Apple refunds the parents of a child who “accidentally” spent over £6,000/$6,350 on in-app purchases on the family iPad
Two parents from the United Kingdom were shocked to find that their 11-year-old son, Alfie, had managed to rack up a bill of over £6,000 ($6,350) by “accidentally” paying for more than 50 in-app purchases on games installed on the family iPad.
Priced at approximately £99 ($105) per-upgrade, Alfie had spent “£700 in less than five minutes, then £1,100 in half an hour” according to his farther, Roy, who said the bill “racked up and racked up, all on the same game.” – “It’s scary,” said Alfie’s mother, Jill. “He said the game was that good he couldn’t stop, but he only thought he pressed it a few times.”
Luckily for the Dobson family who’s story was shared via the BBC, Apple will be refunding the full in-app purchase bill and continues to urge parents to safe guard their iTunes “Family Sharing” account by needing either a passcode or Touch ID approval before making purchases.
For those who aren’t aware of the temptation of in-app purchases within games for children, rather than charging a one-off flat fee for games on the App Store, developers are attracting more players by making their apps available to download for free, with apps prompting those playing with alluring upgrades which can unlock certain things like power-ups, level-ups, coins, tokens, or a variety of other game-specific commodities for a fee, something developers have found to be a lot more profitable than one-off charges through the App Store at the time of initially downloading the application.