12-Year-Old Rings Up $1400 Farmville Bill

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Well, I'm going to be inclined to blame the parent in this case. Question: how on earth did he get hold of his mother's credit card in the first place? I realise there's far, far better places to blow $1400 than a flash game (a jewellers, for instance), but that is not the problem in this case.

You can go ahead and pull your head out of your ass and stop pretending like you weren't 12 once too. Don't even try to tell me that you never got your hands on something without your parents knowing about it (until it was too late, of course). Be it their money, their car keys, or whatever. No parent, no matter how good of a parent, is looking at their kid 24/7.

Odds are she left him at the computer knowing he was just playing Farmville, then went downstairs to watch TV or clean or make dinner, or whatever. Meanwhile it's easy for a tiny 12-year-old to slink around the house unheard, so it was probably an easy task for him to find her purse sitting idle and scoop-out the credit card.

I know that you're in Super Blame-the-Parents Mode because of all the violence in video games controversy, but seriously, actually look at the situation and think about it realistically for 5 seconds.

Wow. No more pocket money for a few years, huh? The fact that the kid even got his hands on his parents' credit card makes me think his mother kind of had this coming. I think there are at least two morals to this story...

The first moral being that gamers have no idea what it's like to raise a kid, I'll bet? Seriously, everybody's so caught-up in past controversy that they're stuck in "blame the parent" mode without actually pausing to think about the situation. For the love of fuck, actually read the article. She isn't even blaming the game OR the company. At worst, this is a cautionary tale for other parents to be mindful of, but of course gamers are so up-tight about any form of news that they have to ***** about it and start pointing fingers before they're even half-way done with the article... IF they even read anything past the headline.

 

[Andronicus]

Well, I'm going to be inclined to blame the parent in this case. Question: how on earth did he get hold of his mother's credit card in the first place? I realise there's far, far better places to blow $1400 than a flash game (a jewellers, for instance), but that is not the problem in this case.

You can go ahead and pull your head out of your ass and stop pretending like you weren't 12 once too. Don't even try to tell me that you never got your hands on something without your parents knowing about it (until it was too late, of course). Be it their money, their car keys, or whatever. No parent, no matter how good of a parent, is looking at their kid 24/7.

Odds are she left him at the computer knowing he was just playing Farmville, then went downstairs to watch TV or clean or make dinner, or whatever. Meanwhile it's easy for a tiny 12-year-old to slink around the house unheard, so it was probably an easy task for him to find her purse sitting idle and scoop-out the credit card.

I know that you're in Super Blame-the-Parents Mode because of all the violence in video games controversy, but seriously, actually look at the situation and think about it realistically for 5 seconds.

Wow. No more pocket money for a few years, huh? The fact that the kid even got his hands on his parents' credit card makes me think his mother kind of had this coming. I think there are at least two morals to this story...

The first moral being that gamers have no idea what it's like to raise a kid, I'll bet? Seriously, everybody's so caught-up in past controversy that they're stuck in "blame the parent" mode without actually pausing to think about the situation. For the love of fuck, actually read the article. She isn't even blaming the game OR the company. At worst, this is a cautionary tale for other parents to be mindful of, but of course gamers are so up-tight about any form of news that they have to ***** about it and start pointing fingers before they're even half-way done with the article... IF they even read anything past the headline.

Hey, hey, whoa there cowboy. I read the article, and I'd be willing to be that Delusibeta did too. The fact of the matter is, although Zynga could most definitely have a few extra security practices put in place, the majority of it problem is really be down to the level of control parents have on their kids. Now, obviously nobody is perfect, and is going to be able to keep important things like credit cards out of the hands of children; that's just a fact of life. But she should make sure she is keeping tabs on what her son is doing on the internet, regardless of whether it's racy websites or something as innocent-looking as FarmVille.

I don't look at this and think "OMG BAD PARENTING SOMEONE CALL THE AUTHORITIES", I see this as a form of education; the kid learns (hopefully) a little more about the value of money, and the mother learns to keep a closer eye on her credit card and (hopefully) her child. Obviously she cares a lot for her son, otherwise she would have just called the police to get her money back, and that I think speaks volumes about her capability as a parent. More so than some of the other people we hear about on this site, at any rate, who it makes me sad to think consider their genes to be actually beneficial to the human race, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

 

[Kaymish]

snip
[edit2]: A quick survey of Zynga's credit processing page shows it doesn't make use of PINs, either, - which is not really surprising. It's a new development.

i have had a PIN on my credit card for years however it is easily circumvented because it is never asked for
infact to check the bill requires more security than to make a purchase i have to put in the card number the pin the cvv2 code and the web access code
to make a purchase i just need the card number and the cvv2 code and my name but i have put in different names before and it has never made a difference

to be honest the pin i the only one that no one is going to find out with out torture or me being uncharacteristicly silly with anti-virus software

 

[Klarinette]

I risk sounding cliche here, but I totally blame the mother for a few reasons:

1) How did he get her credit card details? She should know where her purse is at all times!
2) At his age, he shouldn't be entirely unsupervised online, end of story.
3) The kid's a little shit. He should know right from wrong and know that stealing from his mother is wrong, even if it is 'on credit', and even if he thought that credit meant 'free money'.
4) A 12 year old with $400 in savings? This kid obviously gets everything he wants, or he wouldn't have just swanned over to Mommy's credit card once he'd blown all that money.

She should've called the Police on his ass and REALLY taught him a lesson. It's probably why he did it in the first place, I refuse personally to believe it was a situation where he didn't realise the error.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I wanted to elaborate on #4, but I don't know what to add to it.

There's always the possibility that he stole the card from her purse, but come on... I didn't even know what a credit card was when I was 12, let alone how to use one.

 

[samsonguy920]

You seem to run under the assumption that Zynga cares about that. Considering what has been reported about Zynga thus far, they don't care who the farmer was, as long as they get their money. And they don't even have to contest refunding the money except for one time with the credit card company. The credit card won't go out of its way either. They leave that entirely on the customer's shoulders.
I hope this lady closed her credit card account right off, as well as deleted any credit cards from accounts online. Even if she got a new account and card, she can leave the kid thinking that there isn't one in the household to use. He can get a debit card and put his own hard earned money into that.

I have never owned a credit card in my life, unless we count "prepaid credit cards" which actually aren't credit cards. It puts a serious limitation on just how much money someone can take from me.

On a related but more tangential note, I keep my debit card in my fire safe, with other vaulables like my birth certificate and passport, taking it out only long enough to withdraw the money I need for food/etc every two weeks when the pay comes in.

Really people need to treat these kinds of cards as they would a SIN (social insurance number) card or other piece of valuable. Your life can get just as fucked up by someone getting a hold of your credit as it can be by someone getting your SIN card. Easier in fact, since the fraud with SIN cards requires some setup whilst anyone who grabs a credit card can easily max out the credit rating.

Word.
I unfortunately learned the hard way how unforgiving and tempting credit cards can be. I just hope this lady is learning from her mistake, and hopefully others learn from this incident as well. Frankly there really isn't anything good about credit cards, other than maybe having a bit better credit score just for having them. These days it is cash or debit card for me and I avoid using the debit card as much as I can.

 

[MintsMan]

It seems to me that the child is a complete and utter social reject and absolutely FUCKING RETARDED! Like, at age 10 I was well into the spend-real-life-money-to-get-in-game-stuff idea, but only about $10~20 every 3months or so... when i was actually playing (which has been on and off for the past 3 years) Even so, I knew the value of a dollar... because it was supposed to be my money. Soooooooo it comes down to whether the child is completely and utterly stupid, most likely, or the parents for spoiling the kid too much, still likely but the former is really the most likely...

 

[Starke]

Some sort of security like a password, maybe? I can't help but think that Zynga's "unhelpful" advice is actually right on the money and pretty much exactly what she's asking for. As is so often the case, protections are only useful if people bother to use them.

That's a rather uninformed suggestion, actually. Only recently have credit cards that have the protection of Personal Identification Numbers come out, and here in Canada at least, most stores do NOT accept them - mine, for example, simply doesn't have the technology to do so, as our card readers only work for debits, we have to swipe the credits on the cash, which doesnt support PIN entry obviously.

Old credit card fraud prevention is a joke since anyone who has access to the card physically can use see all three numbers - the card number, expiry date, and security number - required to make an online purchase, and the major credit card companies can all be (in my experience being a middlewoman for more than few customers at my store) extreme pains in the asses about credit card issues.

If an unauthorized transaction is made on your credit card on a digital media the company is legally obligated in Canada, if not elsewhere, to return the money. If they refuse to, this IS something that charges can be pressed against, though sustaining them requires proving that you had the card in a secure manner using methods "considered reasonable by the average person" I believe is the language of the legislation.

I think however, given she didn't press charges, she likely just had it lying on her desk or something, and the kid absconded with it.

----

[edit]: Some background to this post: I work as an accountant and supervisor at a major retail outlet, and have for five years now. I deal with credit accounts and customers that have credit card issues all the time.

[edit2]: A quick survey of Zynga's credit processing page shows it doesn't make use of PINs, either, - which is not really surprising. It's a new development.

I think the catch here is, to contest the charges as fraudulent, the card has to be reported as stolen (effectively). Otherwise, to contest the charge, you have to demonstrate that the card was charged for goods not received. The problem is, then, after the card is used fraudulently the police have to open a case and issue a warning against the kid. Once that's done the transaction is illegal and the card company is obligated to negate the transactions. Which makes a weird kind of sense. (Keeping in mind that Canada's laws are ridiculously consumer friendly compared to most of the developed world.)

It should be theoretically possible to demonstrate that the user agreement was executed in bad faith, given that one of the parties was too young to consent, but, I'm not sure how well that would hold up in court. Additionally that would require expensive court proceedings that would cost more than the amount recovered.

From your next post: What exactly is a SIN card?

EDIT: I somehow quoted two posts accidentally, my apologies.

 

[Eleima]

As for the young farmer, he was apparently "very shocked" by just how much the game cost but said in his defense that Zynga had offered "good stuff that I wanted." Hey, we've all been there, am I right?

No, you're not. At least not to the point of spending over a grand on a single game.
I can't believe that kid didn't know what he was doing. I mean, he's twelve, and that's fourteen hundred dollars, not five bucks. It's absolutely insane.
I'm going to go ahead and the "geezer" thing, but when I was his age, I had an allowance of 5 dollars every month, and believe me, I knew the cost of things. I'd be very careful with my careful saved up money, and didn't spend it without a second thought. That, and what was the mother thinking, leaving her credit cards lying around?.....

This is bad, it gives a bad name to us REAL GAMERS.

Amen to that... *shakes her head*

 

[Bat Vader]

Zynga should really refund her money. If she did not give her son permission to use her credit card the transactions he made should all be null and void. I just lost a bunch of respect for Zynga for not refunding the woman's money.

 

[afaceforradio]

I risk sounding cliche here, but I totally blame the mother for a few reasons:

1) How did he get her credit card details? She should know where her purse is at all times!
2) At his age, he shouldn't be entirely unsupervised online, end of story.
3) The kid's a little shit. He should know right from wrong and know that stealing from his mother is wrong, even if it is 'on credit', and even if he thought that credit meant 'free money'.
4) A 12 year old with $400 in savings? This kid obviously gets everything he wants, or he wouldn't have just swanned over to Mommy's credit card once he'd blown all that money.

She should've called the Police on his ass and REALLY taught him a lesson. It's probably why he did it in the first place, I refuse personally to believe it was a situation where he didn't realise the error.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I wanted to elaborate on #4, but I don't know what to add to it.

There's always the possibility that he stole the card from her purse, but come on... I didn't even know what a credit card was when I was 12, let alone how to use one.

Somebody here mistook me on number 4 and assumed that I implied that because he had money he was spoiled (which is fair enough, I didn't really elaborate on my point). I didn't quite mean that, but what I meant was he had all this money - which he obviously had full and free access to - blew it on a stupid internet game (and therefore doesn't know the value of money) and then decided that Mum should pay for the rest. I basically just meant that even at 12 years old, having £20 in my money box was totally awesome and I would make it last forever cos it seemed like a shit load of money, I wouldn't blow it then go through my Mum's purse for more money.

 

[afaceforradio]

Zynga should really refund her money. If she did not give her son permission to use her credit card the transactions he made should all be null and void. I just lost a bunch of respect for Zynga for not refunding the woman's money.

The trouble is, even purchases made with stolen money are valid purchases because money is still used, even if it is on credit. Also, given her son is a minor and she should be watching him enough to know when he steals her purse and takes out her credit card, they see it as her fault.

I'm actually surprised that the credit card company didn't call about 'unusual purchases' which they usually do if a high amount is spent on something weird like that. Unless this happens alot, which wouldn't surprise me, lol.

 

[Bat Vader]

Zynga should really refund her money. If she did not give her son permission to use her credit card the transactions he made should all be null and void. I just lost a bunch of respect for Zynga for not refunding the woman's money.

The trouble is, even purchases made with stolen money are valid purchases because money is still used, even if it is on credit. Also, given her son is a minor and she should be watching him enough to know when he steals her purse and takes out her credit card, they see it as her fault.

I'm actually surprised that the credit card company didn't call about 'unusual purchases' which they usually do if a high amount is spent on something weird like that. Unless this happens alot, which wouldn't surprise me, lol.

I would have reported him to the police. It would just be a warning, nothing really bad. Yes, money was still used but Zynga should have done a better job on seeing who was doing the purchasing. I still think Zynga should refund her money. Yes, she should have been watching over him better but her son should also know better than to take her purse. Also, what items does Zynga offer on Farmville that totals past $1400.00? That seems a bit much.

Yes, the mother is at fault for not making sure her child stole her credit card from her purse. At the same time though since it was not authorized though by the mother the transactions should be all null and void.

 

[Gunner 51]

I managed to rack up a $600 phone bill for my parents back in the days of modems and long-distance BBSs. Not only did I never see that modem again, they also found a way for me to make up for the debt. It was a very long summer.

Not a lesson I ever forgot, I can assure you. Hopefully this incident will be a (unfortunate and expensive) learning experience for everyone involved.

You seem to run under the assumption that Zynga cares about that. Considering what has been reported about Zynga thus far, they don't care who the farmer was, as long as they get their money. And they don't even have to contest refunding the money except for one time with the credit card company. The credit card won't go out of its way either. They leave that entirely on the customer's shoulders.
I hope this lady closed her credit card account right off, as well as deleted any credit cards from accounts online. Even if she got a new account and card, she can leave the kid thinking that there isn't one in the household to use. He can get a debit card and put his own hard earned money into that.

@Virgil: Wow, $600 is an awful lot of money to blow on games. I can remember British Telecom charging through the nose for internet connection when I first got connected to the internet. (Even recently, I ended up a £180 phone bill because I didn't realise there was a "download limit." (Needless to say, that won't be happening again.)

I guess we can put the kid's error down to the folly of youth.

@Samsonguy920: I guess in a way, I can't blame Zynga for wanting to look the other way. Like any other corporation out there, it exists to make money and isn't too picky about where it comes from. But like the mother suggested, it could really do with a bit more security to stop more instances like this.

 

[Thwarted]

yup, parents should not let their kids get hold of their credit cards.

 

[Brandon237]

What, it is physically possible to spend that much on Farmville? I'm going to put part of the problem on Zinga's head for that. The mother should watch the child a lot more carefully and the password thing would also be useful.

Didn't the mother say that Zinga "unhelpfully" told her to use password protection. That sounds very helpful to me as had she not been negligent over use of passwords this wouldn't have happened.

 

[Chronic42]

I think the child will be grounded from the Internet but farm ville is very addictive for most people and I'm thankful I'm not one of them but for one thing I'm not even surprised he spent all that money, he must have been obsessed with the game to do such a thing.

 

[Vigilantis]

Well, thats the first sensible parents I've read about in a long long time, not willing to put a mark on her own sons record, willing to just pay the bill, and blames the son not the company that took her money...wow...Mommy of the year guys right here. But heres something to think about, the kid just spent $1,400 on this facebook game only to have his account banned, so seriously they are just taking his money and saying "tough shit" to him not having what he at least paid for?

 

[ssgt splatter]

That little brat. I sympathise with mother on this one. If it was my kid, I'd ban him from using the compuiter of 2 months.

 

[Arkfeller]

That little brat. I sympathise with mother on this one. If it was my kid, I'd ban him from using the compuiter of 2 months.

Forget 2 months, try 2 years. He didn't ask her, did he?