Be carefull with your Xbox live account if you have kids

[Gravekeeper]

I'm pretty sure that we in the US are fairly odd in that we have hybrid debit/credit cards. I believe Canada and the UK specifically don't, which leads to confusion when we in the US go around assuming that everybody else in the world does things the way we do.

Yes, its two seperate cards here. Which yes, leads to some confusion when people try to give me their debit card at work.

Also, MS should do jack and all for this woman. Anything they do will just unleash the flood gates, and they don't need a PR boost. Its Microsoft. They're certainly not going away because people dislike them. Nor would granted one idiot mercy make change the minds of anyone who already dislikes them.

[blas87]

While I am certainly not trying to stand up for the brat or the idiot mother, I find it hard to believe that any of us never "accidentally" called long distance without permission as kids or did something we shouldn't have that ended up costing our parents' money. Although I guess the difference between then and now is that parents used to take responsibility for themselves and the kid and not blame the phone company or the television or whatever.

When I was...12 or 13, I had an online friend in Calgary. I called him a few times. Yeah, that didn't go so well with mom. Seems my little under-developed brain never thought that it would show up on the phone bill.

[Giggle Goose]

When I was...12 or 13, I had an online friend in Calgary. I called him a few times. Yeah, that didn't go so well with mom. Seems my little under-developed brain never thought that it would show up on the phone bill.

I remember those days...I got in trouble when I was maybe 11 or so. I called a 1-900 psychic line just for the hell of it. Parents made arrangements to block our phones from dialing 1-900 numbers. Problem solved.


It's kinda scary to think that kids can do that, though! I remember getting freaked out because I ran the phone bill up a whopping $10. lol

[muses_nightmare]

Um, why couldn't you use a debit card? I do. I don't own any credit cards. When you go to a store and you pay with your debit card, you can run it through as credit or debit. When you use it for something like Xbox Live, it runs through as credit so you don't have to enter your pin.

Ah yeah, as other's have explained, here in Canada we don't have that system. Our debit cards are not interchangeable with credit, they are simply to take what money you have in your account, and you have to enter your pin every time. I forgot that the US has cards that are interchangeable.

[Greenday]

Ah yeah, as other's have explained, here in Canada we don't have that system. Our debit cards are not interchangeable with credit, they are simply to take what money you have in your account, and you have to enter your pin every time. I forgot that the US has cards that are interchangeable.

Eh, for me, credit and debit just take money straight from the account anyway.

[Andara Bledin]

When I was...12 or 13, I had an online friend in Calgary. I called him a few times. Yeah, that didn't go so well with mom. Seems my little under-developed brain never thought that it would show up on the phone bill.

I remember those days...I got in trouble when I was maybe 11 or so. I called a 1-900 psychic line just for the hell of it. Parents made arrangements to block our phones from dialing 1-900 numbers. Problem solved.

The difference is that you each did that once. Only once. By the next bill, your parents made sure it wouldn't happen again. Plus, with the long distance, it's not like there's a prompt telling you how much it will cost before the call finishes dialing, and depending on the exact time, the 900 call might not have, either.

Now that I'm looking, I've found an article that mentions both the timeframe, and her excuses as to why she couldn't be bothered to practice any fiscal or parental responsibility. But none of the blame is hers or her precious son's.

Article at Kent Online

The highlights include that the purchases started in July, she was dealing with her father being diagnosed with cancer, and her laptop wasn't working, so she couldn't check her statements and "was mostly dealing with all the letters about direct debits bouncing to check my statements." I can't even figure out what that last bit is supposed to mean, but you'd think with bounced debits, she'd have called then and not waited another half of a year.

I find it amazing that the cancer diagnosis, her laptop's failure, and her son's sudden decision to make unauthorized purchases all happened at the same time last year. What a coincidence.

Hell, the only reason it's come up now is that she got paid and immediately didn't have enough to cover her cell phone bill. And she's blaming the cell phone company for... something. It seems she thinks they're somehow connected with the charges, or at fault for declining a debit card for an account without enough funds in it.

But the absolute prize is that the woman is employed, full time, as a "multi-media executive" for the KM Group, a company that operates newspapers, radio stations, and websites.

^-.-^

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Ah yeah, as other's have explained, here in Canada we don't have that system. Our debit cards are not interchangeable with credit, they are simply to take what money you have in your account, and you have to enter your pin every time. I forgot that the US has cards that are interchangeable.

I miss the Canadian system. I've been here for a few years now and still find it confusing you can run the same card as credit OR debit.

[joe hx]

I miss the Canadian system. I've been here for a few years now and still find it confusing you can run the same card as credit OR debit.

I think if you want to you can ask the bank not to let your card ever be run as a credit.

[Lace Neil Singer]

If she needs a second job to pay her bills, there's no need for an XBox 360 to even be in the place, especially with an online subscription. Video game consoles are a luxury, not a necessity. With the exception of my Game Boy (where the system and games were cheaper than a home console), my parents never bought a game console until a few months ago, and we were well off enough that we could afford a console and a library of games.

Agreed. My parents bought me and my two little brothers a Megadrive one Christmas. It came with two games cartridges; any others, we had to buy ourselves. And yeah, we had to share it.

What I don't understand is why the hell this stupid woman didn't check her bank statement. She could have rung up the bank and they would have told her all her outgoings, and then she would have noticed the discrepancy before it got to a grand and stopped it. That would have been better than just burying her head in the sand and ignoring it.

[LewisLegion]

I just switched my XBox gold membership to a Family membership as myself and my two room-mates all had gold accounts on my Xbox and it just made sense: 3 accounts at 69 some odd EACH a year, or four accounts for 100 all told...yeah, easy math. As it is my Xbox I have the master account. My BF and her husband (my room-mates) each have an account, and I gave the fourth account to my stepsister who got an Xbox for Christmas.

I had to go through FOUR DIFFERENT SCREENS warning me that if any of the other three accounts made any purchases through Xbox live it would charge to the card linked to the master account....i.e. MINE. Each screen not only had the warning but described how to set allowances and parental pin codes so that the other accounts could only spend what I allocated, and points couldn't be added without my pin number from any account. I also got an EMAIL to this effect.

Yeah, mother was irresponsible with her own money, kid didn't know any better, Microsoft holds no fault. It's not Microsoft's job to contact every account that ever makes a purchase through XBox live just to make sure it wasn't a kid that did it. If they did, the extra employee force needed would make Xbox prices so astronomical only Bill Gates could afford to have one.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

“When I put my card details in 18 months ago I thought it was just for his membership to play online with his friends,” she tells the Daily Mail.

“I work two jobs just to look after my family and pay the bills so I cannot afford all these extortionate charges.”

“A thousand pounds isn't that much to people like Bill Gates, but for a single mum it is a lot of money that I don't have.” <SNIP>

“It is ridiculous to allow someone of his age to make payments without any checks being done.”

“It is impossible to monitor everything your children do. These companies should take some responsibility. They take advantage of vulnerable people.”

Another failure of a parent heard from. You work two jobs just to make ends meet, and yet your kid has an Xbox 360, an account to buy games, and no parental controls to keep him from buying games.

And she never punished him for spending all that money. I know a great way she could've taught her son a lesson: sell his xbox. After all he "doesn't want it any more."