness of my son is that I don't have that kind of money and surely some blame must be appointed to the card holder as in the eyes of xbox they authorised transactions by leaving their card details on there aftervselling it and without any parental security. I'm angry with my son but i'm also miffed they can leave their card open like that and expect no comeback.
Also when he did it naively the first time on oh cc barcley card opened an investigation with microsoft with no comeback on our son our us so why should it be any different this time?

He didn't. His child, the seller, didn't delete the information.
If I did this my parents would be mortified and there would be no question who was at fault. As such I would be babysitting like forever to pay this back. Now in 2015 it's Microsoft's fault, it's the Grandfather's fault who probably doesn't know the difference between pong and Assassin's Creed. For the child who stole twice to play xbox games here's a new Xbox for Christmas.
I hope you got him a good bundle.

DCFC79

You could have removed the profile from the console or did a format. I'm not saying the grandparent is innocent as yes they did leave the card details linked to the account.