Dad Blames Microsoft for Son's Xbox Live Spending Spree
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It really is kind of manipulative of Microsoft when you pay for a Gold Account. I signed up for a one month trial sometime last year, and it took me a couple days to realize it was set to automatically renew it afterwards. I had to go to the website and get some phone numbers to call up an employee to have them remove my card from automatic renewal.
There is literally NO option in the Xbox to do this, and their website does not allow you to make this decision. It's a very bad way of handling subscriptions, although I am aware that plenty of sites do this. However, I think this is the first time I had to call somebody up in order to "uncheck" the renewal box.
...you know, this reminds me, I have a funny feeling we never did that after I bought Gold for a year back in November. I should go and look into it. Yo guys, it's been more than 6 months, and since it was paid up in one go I wouldn't be seeing any money changing hands until the renewal happened. So you can see it IS actually easy to get caught off guard.
Anyways, the only thing that really shocks me is how many people are surprised (or offended) that the kid was playing Call of Duty.
As someone said "did everyone wait til they were 18 for DOOM?" Well, I sure didn't. I was playing Resident Evil in high school, too. Hell, my mom enjoyed watching me play it because she likes zombies and horror movies. She's also a big fan of DOOM and did actually pick up the DOOM collectors edition set of discs one year from a Walmart somewhere cause she knew I had played the games when I was younger. Of course, I was in my 20's by then, so this was more of a happy surprise than anything else.
But yeah, "just saiyan."
There is literally NO option in the Xbox to do this, and their website does not allow you to make this decision. It's a very bad way of handling subscriptions, although I am aware that plenty of sites do this. However, I think this is the first time I had to call somebody up in order to "uncheck" the renewal box.
...you know, this reminds me, I have a funny feeling we never did that after I bought Gold for a year back in November. I should go and look into it. Yo guys, it's been more than 6 months, and since it was paid up in one go I wouldn't be seeing any money changing hands until the renewal happened. So you can see it IS actually easy to get caught off guard.
Anyways, the only thing that really shocks me is how many people are surprised (or offended) that the kid was playing Call of Duty.
As someone said "did everyone wait til they were 18 for DOOM?" Well, I sure didn't. I was playing Resident Evil in high school, too. Hell, my mom enjoyed watching me play it because she likes zombies and horror movies. She's also a big fan of DOOM and did actually pick up the DOOM collectors edition set of discs one year from a Walmart somewhere cause she knew I had played the games when I was younger. Of course, I was in my 20's by then, so this was more of a happy surprise than anything else.
But yeah, "just saiyan."
;PGrey Carter said:
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But yeah, sorry Mr. Dad, you can't use the "he didn't know it cost money" excuse when it clearly states a dollar amount to buy points. And if he's so young that he doesn't know what $ means, then he shouldn't be gaming without a little supervision (and especially not MW3, seriously? I mean, seriously?).
Microsoft is not your babysitter, pops. Hopefully you've learned that, now.
I'm going to actually take the father's side here.
It's not unreasonable to expect a password lock on your credit card to be opt out rather than opt in.
All these childless teenagers and twenty something shouting "bad parenting" are just indulging in the reflexive usual squawking in defence of their hobby.
He's certainly guilty of carelessness but it's not like Microsoft can't just reset that account and offer at least a partial refund. That would be sensible customer service/PR on their part.
It's not unreasonable to expect a password lock on your credit card to be opt out rather than opt in.
All these childless teenagers and twenty something shouting "bad parenting" are just indulging in the reflexive usual squawking in defence of their hobby.
He's certainly guilty of carelessness but it's not like Microsoft can't just reset that account and offer at least a partial refund. That would be sensible customer service/PR on their part.
I'm sure that the dad probably set up financial information on the XBox for his son for XBL Gold, but didn't realize there were any security measures to further protect his credit card, because of course his son would not show his dad what kind of security features are on an XBox. Or he would be like my parents, who use the same, easy passwords for everything. On the other hand, the fiscal irresponsibility of not noticing unauthorized purchases after the first bill boggles my mind. There is no way that anyone with a credit card would fail to notice purchases they didn't make if they were really concerned about their money. At one point I tried to sneak a payment to one of my MMOs with my mom's credit card, and after she saw the payment to a company in California on her card, she called the company to block her card from ever being used again. The credit ban even applied to a card under my name, because it shared the account. If the dad were smart about protecting his funds, he would have called Microsoft long ago to resolve unwanted purchases. At the very least, even if he didn't get a refund, he would have been given steps to clamp down on his son's purchasing power.
Yeah, none of these people saying "why is a kid playing COD" waited to played M rated games nor did they wait to watch R rated movies or listen to CD's with explicit lyrics. Bunch of phonies I say. They claim to hate it when things like this happen but deep down they can't wait for the opportunity to bash parents. I'll bet most of them aren't parents and have no concept of parenthood.Hiroshi Mishima said:Anyways, the only thing that really shocks me is how many people are surprised (or offended) that the kid was playing Call of Duty.
As someone said "did everyone wait til they were 18 for DOOM?" Well, I sure didn't. I was playing Resident Evil in high school, too. Hell, my mom enjoyed watching me play it because she likes zombies and horror movies. She's also a big fan of DOOM and did actually pick up the DOOM collectors edition set of discs one year from a Walmart somewhere cause she knew I had played the games when I was younger. Of course, I was in my 20's by then, so this was more of a happy surprise than anything else.
But yeah, "just saiyan."
I don't blame the father as much as I blame the kid. 12-year-olds aren't all that stupid. Xbox makes it fairly clear how much everything costs, and even if they don't, I don't see any reason to believe that the kid didn't have some idea what he was doing was wrong. Then to avoid trouble he likely used the 'I didn't know' excuse. And the father believed him because... well, that way he had more chance of forcing Microsoft to give him his money back (because let's face it, I doubt anyone would feel bad if the father just said his kid's a little brat who abused access like that).
For the whole M rated game thing... oh well. I don't think it's that big a deal. But I am sick of people blaming companies for stuff like this when they don't look into the matter before hand.
For the whole M rated game thing... oh well. I don't think it's that big a deal. But I am sick of people blaming companies for stuff like this when they don't look into the matter before hand.
Is your name Ken? I hope your name is Ken, Ken!Crono1973 said:
I didn't say I was sick of reading these stories, I said I was sick of parents using anything and/or everything as an excuse, rather than take responsibility.
See, see?! <3zombiesinc said:
Because most parents think that their children can "handle it", that just THEIR children are "mature enough". Hell, my dad took me to his work back in the early 90's, and while he worked (he was a network technician for a university) I was allowed to sit in the computer-lab and play Doom. I was 9, I think.teebeeohh said:
Now, if said game had been CoD, I doubt he would have reacted any differently. Why would he? To them, It's a game. You know, game? Fun? Hahaha? And I partially agree. Sure, some things might be inappropriate for a child, but that depends on how mature such child is. I hate to cite anecdotal information as some sort of proof but..Look at me? Been playing violent videogames all my life, and no worse off. So SOME clearly can handle it..
On a related note: When I first got my XBL-account, I needed my dads creditcard. I was 16, and my dad was outraged (and eventually called Microsoft support, located in another country even). Not because I wanted to play Ghost Recon 2 online, but because he was afraid that Microsoft would store his creditcard-information and some hacker would manage to steal it.
Heh.
In the end, I got my own credit-card (couldn't rack up more debt than I had cash,though) and was told that how I wanted to waste my own money was my problem.
So honestly, if I believe my child to be able to handle Call of Duty XXVI (You know there will be one) when he is 14, then I will let him play it. I might of course be wrong, but I doubt it will turn him into a murderer. Might give him nightmares, though.
Also, I'll explain a few things first.
Well, you wouldn't have to READ those excuses if you wouldn't come into the thread. If you were really so sick of READING those excuses, then why are you here?zombiesinc said:Is your name Ken? I hope your name is Ken, Ken!Crono1973 said:
I didn't say I was sick of reading these stories, I said I was sick of parents using anything and/or everything as an excuse, rather than take responsibility.
See, see?! <3zombiesinc said:
Someone obviously didn't set up the account correctly, back when I had a 360 you could set up a pin number so you couldn't just buy randomly (original dash style xbox), and you can still do similar for the new xbox's as I've just set it up for my nephew.
I feel like you're focusing on the really trivial shit here.Crono1973 said:
Do you care to know why I'm sick of listening to/hearing/reading/deciphering/translating this sort of shit? Or would you rather go on believing I'm somehow anti-parent and (possibly) therefore, anti-you?[footnote]I could be wrong but you're giving me the impression that you're personally offended by what I said[/footnote]
I am not offended but I do root for the underdog. I am sick of parents being blamed for everything kids do because the very people doing the blaming were once kids as well and they know that kids go out of their way to keep parents in the dark.zombiesinc said:
I am also sick of men getting blamed for everything too so if you were blaming men, I would say something too.
*Sigh*
-MONITOR YOUR OWN ACCOUNT! I don't even trust my friends using my account because I know I have my info linked to it. And my friends aren't even morons!
-Check your account more often?
-Give your damn kid a children's account to avoid that.
-Inform yourself before letting your kid be a retard and fuck with the xbox.
-And finally, shows how much he cares about his kid.
Maybe it's just me but if I had been that kid and for whatever reason my mom's credit card was linked and I know that and I'm 12 years old, no matter how tempting it would be to buy all sorts of DLC for my game, I wouldn't dare because I know my mom would eventually find out and she would eventually slap the shit out of me. Also, I'd know it's not good to buy all of the things in the world with someone else's money.
So yeah, both are morons. The father deserves to have his xbox locked/banned/whatever and the kid deserves to repay his father for whatever he spent.[
There's the rare scenario where the parent hesitates for a moment, then the kid intervenes and says he's played the game at his friend's house/his brother has it/it's not that bad and the parent buys the story. Only about 10% of the parents are genuinely surprised and put the game back, no matter if it's CoD or AC. Out of those remaining 90%, only around 20% ask something like "Oh, blood and gore is okay. But...does it have sexual stuff?". A game rarely has explicit sex scenes. It's usually provocative clothing or situations or sutff like that, so I reply with that (Depending on the game). Once they convince themselves that the game isn't gonna turn into a porn, they happily agree to buy the game.
Oh, and about 5% of all those guys overall come back days later complaining about the game being too strong for their kid and claiming we didn't warn them, trying to make us look bad to get their money back.
So...yeah, blood, gore, violence and bad words are fine...but not sexual scenes. Maker forbid those.
Anyway, personally (and I guess I was a geek), I don't remember playing a M rated game until I was 15/16, and even then I was hesitant. I felt dirty and guilty. And a bit scared (It was DMC1). And I would have never considered picking up verbal fights with strangers because that just was pointless and rude.
Yeah, maybe it was just me.
-MONITOR YOUR OWN ACCOUNT! I don't even trust my friends using my account because I know I have my info linked to it. And my friends aren't even morons!
-Check your account more often?
-Give your damn kid a children's account to avoid that.
-Inform yourself before letting your kid be a retard and fuck with the xbox.
-And finally, shows how much he cares about his kid.
Maybe it's just me but if I had been that kid and for whatever reason my mom's credit card was linked and I know that and I'm 12 years old, no matter how tempting it would be to buy all sorts of DLC for my game, I wouldn't dare because I know my mom would eventually find out and she would eventually slap the shit out of me. Also, I'd know it's not good to buy all of the things in the world with someone else's money.
So yeah, both are morons. The father deserves to have his xbox locked/banned/whatever and the kid deserves to repay his father for whatever he spent.[
GameStop employee here. Funny you should mention that. It's no secret that we can't sell a game to someone who looks younger than 17 years old without their ID. So whenever a parent is clearly buying a M rated game for their kid, we have to ask something like "Are you okay with the M rating of this game because it contains violence, blood and gore and strong language?". Now, here's the funny part. Parents nod at me with the most boring look on their faces as if saying "Yeah, yeah. Just gimme the damn game".KeyMaster45 said:
There's the rare scenario where the parent hesitates for a moment, then the kid intervenes and says he's played the game at his friend's house/his brother has it/it's not that bad and the parent buys the story. Only about 10% of the parents are genuinely surprised and put the game back, no matter if it's CoD or AC. Out of those remaining 90%, only around 20% ask something like "Oh, blood and gore is okay. But...does it have sexual stuff?". A game rarely has explicit sex scenes. It's usually provocative clothing or situations or sutff like that, so I reply with that (Depending on the game). Once they convince themselves that the game isn't gonna turn into a porn, they happily agree to buy the game.
Oh, and about 5% of all those guys overall come back days later complaining about the game being too strong for their kid and claiming we didn't warn them, trying to make us look bad to get their money back.
So...yeah, blood, gore, violence and bad words are fine...but not sexual scenes. Maker forbid those.
Anyway, personally (and I guess I was a geek), I don't remember playing a M rated game until I was 15/16, and even then I was hesitant. I felt dirty and guilty. And a bit scared (It was DMC1). And I would have never considered picking up verbal fights with strangers because that just was pointless and rude.
Yeah, maybe it was just me.
You got me there. Let's see, if it's CoD, he could have got Elite...which is about 50 bucks. Then, I'll assume he wasn't just playing one CoD? (The article never specified that). So he could have got some map packs for Blops, which is $75 for all of them. Uhh...I don't know if you can rebuy them once you've already bought them before. I'm guessing no, so okay.glitch388 said:
Maybe some avatar stuff?
FIFA allows you to buy more players/teams/fields/whatever. Not sure how much that would be but...let's assume it's the same as CoD, which we'll round to $200. So $400 for it all. let's exaggerate and go to $500 assuming he also has more than one FIFA game lying around.
Yep, either dad's lying or the kid is lying or both are lying. And they're morons. That's for sure.
It's not always the parents fault, I absolutely agree. In this case, we certainly don't know enough to be certain either. I was just relating this situation to others that I felt were similar and happened to fall directly on the parents' lack of care, inability to take responsibility or just general laziness. That doesn't mean I believe it's always the parents fault or that all parents are this way, I do try to avoid mass generalizations and making myself out to look extremely ignorant.Crono1973 said: