12-Year-Old Rings Up $1400 Farmville Bill
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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If I had spent 1400 dollars on a parent's CC, the first thing I say better be "you should have seen the titties on that "escort""
Only want to say something about point 1)afaceforradio said:
How in your own home your purse/wallet should be safe. Obviously they're not in this case, but they should be.
I have to
I also can't fathom what he was spending his money on. $1400 will get you nearly 9000 points of their special "you've got to pay for it" money and most of the special items that require this junk are less than 30 points . . . meaning he could have bought several hundred of these special items. I realize they can sometimes be gifted to friends so I suppose he could have been sending out tons of special items but that still seems extreme. If he was playing all of Zynga's games and bought a bunch of funny money for all of them I might believe $1400 but even then it seems extreme.
I agree. The amount of money should have raised some flags - probably with the credit card as well as Zynga. Given that they didn't I think Zynga should have done the nice thing and refunded some of that money. Sure they aren't legally obligated to and sure the mother seems to be the one largely at fault here but it would have done a lot to soften their money-grabbing image. Instead they've just reinfored it.DividedUnity said:
I also can't fathom what he was spending his money on. $1400 will get you nearly 9000 points of their special "you've got to pay for it" money and most of the special items that require this junk are less than 30 points . . . meaning he could have bought several hundred of these special items. I realize they can sometimes be gifted to friends so I suppose he could have been sending out tons of special items but that still seems extreme. If he was playing all of Zynga's games and bought a bunch of funny money for all of them I might believe $1400 but even then it seems extreme.
God that made me laugh...ThyNameIsMud said:
At 12 you most definitely old enough to know better. The could would receive some MAJOR punishment if he was my son.
Exactly you shouldnt, but not all payments unfortunetly require verification and apparently this was the case. With most credit companies (Visa for instance) aditional verification is just prompted on transactions above a certain amount. That obviously should be changed.Straying Bullet said:
Current conversion rates are roughly £1.50 to $1, so it comes to £916. That means the kid only had £250ish in his savings account, which isn't much, but still a lot for a twelve year old. This mother recieved a bill for nearly £700.Sebenko said:
Happy, fellow englishmen?
OT: How the hell did this happen? I understood the value of money at 12 - maybe becuase my mother made me work cash-in-hand during the summer holidays to stop be becoming a complete shut in... I realise we have some incredibly thick people here in Britain, but this is pushing it!
Still, glad to see the mother's got some kind of brain in her head and isn't blaming the company/game for what her son did - but I do hope he's grounded until he goes to uni. I think that the company should at least make a token gesture to the parents, since it was pixels the kid was buying and now there's absolutle nothing to show for it. Even a partial refund would give the illusion that the company is run by humans and not machines.
Their solution smacks of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
EDIT: also, you can't open your own bank account in england until you're twelve - his parents would have had to open it for him to have that kind of money in it.
A ton of platinum carrots. Actually, I hear you can buy statues and crap that make your plants grow better.Sir Ollie said:
Imo zynga should at least put up a max amount of money, that a player can spend on their games each month. But as they already told the public, their a scam, which is why they would never do such a thing.
Yes i agree that this incident was the kid (and his mom, for not raising him well enough)s fault, had he not used the money on zynga it properly would have been something else, but zynga also seem´s to push the moral limits more than any company ive even seen, to the extreme.
Yes i agree that this incident was the kid (and his mom, for not raising him well enough)s fault, had he not used the money on zynga it properly would have been something else, but zynga also seem´s to push the moral limits more than any company ive even seen, to the extreme.
The point is that kid had access to the $400, and clearly didn't need permission to spend it, so it couldn't have been for University (not to mention he's English, so he'd get funding, he wouldn't really need a college fund from such a young age). A friend of mine has £3,000 a year put into a trust fund by his dad, but his dad has to sign it off before he can touch it, and this guy's 31 years old. No, it doesn't make you spoiled, however this kid could obviously get his hands on it and has been able to do what he wants without being checked on. THAT makes him spoiled, not necessarily the fact he has money. I guess I didn't word it right.Snowalker said:
Personally I don't think she should be worried at all... The currency in the U.K is the Pound Sterling, not the Dollar, which according to the article is what she's being charged...
All joking aside the kids an idiot for not thinking this would come back to him and the mother is an idiot for allowing her 12 year old son access to her bank details.
All joking aside the kids an idiot for not thinking this would come back to him and the mother is an idiot for allowing her 12 year old son access to her bank details.