An 8 year old spent £8500 on the Apple app store(Guardian)

[Eyerollexpert]

In the Guardian on a problem page.
An 8 year old girl has her own iPhone and Apple ID and over 90 days spent £8500 . The parents didn't realise their HSBC debit card was linked to her iPhone. She was not aware she was spending real money.
Long story short parents were eventually refunded.
I canndecide which part of this is the most ridiculous an I year old having an iPhone or having £8500 in a current account that you don't need to check the balance for 90 days???
I live in a different world I think.

Can't decide which is more ridiculous 8 year old .....

Some people are twats. An iPhone costs a fortune and they've given one to a child under 10. I doubt they safeguard her phone use or they'd know what she was doing.

Fuck knows what she's seeing online or speaking to.

Do they want to adopt another child? I need a new phone.

If it's an old iPhone you can get them quite cheaply. I got one as a swap for some vinyl records I didn't want.

And it's possible they didn't have 8.5k in the bank. The account might have gone massively overdrawn and unauthorized overdrafts are expensive. If it's not a main account they might not think to check it.

The banks anti-money laundering should have kicked in if is was a otherwise non-active account and being overdrawn by 8.5k.

They were lucky that they were refunded the full amount. Doesn’t always happen.

I've got accounts I don't use much, but they're not non-active.

Arguably the bank should have suspected fraudulent activity on this account though with that pattern of activity. But they don't seem to have done.

What on earth did she buy that cost that much?

Kind of ridiculous that they got refunded! They should have been keeping an eye on their child's phone use. Cards don't magically link up with phones - they set that up.

I think if there is more than one such charge companies should say no to refunds. Where does parental responsibility come in?

Your account is non-active but not inactive as you have another account you pay for food and other bills.
You may have a few transactions but they will likely be to a very small number of accounts and over 3-4 years have a pattern.

So if your account suddenly started transferring to a single account and is a techically classic fraud like pattern the system should flag and stop the card
Or at least begun to bounce the transactions if it was running up an overdraft.
I am assuming the account did some of the 8.5k

Or check what your child is up too.
Could be more serious with online use .

They clearly added the card and the kids spent without checking each time.

The fact that an 8 year old has smart phone is ridiculous. Shes too yoing to realise it was real money she was spending so she therefore too young to have a smart phone. It's quite scary actually. My daughter is 8 and no way would I trust apps and other i older individuals not to take advantage of her.

It is ridiculous that she raked up that amount however my daughter would do the same as I don't think they understand the value of money at 8 especially when apps have in app purchases to make the games better.

I sell on ebay and vinted and you wouldn’t believe how many parents message saying their kid bought XYZ and can they be refunded please.

I’m surprised they got refunded as in-app purchases tend to come up with a message or price indication, so it’s hard to believe an 8 year old didn’t know she was buying stuff with real money.

Onus is on the parents but so many of them just plead ignorance because they’re not “tech savvy” or just don’t care what their kids are doing.

The law (UK and most places) says a child can not create a contract for non-essential goods or services.

So the seller has a duty there too.
And unless the seller can prove the child had permission to use the card.
The seller would have a case if the child is using the adults account but if they have the childs age in the childs ID its down to the contract

The phrase “more money than sense” comes to mind. There are plenty of stupid careless rich people.

@AnSolas it depends whether they set her up with a child account (and also possibly lied about her age) or set it up as an adult account, doesn't it?

Happened to me years ago. DS was 9 and had an iPad which had no payment method linked to it. He occasionally received iTunes gift cards and somehow managed to overspend by 50p and Apple restricted his account until it was paid off so I linked my debit card, paid it off then unlinked it. His iPad had to be reset from a back up shortly after so I can only assume it had backed up in the few minutes the card was linked, that or Apple kept it linked somehow despite me explicitly unlinking it and double checking it was removed.

The following night he managed to spend £3000 on in-game purchases of £50 a time. Took a week but Apple refunded me after strongly encouraging me to say DS didn’t understand he was spending real money. Had to borrow money to pay my mortgage in the interim.

Indeed and if she had access to the parents IDs to edit her account data too.

Most big companies will repay as they dont need the bad PR or be the example of why the law had to be changed to regulate against their business

Very easily done especially over 90 days. You can buy £200 Robux packages with one click.

Yes, this... and the money they are refunded isn't magicked out of nowhere, it ends up costing other bank users. Total negligence on the part of the parents to give an 8 year old a phone and have no oversight of what they were doing on it, plus not checking their account for 3 months!

A fool and his money!

Ridiculous they were refunded. Piss poor parenting shouldn't be rewarded.

I thought the parents came off pretty badly in that one, they clearly had no clue what their child was doing online. But it said she'd spent money buying gifts for YouTubers/influencers, not realising it was real money, and it was also pretty poor of them, as they allegedly encouraged her to spend more and more, even though they could apparently see that she was a child.

Dd spent a couple of hundred on Roblox on the iPad in a matter of two hours while I was at the hairdressers. It was linked to my Amazon account. These things happen but yep 8 year olds shouldn’t have phones