Long and short of it -- no, I don't expect a refund. You give your child a password, that means you get to suffer the consequences. Apple has made a lot of changes to help prevent this - ability to not have the password carry over for the 15 minutes; two device authentication method for purchases; amongst other things. Parents need to make rules and stick by them. You make a mistake you learn from it and move on. Bait and switching - you still don't understand the definition. A developer can do whatever they want with their game. You take the risk with digital content - content can change; it can get pulled; pricing changes; etc. Read the terms and conditions. That's just the way it is.
None of what you just said would be an issue with me. Parents need to be responsible. Developers can do what they want. It will forever be a sad state of affairs however when developers can justify having a one hundred dollar consumable IAP. Not from the perspective of responsibility, but from the perspective of morality and artistic integrity.
The lawsuit deals with children buying inapps during the 15 min interval, not with giving them passwords. About freemium bait and switching, just because it may be in the term and conditions does not make it legal, or ethical at the very least. So what you are saying is on itunes, if you bought a song, they could just convert it to a demo 20 second song, and force you to buy the song again in a different name. I think these practices should be deemed illegal. Just because something is digital does not make it reason why business ethics can not be upheld. People have an expectation that they will get a product, and that product will not be reduced to a crippled app or song. Well, I hope some class action lawsuit does come up someday for digital goods rights. Just because a good is digital does not give the right to rip off consumers.
Hand on heart and this is the honest truth, I wouldn't even consider asking apple to refund it, in my case, my kid would be refunding it by doing chores or something, probably until the age of 21 lol, and if she was really deceitful about it, I'd be selling her iPad too. I know she knows about this stuff though, so I'd be more annoyed at her than at apple. It's shitty that these type of iaps exist in the first place, but if a parent just checked the game for a few minutes it could be avoided. My kid has an iPad allowance and can buy one game a month (cos I spend it all on meeeeeee lol) or she could buy gems etc in whatever game and she very quickly realised what a waste of money they are, and even she will read the App Store description to what the iaps before choosing the game. If an eight year old can do it, then so can parents. Genuine mistakes should be refunded, but parents need to take responsibility. It's happening with everything, the blame gets passed onto schools or whoever, teenage pregnancy, obesity, bad literacy, all get blamed on the schools or government when actually, in my opinion, it's the parents duty to teach the children these things. I know I'll probably sound smug, but nothing can be further from the truth, my kids not perfect and neither am I, I make bad choices but I try my best.
$500 in chores? Wow, you are a good mom! I like how you give them one app a month. Kids are lucky these days. But one thing to note is that you are a very knowledgeable ios mom. Most moms probably don't even know what an inapp is.
I am knowledgeable but only because I made myself so, I knew we were gonna get my daughter in iPad last summer and I spent the month before that googling about the bad side. I'd heard horror stories on the news about kids spending money so wanted to be prepared. You are right about other mums, know any mums who use their tablets for stuff other than eBay and Facebook and stuff, and run to their husbands when they go wrong, it's sad really, they could easily sort stuff like that themselves. my friends thinks I am weird for playing games, it's for teenage boys in their eyes, if I say I've been up all night playing on xbox I get the funniest looks, I say bullshit, I'd rather escape in a good game than sit on my arse watching soaps, they feel sorry for my husband cos between myself and my daughter a console is always plugged up lol. I'm going off topic so I'll shut my cakehole now.
Me too, I would much rather play videogames than watch soaps. But, it is funny, after about college age, it seems almost a shame to admit that one likes to play. They always say they don't have time for that.
Yeah and that's a very weak argument, I hear it regularly. It's almost like they try to make you feel bad for having the time to play. People make time for stuff they enjoy, you can bet people who pipe out with that line make sure they have time to go to the pub, or spend an hour on Facebook, or sit and watch soaps or whatever it is they like, I don't have time for that stuff because I choose to spend my free time doing summat I enjoy, which the majority of the time it's gaming, Gaming is as much a valid hobby as knitting, (which Im also awesome at btw lol) if people have a problem with how we spend outer time then it says more about them than it does us.
You write you "heard horror stories on the news about kids spending money" and that's what made you took action. But that's exactly the problem: many of those horror stories are from people who never did hear those stories, never knew about the concept of consumable IAP and just assumed that a silly free game was a silly free game. They didn't give their children their creditcard info either, not even their password. They just downloaded a game for their kids themselves, and then Apple didn't ask for a password again when the kid (possibly a 4 year old) just tapped on every nice looking icon it saw and bought a $100 consumable IAP pack.
I've no doubt that is what's happened in many cases, but if the parent checked the game for a few minutes (not necessarily for iap but to check the content) before handing over the device to a child then they would have seen about the iap, or even if they supervised the child for the first few mins, they would have seen the iap pop up themselves as even without having to put the password in you have to confirm to buy. To much inappropriate content is aimed at kids, not just iap, not even just games, we can't just assume that because its focused in a kids product that the product is suitable for kids. We should be able to hand our children things and assume they will be safe but we can't, especially when handing over an internet connected device.
Or you can just log out from the Appstore before you give the device to your kid. While I agree that Apple could take some measures to make it easier for us parents (e.g. by toggling if username/password are stored at all), I am firmly with cloudpuff: it is MY responsibility as parent, no way around it. Yes, some things can be regulated, but ultimately it is up to me as parent. Example: Imagine a supermarket that sells weapons and drugs, but it is prohibited by law to sell them to minors. Yes, the supermarket should obey the law; but let's just say they don't. I have to take care that my child does not go there and buys a shotgun and crack. Not school, not government, or whoever else people like to blame these days for their own failures as parents. @cloudpuff: tons of respect from me! You are a great mom; and already brought up everything I thought about, and very well worded.
I understand. I just like to highlight the IAP part. Once you strip away the lackadaisical parenting and developer independence, what you're left with is what exactly they bought, along with the same issues of IAP that we talk about here every day. I guarantee the lawsuit didn't reach 32 million because kids bought expansion packs or singular, permanent unlocks.
