ASN spent £200 on game refusing to refund

[MissesG]

I am teaching my sixteen year old daughter with ASN about money. She is cognitively underdeveloped and behaves as someone much younger. first she started with smaller amounts of money and less that she had to buy with now she has got her own debit card and we built up to bigger amounts which she was handling mostly well.

But one night she got carried away impulsively bought something expensive on moviestarplanet over all she spent in the region of £200 on the online game in the space of 2 months with the debit card and used up the virtual assets she got with it. I only found out when she didnt have the money to use on what it was intended for! I was expecting this sort of thing might happen, but know most places protect people against this sort of thing and thought shed have the money back soon. I checked and sure enough according to their terms, they dont accept purchases made by under 18s without parental permission, nor do they accept cards used by under 18s.

First I got her to contact the business and be honest that she had done it without my permission and used her under 18s card, with receipts of every transaction. The response she got was that all sales are final and that they will not be refunding! I sent my own email explaining to confirm, and they told me the same thing and that all sales are final and that the case is closed!

She really needs that £200. I am really disgusted and angry and have now told them she has ASN and warned them that I will be opening up a dispute with the bank. Im not sure if ive got a leg to stand on or what that entails or if moviestarplanet can still refuse to refund.

you set her up with the account and you should have supervised her spending
why should they pay you back for your inability to parent her !!

I've just stuck a programme on 4 catch up. It asked me if I was over 18..I said yes.

Funnily enough it didn't ask me to flash my passport and scan facial recognition at the TV to verify.

You're on another planet, and may I suggest if you're so worried what your DD is spending her wages on, you find an actual resposnible adult to oversee her finances.

you have NO LEG TO STAND ON

ok.

May I ask what ASN is?

What is ASN?

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT NEEDS

You've said it. You have no control over where her wages go. They're gone. If she is able to work for her own money it's not actually up to you what she does with it any more than another 16 year old.

There are NT teenagers out there who freely admit, now they're my age, that they never realised that your student overdraft wasn't actually free money!

she shouldnt have been able to tick something she should only be able to buy at 18 without proving ID

You are requiring a random internet company to have more control, oversight and general i interest in your daughter’s financial welfare than you do. Doesn’t that strike you as weird!

You could teach your daughter not to tick things that aren’t true, not to spend money on frivolous things like online games, or how to budget. But no - you’d rather a company do all the hard stuff.

What would you have done if it had required ID and she’d used yours? Insisted that the games company carry out ID verification via retinal scanner? At some point your child does need to be your responsibility.

It is like accessing any service, surely. Just because it is online it doesn't mean that she hasn't used it. It's the same as if she had a Spanish lesson on zoom, if you say she can't learn Spanish, she still would have had the lesson she paid for, even if she has nothing to show for it. People work to produce the games, and sell the add ons.

My DD's savings accounts were controlled by me until they were responsible (dd2 had hers at 21, dd1 still doesn't have hers as she has asd) but they have had bank accounts from age 11 and pocket money to learn about budgeting. Lesson learned op. If you buy goods or services even virtual the money has gone

Someone made a good point. The paid content is how free-to-play games pay for their staff, developers, servers, licenses. Otherwise none of them would exist.

In OPs world, anything virtual has no monetary value....

OP did she access the game on an Apple device? As I know Apple are very good at refunding this sort of thing if you contact them.

Sorry OP it’s your responsibility not the game. I don’t see why you thought they’d just refund the money as it’s not their fault.

So you thought it was ok to take a chance as long as the company lost money but it didn’t adversely affect you or your daughter? What an attitude to have .

I think you're right
@MissesG you realise these games don't make themselves?

So how is she going to learn? What’s the alternative, she never learns and someone else has to pay for it? And if it’s a lesson you think she can’t learn, you shouldn’t have put her in this position.

You don't say what she "really needs" the money for exactly. I think chalk this up to experience and a lesson learned
. If it's essentials she needs you could buy them and she could pay you back?

It's a hard lesson for your dc, but she's not the only teenager that's overspent on these games regardless of ASN.

Is there any way that you could prove that the company knew or should have known that she was under 18? For example is the payment card a type that is only used by under 18s?

Contrary to a lot of advice on this thread, I think it's possible you could get your money back (from a purely legal perspective). Difficult to say without all the facts and difficult to achieve if the company is in Denmark. Companies DO give refunds in this situation. But I also agree that perhaps you need to take more precautions and stop her from spending like this, given that it sounds like you were aware of it for a while before deciding to ask for a refund. It's different from a situation where you genuinely had no idea that your kids was running up a massive bill.

yes the debit card is an under 18s, i dont know if they have a way of checking that. And they did know shes under 18 as she had to input her date of birth to use their social features.

And there is no chance she altered her DOB to be "over 18"?

But you don't need to be 18, you need to be 18 or have parental permission to enter the site and therefore use "his/her own money". It is her own money! She accepted those terms when she signed up.

OP, I don’t think you’re thinking this through. She could buy almost ANYTHING - physical gaming products, or electronic products, and once she’s removed the outside plastic or original seal, you may be lucky enough to get a store credit, if you beg and plead with the store, but you won’t see the money back, as they can no longer sell the product for the original price. Same with clothing she might have removed the store tags from. You are only protected by a 14-day countrywide return policy if the product is faulty, or for online orders, you can cancel the order, or return if faulty, but again, you must not have opened or used the product (unless faulty) - www.gov.uk/accepting-returns-and-giving-refunds . Even this gov.uk page makes it clear you cannot return products because you no longer want them, though most stores will allow you to return products that are unused and unopened, in a reasonable time frame, as a courtesy. So she could have perhaps done a lot more monetary damage than £200, if she had bought a PlayStation and opened it.