To take away DD's tablet after she ran up £180 bill on games?!

[Glittermud]

She got it for her birthday and was thrilled. We naively assumed that she was a mature and trustworthy (relatively speaking) 8 yr old. But then this morning I saw in my account that she has spent over £180 on my card buying ridiculous coins and games and characters.

We had sat her down and explained how the 'free' games worked and had told her not to even consider buying anything but to approach us first if she felt that she wanted to. She agreed and we trusted her. And now here we are.

DH has suggested confiscating it for a week or two and I am fighting the desire to take it away permanently. Am I an unreasonable hot head? What would be the best punishment?!

Yabu because it's entirely your fault for not disabling in app purchase. In all the games I know, even with it enabled you have to enter a password to confirm payment. I don't have any fancy set up either just standard

Take iPad off her, beat yourself over the head with it, take away the payment option

Absolutely yours and your husbands fault. As a pp said - did she actually know she was spending real money? Our dd has free access to a tablet/ipad and on both of them if she clicks to buy something in-app she has to put a password in and obviously, as her parents, we have not given to her.

If they're savvy enough to use and download apps, they're probably savvy enough to enter some card details if requested

You don't have to be 'savvy' to downlad an app ffs. You would have to be a majorly 'savvy' 8 year old to understand the intricacies of adding your parents debit card details to a tablet.

I'd take it away for a week and lock down the purchasing part. It's easily done, I almost accidentally bought $100 worth of coins once when I wasn't paying attention, caught it on the confirm sale...

I wouldn't take it off her altogether but I would set parental controls.
There are various options for parental control and they vary across devices but the absolute least should be a password requirement for any purchase and any purchase should send an email that you should be checking.
We also have rules over and above the controls such as they aren't allowed to download any apps without one of us checking the permissions and reviews.

I know, what a moron. It was an oversight that the in-purchase apps weren't disabled and I take FULL responsibility for that. Utterly. Idiot.

It is connected to a card because as a Kindle Fire it needed to be attached to an account to be set up and it was easy to just get it up and running.

I accept full blame. But I am surprised by the out and out lying. It's that that I am most disappointed by.

Don't link a card to it in the first place.
You can use iTunes credit instead.

I think you should take it off her for a couple of weeks. This isn't entirely her fault to be fair.

I dont understand why you would leave your card details on there? My dc do have cards linked to their account but do not know their passwords so can not purchase without me putting the pw in.

Okay, so the consensus seems to be that I am a ludicrous moron so regardless of that, what's the best punishment? Er... for her? Mine is obviously that I won't be able to afford any gold-flecked champagne this week.

You didn't supervise your child and now you want to punish her for it.

Dd has a kindle fire and an Amazon account. It has no card details on it.

She gets Amazon vouchers for Christmas and birthdays and uploads them.

There is a setting on the iPad, called in-app purchases, if you turn this off you will block the chance that any of these extras can be purchased from apps.

We learned the hard way, however Apple did refund us every penny.

The temporary ban, a talking to and removing in app purchases.

This is a well known problem.

She is 8 and won't equate money in a game with real money any more than my mature and trustworthy 8 year old would. The game isn't real so why would the money be real.

This is why you disable in app purchases. They are locked on our phones and no cards are linked to the account. I use iTunes vouchers if the DC want to purchase a game so if the worst happens and I forget to re-enable the restrictions the most I can lose is the value of the voucher.

I think the main fault is with you and your DH.

I think its your fault, sorry. She's only 8 - i should have been locked down.

I'd say take it away until she has earned back the money through chores.

x post

I think a couple of days screen ban, at most, as a punishment.

It comes down to how she got the card details. If you set up the card details on a tab and then gave it to someone else, then this is your issue. If she took your card without your knowledge and entered the details then I would be taking the tab away.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201730490

It gets worse.... this has all happened because I assumed that DH was controlling it (he set it up after all). So I'm pretty sure that that elevates me now to some kind of laughable stereotype little lady moron too.

Yay.

Take it from her for a couple of weeks, go back to factory settings so she loses everything then start again from scratch. It will hurt but it may need a lesson that'll stick.

Make sure it's locked down before giving it back.

So YOU (and your DH) have cocked up and you want to know how to punish your eight year old child because of it??

Set appropriate controls and give it back ffs

I suppose the punishment would depend on how deliberate you felt it was. Did she understand? Was it on one particular game? I found some games affect my dd's behaviour more than others so if it was one particular game that was becoming addictive, I'd remove that game altogether.