12-Year-Old Rings Up $1400 Farmville Bill

[Sporky111]

Somewhere in the depths of flash-game hell, a Zynga executive is reading this story and doing a celebratory fist pump.

Seriously though, this is a story that is refreshing to read for several reasons.
1. She blamed her son and not the game.
2. She isn't suing them for a rediculous amount of money, or any for that matter.
3. The son is out $440 dollars, so it isn't just on the parents' shoulders. He's probably going to have to work to pay his parents back.
4. The mother isn't technologically-retarded (IE: she could easily set a password on the computer and change the number on her credit card)

 

[Asturiel]

What can you buy with $1400 on Farmville?

Carrots?

Trucks full of carrots. This boy single handedly made another farmer very happy, his entire crop sold, all of those pixels, this kid is a mastermind, right now he is selling them to others for double the price!

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.

Yes however if this kid is refused jobs because of that black stain and she is a bit weak, where is he going to turn and end up sleeping? Ill give ya a hint, it won't be on the streets!

Wow. I'm reminded of that girl that rang up that ridiculously high cell phone bill for texting. Honestly, don't these kids realize that their parents are not endlessly supplied with money?

And how in the world do you ring up a bill like that for Farmville, exactly?

She should've filed the complaint with the police. If the kid is only 12, then I believe his record is cleaned when he turns 18, anyway. But if she wants to bite the bullet and pay for it, then let her. Maybe she'll learn that her kid is irresponsible and lock up her credit cards.

When I was in Europe I went with a lot of people who are quite spoiled(this was a surprise to me by the way, I jokingly said it and my parents sent me over there, my parents have money but if I want to see any of it I gotta work my ass off) one girl quite literally with how many texts/calls she used with her boyfriend while over there was over 2 grand. Two bloody grand to talk to that guy your likely going to break up with in a month because of how fickle she is? Money doesn't grow on trees when you start setting them on fire!

This is no different from anything else. Kid buys $1400 worth of clothes, oh well. If you aren't going to treat a game that can cost money the same as anything that can cost money, then the problem isn't with the game. The kid needs to know what money is, because once he's not living with his mother anymore he'd going to find out real quick that $1440 in crops on Farmville can't feed him.

At least they can return the clothes (likely) and even then he/she has something of some value. This kid bought things to make his game easier/better that now that his account is suspended got reset. So the stuff that was bought with set money is gone and even then was worthless to begin with.

OT: Well this kid is mischievous, I would say take him out of school for a year when he's 16 and make him get a full time job until he can fully repay his mother back, then he can go back to high school. At the very least once he's graduated he's staying home, paying rent for set home and working his damn debt off. Although the kid might be crafty enough to find some laws to fight this.

 

[cjcool10]

Im dumbfounded by this If I was 12 and was going to blow through 1200$ on gaming, Id be getting a mad stack of ps1 games( at the time). Would never ever cross my mind to spend it on something as stupid as farmville what is wrong with kids these days.

OMG I would do the same as well as PS2 and PS3 Games and buy a proper banging Gaming Pc and Some Epic Peripherals

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Isn't this what we said at the start of MM?

 

[Indecizion]

anyone who spends that kind of money on a ZYNGA game should be removed from the genepool, also i bet his mum beat his ass HARD.

 

[Jamieson 90]

Parents need to be more aware of this sort of thing, When I was 10 I played Phantasy Star online on the dreamcast, we didn't have the internet so you had to use the cable supplied with the dreamcast through the phone line and it cost 1p a minute so an hour was 60p.

My parents agreed I could play the game as long as I used my pocket money to play it. I would right down when I logged on and then log off, my parents would work out how much I owed then take it from my pocket money, This taught me how to manage time and money.

Its not that hard, parents just need to get involved, how can you not notice your 12 year old is spending so much time on a game? ask them what there doing, how did they get all this stuff etc.

If your child walked home with loads of designer clothing, games, dvds and other expensice stuff you want to know how the hell the bought all that stuff, The same applies to the internet and games, thing is parents are lazy and think computers and TV's are there to babysit their kids.

 

[Ori Disciple]

She thinks there should be a password for when you make charges ON ZYNGA GAMES, which I agree with.

Zynga's unhelpful advice was that she should have put passwords on her entire computer in anticipation of her son spending a thousand dollars online, that's just stupid.

Not really. He IS a kid after all, and kids do stupid things a lot. It falls to the mother/father/both to keep an eye on him, and Zynga is completely in the right. If she had put up a password, or more importantly, kept here Credit card number away from him (honestly, I would take steps to ensure that MY kid(s) would not get that number, whatever the cost), this would not have happened. but she didn't, and shes paying for it.

Not saying Zynga is in the fault, or that they are obligated to give any advice, but since they did, it's worth pointing out that it's crappy advice.

I'm not saying that you did, good sir. I'm just saying that the mother should have been more involved with what her son was doing

 

[Jamieson 90]

Its not that hard to get someones details I mean seriously all you have to do is right the number down and the 3/4 number security code on the back as well as when it is valid form,

Hell if you really want to be quick take a picture with your phone one of the front one of the back.

Thats the easy part, the Mum should have noticed him spending so much time on the game. If one of my hypothetical kids was spending so much time on something I would come to the conclusion that this is something they are pritty interested in maybe even a hobby, So obviously you ask them about it, what do them like? what are you doing now? what are you buying? where did you get all that stuff? hang on a second why is that asking for credit details? Have you done this before? How much? .....

 

[Knight Templar]

And Zynga doesn't have systems in place to prevent this? A god dam 12 year old is allowed to run up debt of $1400?

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Wow. That's almost 936.612 Zimbabwean dollars. Someone isn't getting a new bike for Christmas.

 

[Sir Kemper]

I bet that kid has a kick ass farm

Unless it's a zoo.

Anyway, this actually remindes me of another story from a while back, about the kid who ran up his mothers bill buying microsoft points.


Anybody remember that.

 

[duckfi8]

I bet that kid has a kick ass farm

your god dam right he does

 

[Space Cowgirl]

Wait, what? I myself don't play Farmville and I don't have a clue as to how this kid racks up a bill that large with it and how his mother never found out about it until it was too late. Another question I have is how this kid gets a Facebook account aside from lying about his age. Really, what can you get on Farmville that costs $1400? I blame both the kid and his parent on this one. The mother for not keeping a closer eye on her son and the kid for playing Farmville in the first place and not really being smart with money.

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

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.

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[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.

 

[teutonicman]

Oh man you know that kid is going to be working in the coal mines for a long time, or a chimney sweep.

 

[Weaver]

Does anyone else wonder how Zynga could possibly have it set up so you could blow over a thousand dollars on a game? You could buy like every fucking item in one of those free to play Asian MMOs and it wouldn't run you that much.

Also, isn't there like a 13 year or older rule for facebook games?