

Ask HN: Son spent £2,500 on FIFA 14 last month - sjcsjc

A friend of ours has just discovered that her 12 year old son used her debit card details to run up a bill of around £2,500 over the last month.<p>It appears that this type of thing is not entirely unusual [0] [1].<p>It seems that this is a complicated legal situation, but from a PR and customer relations perspective I wonder if the companies involved refund this kind of expenditure in order to avoid bad publicity.<p>Does anyone know if EA Sports, Microsoft or Playstation ever issue refunds in these circumstances. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.<p>[0] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mirror.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-news&#x2F;mum-blasts-ea-sports-after-3185676<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;articles&#x2F;3pG9xRMkVTgKn0jT19KNKdV&#x2F;huge-fifa14-bills
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Someone1234
Several thoughts on this topic:

\- Cards (debit, credit, etc) are inherently insecure. When all the
information you need to make a purchase is stamped right on it and or
completely public (e.g. address).

\- "Verified by Visa" and "Mastercard securecode" help a little but they're
badly done, poorly supported, and are trivial to bypass (they also rarely work
on mobile devices).

\- This is largely a parental issue. You aren't bringing up a "good kid" if
they either A) don't understand the value of a pound, or B) do but don't care.

\- Parents often blame the companies for "allowing" this to occur after the
parents themselves knowingly added their card onto a system their kid has
unlimited spending potential on (e.g. app stores, other digital goods, even
Amazon).

\- I think it would be a nice gesture for EA to refund SOME of the money but,
frankly, the parents deserve to take some level of hit on this one.

\- Most banks suck at informing their customers about unusual activity, like
2500 pounds on digital goods over a short period(!).

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saluki
I expect they will refund . . . or you can do a charge back by contacting your
credit card company and explaining you didn't authorize the charges . . . in
the future they should think about using a pre-paid card for in game/app store
purchases . . . and explain to their son the value of money . . . maybe relate
what he spent to the mortgage or family's monthly income.

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justintbassett
If they were on Xbox, Microsoft is the first contact for this. I was able to
get a refund pretty easily after my little cousin bought a bunch of stuff on
my account.

In the future, I'd recommend a pre-paid card, like others have mentioned. It
will teach him how quickly 25 pounds can disappear even when it's only a few
quid here and there.

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1123581321
Yes, they will refund it in cases like this.

