According to a report on the UK’s Daily Mail website, an 11-year old kid managed to charge an otherwise rather impressive £1082.52 to his mom’s debit card over Xbox LIVE. And whose fault is it? Microsoft’s, obviously.
“It is ridiculous to allow someone of his age to make payments without any checks being done,” fumes Dawn Matthews, apparently blithely unconcerned that the Xbox has built-in parental control functions that disable all online activity for exactly this reason. “It is impossible to monitor everything your children do. These companies should take some responsibility. They take advantage of vulnerable people.”
It seems she’d previously registered and used her debit card to purchase her son’s Xbox LIVE subscription. Those details would have been saved to the console for future use.
However, every time her son purchased something over Xbox LIVE, he’d have had to select that card as a payment option, before confirming it. It’s kind of hard to imagine he spent over a thousand quid without realising it. Or maybe not.
“Brendan is 11 and knows his times tables but it was only when I explained to him that he realised how much money he had spent,” she says. “When I showed him he burst into tears. He unplugged the Xbox and said he didn’t want it anymore. I haven’t punished him because he feels bad enough and I know he won’t do it again.”
Uh-huh.
