Child Spends $4.5K in Microtransactions, Parent Wants to Sue Microsoft

These stories are all too familiar now. Why point fingers when there are safeguards to protect this from happening? And then there is the good old fashioned strategy of monitoring your child's activity. I guess too many parents can't be bothered with
that.

 

If he's on a Director of Corporate Communications at the World Bank's Salary, why is he complaining about losing 4k and pointing the blame somewhere else? He's obviously not a responsible adult, otherwise he would check his accounts on a daily bases and
part of being a good parent. How did he get that job again? And he wants to spend more money to try and sue a big reputable company, good luck with that. 4k on the other hand is a lot for some, kids and adults who earn less than 4k a week which is many are
smarter than this.

 

This just goes to show you that while money can certainly help with someone's educational upbringing, it doesn't necessarily make a person smarter. I, for example, am a lowly teacher who gets paid a few $100 each week, at best, and I know very well how to
avoid such an embarrassing issue (granted, I also don't have kids, so there's that).

 

If they file in EU courts then they mayhave an honest chance at winning a suit.

If they file in US courts, then Microsofts odds of winning is like 99.999999999% to .0000000001% for in the US any company with more than 50 employees paying taxes is viewed as to big to fail.

 

I don't quite understand what this means? Even if this guy wins the lawsuit, he'll get back a few thousand dollars. This isn't a make or break lawsuit for MS. They're not going to go bankrupt.

While you may be correct, we should really tone down the generalizations and assumptions of who this guy is. Just because someone works as a XYZ or works for ABC does not immediately make them a shmuck. We don't know this guy, so let's not judge.

 

@Goth - 4.5k isn't really a lot of money...

It is to some people Goth.. it may not be to you or I, and in this case the guy in question (head of bank or whatever his title was) but to some people that can make a WORLD of difference

 

"Even if this guy wins the lawsuit, he'll get back a few thousand dollars. This isn't a make or break lawsuit for MS."

I don't know how to do the quotes like you did.

Lets review. One suit often opens the doors for others to follow. So the potential for loosing a lot of $ is there. Example: Double charging for DLC, and how many Xbox gamers were double charged for DLC?

Side note: If M was smart, (actually respectful) they would begin allowing only one source for DLC, and if the content was downloaded once, then the next time around... No charge!

But simple mistakes made by gamers means extra $ for M and those who dev games/DLC for their systems, and outside of court action we all know that they aren't about to change that "Milk em till it hurts" policy anytime soon are they?

And in most cases. You win, your Lawyer wins, their Lawyer wins, and the Courts gets to charge the loser for court costs. Who foots the bill for all of that? So a few thousand dollar lose can turn into a fortune pretty quick.

 

This was a mistake by the consumer made again, and again, and again though. I still think MS implemented a policy where you can only spend X amount at one time, so in this case, the 4,500 was spent over a pretty broad course of time. MS (or any company)
shouldn't be held responsible for other people's stupidity or ignorance.

 

Money is always subjectively based upon the individual that the money refers to, as iBakez has already said. Take my lifestyle, for example. I make less than $20,000/year as a substitute teacher, which is pretty much bottom of the rung. It would take me
months to get 4.5k with my current situation. Thankfully, that's off-set with familial support (such as living at home), which helps expand my living situation and making it better than it probably should be if I were without it. It's things like this that
make financial issues EVEN MORE subjective.

Quite frankly, I think the guy should just cut his losses, pay up, learn his lesson, and reprimand his children for their actions (and teach them why what they did was wrong).

 

Children can't enter contractual agreements, nor can they be held liable when they make an "accidental" purchase on their parent's credit card for an app or a console game/content. The parents should be fully reimbursed for these unauthorized purchases.
I didn't read the article because I'm too busy, but I can't imagine that MS would fight it. It would end up being an MS VS FTC issue.

 

ignorance isn't a viable defense in court, MS has parent controls out in the open as plain as day. people like this are the reasons we have "contents is hot" on coffee cups, and "do not iron while wearing shirt", i personally say that we remove all warning
labels and let natural selection take over.

and 4.5k is a lot of money, i've been on my own since i was 17, that was when i had to work 2 full time jobs and often times $10 meant the difference between eating and not eating that day. 4.5k is the price of a decent car, several months of rent or utilities,
that's not a lot of some, good for them, but this comes off as very condescending.

 

It really doesn't matter, Zero, whether the parents were being "ignorant" or not.

All we need to do is look at what happened with google:

"Google Inc. has agreed to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint alleging that it unfairly billed consumers for millions of dollars in unauthorized charges incurred by children using mobile apps downloaded from the Google Play app store for use on
Android mobile devices. Under the terms of the settlement, Google will provide full refunds – with a minimum payment of $19 million – to consumers who were charged for kids’ purchases without authorization of the account holder."

 

I realize there are measures in place to keep stuff like this from happening, but kids are kids and they can get into just about anything. But as someone else suggested, after a few hundred dollars were spent, a limit should have been reached with maybe
an email to the account holder that would have needed to be confirmed in order to continue.

 

and the only result i've seen from Google on that is basically a warning label right under the install button that says "in-app purchases".

people need to start taking responsibility for their mistakes and ignorance, being sue happy over their own shortcomings only rots our society more.

 

As a parent of 2 kids each with their own Xbox 360 and their own Ones I find this stupid. You simply research things for your kids first. This is no different than a kid ordering all kinds of pay per views off Dish. As an adult you take the time to insure
it does not happen.