Either he’s a 1%'er rich enough to not notice $4,500 worth of credit card charges over several months (in which case, why does he fucking care his son blows $4,500; it’s like pocket change to him), or he’s a goddamn idiot for not noticing that there are $4,500 worth of credit card charges being made on his card over several months.
Would additional protections be nice? Sure. But the righteous indignation act needs to go. Beyond not paying any attention to his son’s behavior (during a move, etc. etc., as a parent I get it) or his own credit card bill (???), he made the utterly boneheaded of move of tying his credit card to his son’s email address. That auto receipt is the protection.
I’m all for parental controls, especially when it come a to purchases, but he needs to man up and admit he is at least equally at fault here. The talk of class action suits is ridiculous.
LockerK
6051
Sounds like mostly the former, but a bit of the latter according to the article:
Losing $4,500 for many families would be a life-changing disaster. For us it is very upsetting and means we’ll have to tighten our belts and forego some luxuries but we will recover relatively quickly.
Not saying this isn’t an issue because you hear these stories all the time, but personally I lose a lot of sympathy for the guy if it takes him months to notice.
How on Earth can you spend that much money in the game? That seems monstrously exploitative.
stusser
6053
You can spend that much in many, many games, actually.
Like someone said earlier, MS needs to get with the program and immediately refund on complaints like this, just like Apple and Google. It isn’t worth the publicity, and they aren’t in the business of ripping off customers anyway.
It kind of doesn’t matter how many protections are offered when parents don’t actually use them.
stusser
6055
He needed to put in his credit card to purchase the game online; he didn’t realize or somehow missed that it would be associated with the account from then on. That’s not difficult to believe, or negligent on his part.
Man, my credit card company cancels my card if I so much as fart. I can’t friggin’ believe they don’t have an alert set up for this kind of spending.
stusser
6057
My card company declines charges for a $500 videocard from newegg thinking they may be fraudulent, but then when someone stole my number from a restaurant, cloned it into a fake card, and bought sporting goods equipment 1000s of miles away (which I would never in a million years purchase)-- no problem at all. No, I’m not curious why you need 6 pairs of skis, I’m sure you have your reasons. Have a nice day sir.
He worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and now works for The World Bank. He’s not a 1%, but he is well-off enough that multiple $109.00 purchases spread across months would be harder to notice. $4500.00 isn’t a handwave to him, but it’s obvious he uses his card for a lot of purchases throughout the weeks.
Anyway, I can sympathize. At the end of the day, of course it’s his fault for not noticing, but at the same time Microsoft sets things up so that making a child account is a lot more hassle than a normal one.
Razgon
6059
Like Steam, the way your card is remembered isn’t there for the convenience of the costumer, but of course so that people are easier tempted to make purchases. There’s a lot of psychology involved in both that particular setup, and the way certain games work (Going back to "Gotta get them all Pokemon), so the company does bear some fault in these cases. How much is way beyond my paygrade to set a bar for, but its a difficult conundrum for sure.
That would be easier to believe if he didn’t have his own console. Wait…he does, right? [Re-reads the article] Ah, I read “Office 365 subscription” as “Live subscription.” So maybe he’s not as familiar with the system as I thought. I guess his use of “X-box” should have been a hint.
And the more I think about it, his missing it on the credit card statement is not as unusual as it might seem. If he uses his credit card like a debit card (uses it to buy everything and then pays off the balance), I could better understand the charges flying under the radar. But that means he must have a terrible reconciliation system in his household. Time for Quicken, methinks.
Still, as much as he says that he and his wife take their share of the blame in this situation, the tone of the piece says to me that they think it is much more Microsoft’s responsibility than it is theirs. While I would agree that Microsoft’s customer service can be horrible and that the Live payment system is behind the times, I wouldn’t agree that a claim like this holds much water:
“[Microsoft] will tell you there are all sorts of parental controls available but back in the real world we all know that parents often don’t have the time or expertise to use these properly (emphasis added).”
Expertise? Maybe, if by that he means knowledge of those controls. I’m not sure how front and center Microsoft puts those these days. But time? When your credit card is involved, make the time.
I don’t find that an untrue statement. Many parents don’t understand the parental controls available on a console.
The Xbox is built around making digital consumption (free or paid) easy. If you’re not a gamer, even finding the parental controls can be difficult. Think about the parent that has no interest in gaming setting up a console for his or her kid. That parent isn’t going to dive into all the menus and settings. They’ll follow the quick setup instructions and move on.
Sorry, Telefrog, I ninja’d to make that same point.
JoshV
6063
Yeah, I’m not sure how Xbone does it’s online purchases, if it autosaves credit card info, though most sites and places have a little checkbox when you input it, something like “Save Credit Card Info for future use” or something. My general rule of thumb is, ALWAYS unclick that! I would assume the Xbone has a checkbox on it’s CC entry page for such a thing, and a parent would have to be either negligent or extremely trusting of their child if they wanted to save it to the account. Though a pop-up or something warning the user when saving the CC info and tying it to a child account doesn’t sound hard. (Or even disallowing saving CC info to juvenile account holders entirely, but that’s kind of a conflict of interest)
Anyway, guy is a Director at World Bank? That sounds like a decently lucrative position, I think they’ll be fine.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but on the 360 it was basically impossible to remove a credit card from the console itself once you added it.
stusser
6065
That’s not the point, the point is that MS shouldn’t be profiting off little kids spending thousands of dollars without their parents’ knowledge. That’s not a long-term business plan.
Shouldn’t we be shaming EA for selling essentially booster packs of FIFA guys? What do you even get in these, is it just randomly generated players or can you luck out and get a mythic rare like Pele? (Pele is the only soccer player I’ve ever heard of, apologies if he’s not even good or not even a soccer player).
The FIFA packs are a gigantic money-maker for EA. That doesn’t excuse or absolve them for essentially selling virtual CCG packs in bundles, but there is no way EA can drop them without pissing off their investors. It’s essentially free profit.
In 2013, EA made $200 million with just Ultimate Team sales. In 2014…
FIFA digital net revenue generated over $145 million in the first half of fiscal 14, an increase of over 25% compared to the first half of fiscal 13.
So this is essentially team building from booster packs. Could a guy with tons of money buy thousands of packs and make a super team? When you upgrade Fifas each year do you lose all your players?
I’m curious about this because this is what the guy who stole my Xbox account a couple years ago did with my credit card, he bought some shitty Live Arcade games and tons of FIFA packs.
