Father blames Microsoft as son spends £1,150 on Xbox Live
on July 14th, 2012 at 5:54 pmVideo games are teh evil! Quick, to the Daily Mail!
This latest attempt to bring the games industry into contention is a beauty as a father decides Microsoft is to blame for his son blowing £1,150 on his credit card via Xbox Live.
Read on.
“He didn’t realise it was costing real money,” Sam Ghera, from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, told the Daily Mail. “With sites like eBay and iTunes it always asks you for a password before you make a purchase, but with Xbox Live you just press a button and then your money’s gone.
“I contacted Microsoft but, six months down the line, they’re still saying they’re looking into it. I’m waiting for them to get back to me.
“An apology would be nice but I’m more interested in having this problem stopped so that we as parents can stop our kids from making payments on our cards.”
Despite the son spending money on Microsoft Points for over six months, Ghera didn’t realise the money was missing until he went overdrawn.
“I went to the bank to take some money out with my credit card but the machine said I had insufficient funds. I was standing there thinking that I’d been hacked in to, but the bank came back saying they were legitimate charges.”
Ghera explained that he had registered his card to Xbox Live to allow his 12-year-old to play Call of Duty and FIFA with friends.
“I didn’t even know that it was storing my information, and even if that thought had entered my head I would have thought there would be something in place so it wasn’t so easy to spend money.”
Microsoft has responded to the report, noting that the price of downloadable content is stated throughout the purchasing process.
“There are multiple opportunities where consumers are asked to confirm their purchases. The price is clearly displayed on the screen,” a spokesperson said.
“It should also be noted that Xbox Live accounts registered for children’s use have online activity automatically defaulted to off, and these can be enabled, should the parents wish, in the family settings section.
“These settings include specifying the email address to which all purchase notifications are sent and using other features, such as ‘over the shoulder approval’, that allows the account holder to give permission for purchases by typing in a password.”
Source: Eurogamer
You see, my issue isn’t with The Daily Mail using this as yet another unashamed attack on the games industry, more the fact that a blatant lack of responsible parenting has yet again taken a backseat to this, frankly laughable, story.
First of all, Mr Ghera is clearly one of these fuckwit parents who will do anything to keep his kid quiet – like buying him an 18 rated video game. Unsurprisingly though, this rather glaring fact has been brushed aside for the sake of sensationalism.
Secondly, Mr Ghera’s son is either as dumb as a sack of bricks, or is lying through his teeth with the claim that ”He didn’t realise it was costing real money”. I seriously doubt it’s because ”He didn’t realise it was costing real money”, however if that is the case then perhaps Mr Ghera might look to spending more time involved with his sons education and less time spoiling him with unsuitable gifts just for a bit of peace and quiet.
Thirdly, what in Gods name possessed Mr Ghera to set up a non-secured account on Xbox Live using his credit card and then allowing his son to run amok? Well the answer to that is quite obvious – Mr Ghera clearly thinks game consoles make for a suitable babysitter. Rather ironically a real babysitter wouldn’t have cost him £1,150
It would have taken Mr Ghera just ten minutes of his time to set up a secure account and avoid this whole issue altogether. Instead, Mr Ghera chose to be a lazy, useless parent and is now paying the price.
I’m afraid to say, Mr Ghera, that your stupidity is only out-weighed by your ignorance and as such you’ll get no sympathy here.
Excellent article – The guy’s a twat!
Good to see you back, Paul. And yes, the man is an idiot.
The man and his son are idiots and you are totally correct about the parenting, or lack of but I actually think that Microsoft, by default, need some kind of limiter in place for purchases made from credit cards.
A monthly/weekly scalable limiter would suffice.
My Live account was hacked in January and the thieving cunt(s) stole my 2000 gamer points and tried to fleece another £75 from my linked credit card. Luckily, the card had expired and failed to go through.
Fortunately, I stumbled across my hack by chance as I happened to log into my 360 10 minutes after the hacker had got in. It alerted me that someone else has been logged into my account so I immediately changed my LIVE password and unlinked any previously linked consoles. This kicked them out and stopped them from getting back in as their next step would have seen them changing the LIVE password and locking me out for good.
Had I not stumbled across the hack, and had my card not been expired, they could’ve maxed out a £10k limit with nothing to stop them.
I have to say that Microsoft were great and they refunded my points within 48 hours but ever since this hack, I have barely touched my 360 and I will never ever register a credit card on a console ever again. It’s points cards in the future for me.
Hi Phorenzik
I just use one of these pre paid credit card on my PSN account.
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/prepaidcards/
Not linked to any bank account, top it up when I want to. Without any problems of the funds being taken out of my account, if my PSN account does ever get hacked (again).
Whilst you have a point regarding hacking, the fact that the father could have prevented his kid doing this using the parenting controls shows he’s a fuckwit of the highest order.
But of course, putting parenting controls on means It would’ve barred COD from being played, at a guess.
He’s also a fuckwit for believing his son “who thought he was buying the items with points he achieved” – So that pop-up box you have to double confirm saying “THESE MS POINTS WILL COST YOU 17 QUID” didn’t happen, right.
The kid did it, never got told off for it, and because his dad’s an idiot who doesn’t check his statement, kept doing it.
I used to use a similar virtual credit card a few years ago to buy Jap content off the Japanese PSN Store.
Thanks for the tip. Worth doing if I need something in a hurry and can’t get hold of a points card.
Totally agree with everything you said – what an absolute tool. I love how newspapers latch onto anything that gives gaming a bad name….
Obviously they conveniently skip out the part about his kid playing an 18 rated game….love it.