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Question, and perhaps a warning regarding mobile billing

Hi, sorry but this is going to take some explaining!

I am the account holder of a fairly widespread mobile family plan on EE. I have on it myself, my partner, my 9 year old daughter, my 10 year old son, and my partner's 11 year old son. 

The children's phones all have caps of £0 so they can't go over any charges. 

An incident has occurred however, with my daughter. Somehow, she claims accidentally (though that remains in contention and she is being dealt with accordingly), she has managed to set up the phone account as a payment method on the Google Play store, and, hold your hats, has spent a whopping £235 on Roblox, in probably as many as 60 little transactions. This all happened over the course of the last month, so I wasn't aware until the bill was paid. 

Now, yes, she's a little #### for doing it and is being dealt with and is currently banned from Roblox and phone, but, the biggest issues I have at the moment are that...

1. EE offered absolutely no security to stop this being able to happen. There was no identity checking, no notification, no contact whatsoever to me, the account holder. Further to this, since it happened, I myself have tested setting it up on my own phone on the Google play store, which worked in as little as 3 taps of a finger, and I got my partner to try it on her iPhone, she was also able to do it with no barrier, no checks, very quickly, on the Apple app store. 

And 

2. Having the £0 cap on the account made absolutely no difference, it was completely ignored.

I have since been in touch with EE about this, as I feel it is a massive failing on their part, bypassing the cap and having absolutely no security measures in place to counter the payment method being added without verification. I was basically told that the cap doesn't include mobile billing, and was completely ignored when mentioning the severe lack of security. I was offered absolutely no help with the matter, and was told by EE to contact Google Play. 

Knowing what I do about the way Google deal with their refund policies, I know I'm far beyond the time allowed to request refunds, and bearing in mind the play store credit was already spent on Roblox, which in turn was spent on Robux, which in then were spent on in game items and such, there's pretty much a minus 3000% chance of any action.

So as much as anything, let this be a warning to anyone that has a family plan with children, how easy it is for a child to either accidentally, or on purpose, make this happen. I've been stung terribly, on furlough, less money as it is, my daughter is in serious trouble, but I'm most epically annoyed that EE are holding absolutely no accountability for the failures on their end. During the call they banned any further payments being made on the child account, I don't see why that couldn't have been implemented in the £0 spend cap though, as them saying the phone is capped gives off a definite false sense of security if this can still happen!

I'll still be trying to chase up Roblox and Google but I'm not holding out any hope. Happy to hear anyone elses ideas though. 

Thank you for your time and patience.

Comments

  • PHK
    PHK Posts: 1,967 Forumite
    Seventh Anniversary 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Did you not set up Google’s parental controls on the phone that would have prevented any purchases? 
  • zagfles
    zagfles Posts: 20,969 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Chutzpah Haggler
    Shows how useless these so called "caps" are. Stick with PAYG, especially for children, these days just as good value with sensible use of bundles etc.
  • PHK said:
    Did you not set up Google’s parental controls on the phone that would have prevented any purchases? 
    For quite some time it wasn't a necessary path to take. No payment method was made available on the store in the first place, and any purchases made had been approached by using prepaid gift cards. We weren't actually aware that the phone could be set up, especially so easily, as a payment method on either the apple app store or the Google play store, particularly when we were led to believe there was a spend cap on the phone. 
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