Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card
Angry woman seeks solicitor
An 11-year-old boy has landed his mother in debt , after splashing more than £1000 on Xbox Live, without her knowledge.
Mum-of-two Dawn Matthews entered her debit card details into the console to buy her son, Brendan, an Xbox Live membership to play against buddies online.
The 37-year-old went about her business, blissfully unaware that Brendan used her details to buy games, weapons and costumes for his characters, Kent Online reports.
The spending spree continued until Matthews tried to pay a phone bill this month, at which point her card was declined. When she contacted the bank, she was told everything had been spent on Xbox Live, with 25 payments alone made in the last two months. In one month Brendan spent £350. His entire expenditure totalled £1087.
Dawn said she failed to notice the debts because she had no access to online banking and was busy sorting through numerous letters about her direct debits bouncing. She attributed this to " the recession and rising costs of petrol and food".
She plans to contact a solicitor about the payments as Barclays and Microsoft both deny liability over the already-paid bill.
The Xbox Live account is now been closed and Brendan is probably seeking a paper round. ®
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COMMENTS
Before the commentards start...
Some people are IT illiterate. The expected behaviour of a debit card is that it is presented for each new transaction. Storing credit/debit card details in accounts is against the basic principles of how the system works in the offline world. I think the mum's fighting a losing battle, but IMO, XBL are to blame. They want to make money, so they make it easy to spend money. They expose the consumer to additional risks in the name of profit.
Yes, the mum should have read the Ts&Cs more carefully.
Yes, the mum should have checked her bank statements (and the whole "online banking" thing is also partly to blame).
But no: XBox Live shouldn't have allowed this to happen in the first place.
Child account?
And she's supposed to know that because?
Nope sorry, Microsoft could easily and clearly state when buying stuff on Xbox live that your credit card details will be remembered and used to make purcahses in the future at the touch of a button,
OR
Make it so that you have to choose to have your details remembered rather than it be the default choice.
But of course Micro$oft doesn't want that do they? Oh no, they'd rather engineer things so that you present youself for explotation.
Sir
It doesn't help that M$ won't allow you to remove a credit card from the gamer account once it's been used. They only allow you to overwrite it with a new (and currently valid) one.
I had let my CC card company know that the card details had been cloned and to get a new number issued when they refused to remove it.
NEVER PUT YOUR CARD DETAILS ON XBOX LIVE!
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