Smurf it all to smurf! In-app purchases ring up $1,400 in charges

Bonsoir, oui pour moi en effet je fais des achat par Apple store, il y avais exactement, un l'aps de temps pour faire plusieurs achats sans utiliser le mon de passe en dehors du premier, alors j'ai essayé de nouveaux ce soir même avec le 4.3, et rien a changé pour moi, il existe toujours un certain temps entre le premier et les prochains achats sans vous demander le mot de passe.

I know you guys are an Apple oriented website, but you can't stick up for the company like this by saying " but a child could still potentially figure out a password and toggle the option off."

That like saying someone could potentially figure out your pass word to your computer where you may have your social security or credit cards. Just because there is a possibility of it being figured out means we should completely do without passwords?

Apple must be paying your bills.... justifying the negitivites of one company with another does not make it any better. Two wrongs do NOT make a right.

The whole "watch your kids, it's the free market at work" argument fails, because it's a matter of degree.

I think everyone would agree that a $10,000 one-click purchase in a game like "Fishies" or "Smurfville" would be unacceptable. You can't hold parents liable for their "failure" to anticipate that such a thing could happen. It's absurd.

How about a $100,000 in-app purchase? It immediately overdraws the parent's credit cards and ruins their credit rating. But they shoulda known better! It's their own fault?

No, it's not. It's a ridiculous concept to shift the burden to the device user.

I can see allowing $1 purchases, assuming that those purchases require passwords every time. I can see $5 purchases.

But I simply can't accept that a 3-year-old playing a Smurf game can spend $100 with one click... unless his parents have adjusted their device settings. That's simply beyond my threshold for "punishment" for iPhone users who aren't familiar with all of the device's settings.

You people with the watch-your-kids etc mentality are looking for perfection, people make mistakes. But clearly the app store is misleading to users.

Apps that you buy with a button marked "free" would imply they are free. Unless you are aware of in app purchases (which are new to most platforms including this one) free would mean free.

I also have an issue with any company running free with credit cards, I am against fed regulation on many things but ccards need more control. Require the cvv (back of the card) code for purchases and perhaps stop forcing the consumer to keep cards or money on file for ecommerce sites.

I have the same issue right now battling with apple. another in app purchase thing. my kid (5 year old) somehow was able to spend 50 bucks after a few hours without prompting for a password . I emailed itunes support (brutal by the way) and they decided to disable my credit card and told me to go get a new one from the credit card company. I have said that isn't possible and even a consideration as i have stuff automatically charged to it. drives me crazy as I didn't ask for them to do this but they did now I cannot use Itunes store for anything as it wants a credit card to move forward. Apple Itunes support is by far the worst I have encountered so far .

Okay - my last comment got lost and lord knows that I hate it when I can't post my opinion on the internet for everyone to see ;)

THAT SAID..

Back to what I was going to say.

First, I let my kids use my iPad and iPhone. Regularly. I do NOT let them on apps like We Rule/Smurfville, etc BECAUSE of this. The one time they helped me on We Rule, they drained 10 mojo on something stupid... that I didn't want to spend it on.

It was my fault, because I let them do it.

But that wasn't a purchase. And that's another argument. Back to the initial one.

It is a parent's responsibility to ensure stuff like this doesn't happen. That said, there IS a loophole in Apple's system that should be stopped. As a parent, I'm distracted and as much as I can say it's a parent's responsibility to stop this, to make sure they don't have access to this that or another thing.

And I agree, almost all the time. NO way will I allow my kids, no matter how old, to have access to my iTunes password or iTunes account. Right now, however, it's my phone and my iPad that they're using, and I want to make it easy for me to be an impulse buying idiot.

Now, here's the thing. I won't allow them to have my password, but say I go and download Smurfville for them and load it up. They have access in the game, but CANNOT install anything new. The problem is, there is that 15 minute window that if I'm not thinking, which a lot of the time I can tend to not do because I have twins and am scatterbrained.

What should happen is that there should be an option, one that you can turn on and off with, tada, a password that will remove the window. Then, every purchase no matter what requires a password. People like Jim with no kids can turn it off so that they have unfettered and unprotected access to their accounts.

But people like me can put a stopgap into place for being scatterbrained.

Combine that with parents being intelligent and NOT giving their passwords to their kids, this stuff will never happen even with a CC on file.

And then if you want to be more sure, just remove your CC off file, buy 10 - 20 dollar iTunes cards and be done with it.

And as much as I like games such as We Rule/Safari/City or whatever, I ***HATE*** the IAP model for how it can suck the money away, because this is an addiction like gambling or heroin, IMO.

Okay, let's see if this rant sticks.

I wonder what it was like in the old days when parents were responsible for what their children did, instead of device makers and game developers.

1. Apples Terms and conditions require you to be 13 or over to use services provided through iTunes and 2. There is a simple way to get around this. Have separate iTunes accounts, make one for your kids, and link that to the cheapest iTunes card you can get. This is their allowance on iTunes, once they spend that they cannot go over, they need to get a new card or you need to send them a gift through your credit card enabled account. This regulates their purchases. You can also monitor what they are buying through the purchase receipts emailed to you after every purchase. This also works if you get a US promo code, you make a US account to claim it, then sign out of that account and sign in to your main 'credit card' account.

I put blame on Apple. To blame parent for not figuring out how to dig deeper into the OS and turn on controls (that won't work if there is a 15-minute windows to make your berry purchases)- goes against how Apple markets in the first place.
This is all supposed to JUST WORK. The parents should have setup a special kids account with a specific limit loaded from a gift card- then when it is used up- it's done.

Also, people don't seem to know it... BUT
You can create an app store account without a credit card.
You can simply link it to an app store gift card.
You ran through your $20? Tough, you will have to earn more.

Give money some value.