6-Year-Old Spent Over Rs 11 Lakh On A Game On Mom's iPad, Apple Refused To Refund

Today, parents are known to give their children tablets or phones to kill time. And this trend only spiked when the COVID-19 pandemic locked us all indoors.

And now a six-year-old has managed to spend over 11 lakhs playing Sonic Forces on his iPad, leaving his mother in a massive debt.

Tamara Beckwith: NYPost

Reported first by New York Post, In July, when Jessica Johnson, mother of the six-year-old George Johnson was busy working from home and keeping her finances in check, she was oblivious of the shopping spree her youngest son was on.

George had bought add-on boosters in the game (each ranging around $1.99 for the red ring to $99.99 for a gold ring) that allowed George to unlock rare characters and bonuses. On July 9th, she noticed 25 transactions totalling to $2,500, coming from PayPal and Apple.

When she noticed the sums spike from her Chase account, she thought it was some kind of fraud and she contacted the bank to report. As July came to an end, the amount on the bill reached $16,293. However, it wasn¡¯t until October that Chase revealed that it wasn¡¯t a fraud and that the transaction was indeed hers and asked her to contact Apple.

When she connected with Apple and saw a running list of charges with Sonic in front of it, she knew her son was the culprit. When she asked Apple to reverse the charges, it stated that since she didn¡¯t file for a refund within 60 days, (since she thought it was a fraud and Chase was investigating it) nothing could be done. They instead said that there is a setting to disable such use and she should have known that.

She said in a statement to New York Post, ¡°Obviously, if I had known there was a setting for that, I wouldn¡¯t have allowed my 6-year-old to run up nearly $20,000 in charges for virtual gold rings. These games are designed to be completely predatory and get kids to buy things, what grown-up would spend $100 on a chest of virtual gold coins?¡±

Representational Image: Apple

She blames Apple, calling the Cupertino giant Predatory, ¡°My son didn¡¯t understand that the money was real. How could he? He¡¯s playing a cartoon game in a world that he knows is not real. Why would the money be real to him? That would require a big cognitive leap.¡±

Apple offers a slew of parental control options that allow limiting app time use as well as limiting the ability to make purchases entirely -- on iPads, iPhones and even MacOS. So, in case your kid is using an iPad with your credit card on it, it¡¯s better if you got these settings in check.