Credit Card Charges By A Minor In Game

[Dawnseven]

Probably lots of people with kids have been faced at one point or another with unauthorized credit card charges by their kids. I have a 12 year old and he's been grounded a time or two for buying things on my iTunes account ($5.99 -- but that wasn't the point), or last summer for buying $40 worth of games on his Xbox (for which he was grounded for a month). My credit card was also on file with Blizzard when my son had a WoW account, and was, until today, on file to pay his monthly subscription for SWTOR (the game du jour).

Separate from this, it's stupid I know, but I don't always look at my credit card statements. I have a lot of bills set to automatically get paid out of my checking account: the cable bill, electric bill, mortgage payment, car insurance, life insurance ... and my Discover bill. With Discover they automatically take the minimum monthly payment. If I can afford more that month, I log into the account a minimum of 3 days before the auto payment and change the amount to something higher. Times are tough, and I've been paying the minimum for over a year now. Since I know where the card is, I haven't used it for anything extra, and I know my balance ($2K short of my limit), and since I know the payment is automatically going to be made on time, I haven't bothered looking at the bill.

And then we come to today ...

I happened to log into my account today to check my credit score (Discover gives you your FICO score for free) and I noticed on the account summary page that I was $1000 over my limit. Shocking considering I recall being $2,000 under. I pull up my account activity and long story short, my 12 year old has been going to town buying Cartel Coins for months, charged to my Discover card on file, to the tune of $300 to $400 worth a month. The total charges since last summer come to just under $3,000.

There is absolutely nothing that I could say that accurately conveys what I was thinking or feeling.

Sobbing, shaking, and on the verge of vomiting, I called Discover. After talking me off the ledge (almost literally) they convinced me that the situation was "ridiculous" and that I should be able to do something about it. They did 2 things. A) They locked my account somehow so that no more charges (by anybody) will get paid if I'm over my credit limit (why would they do this in the first place??). B) They put a payment block on SWTOR so no future charges will be paid. That was nice and all, but not really very helpful. They asked if I had called SWTOR customer support yet and I said no, I just called Discover in a panic. Discover said the charges were not authorized and I should call SWTOR and them reversed.

Next was a call to SWTOR customer service. More crying, more shaking. I talked to two very sympathetic people (or so they seemed) who said this kind of things happens ... and then told me that since I checked the box somewhere saying I authorized payment with that card and the charges were in fact made by my son (which they were able to confirm through a location check or something) they had no choice but to consider the charges "legitimate" and that they couldn't refund a penny. HOWEVER, that being said, the charges were NOT authorized by me and that I should call Discover back and dispute them. They even went so far as to strongly suggest that I keep using the key words "unauthorized" and "fraudulent" in my discussions with Discover.

And now, I'm supposed to call Discover back.

My question to the masses is, has anything like this ever happened to you? What did you do? What was the outcome? Am I sincerely going to get screwed out of $3,000 for pixels?? If the kid logged into my Amazon account and ordered a bike or a go kart or something at LEAST he'd have something to show for it (and I'd have something to return). Cartel coins? Seriously? Is there even that much you can actually spend cartel coins on?? They have to be making more money sometimes as a F2P than they get in subs. That's probably fodder for a different thread though.

For now, help me. I have to call Discover back. And I have talk/ground/kill/something my son when he gets home from school while trying to possibly come to terms with having to pay this $3,000 AND avoid someone calling child protective services on me for whatever may ensue later.

[Deleted]

The purchases were not authorised by you and are thus void because a minor cannot engage in a contract so you don't have to pay dick. Shit like this is pretty common now, especially with smart phones.

[Gheld]

This sounds like a very unfortunate oversight on your part. Although a 12 year old should have understood that what he was doing was wrong. You should both be grounded for life.

EDIT: Be careful though, because I'm fairly sure most cardholder agreements forbids the use of the credit card by anybody but authorized card holders. So Discover can easily turn around and throw this in your face.

The end result is that if you don't want to pay that money you would have to press for credit card fraud charges against your son.

But seriously OP. I check my credit card balances/histories every week. It takes about 5 seconds.

[Deleted]

Don't let your son get your cards, tan his arse too.

[Xerra]

You should probably swap to a month by month or 3 month at a time for games then after you sub go through the process of unsubing each time so that your card information is taken off the site. It seems someone foolish to have your info right there with ingame shops so accessible. Personally after a strong talking to I would say, well looks like no christmas or birthday presents for a good 3 years. We will still have cake though!

[A Day to Remember]

Start by cleaning your house of any proof the child existed, then murder the child...

Obviously this is in jest, when i was young and dumb i ran up a ~$1300 phone bill calling long distance to a friend for literally 6-8hrs a day every day. As far as i know they didnt have to pay it and i certainly got my ass beat for it. I dont have any real advice except, fight it, dont just accept that you get fucked out of $3000 go to court if you have to.

[zealo]

3000 dollars on Cartel Coins.. You get about 1000 of these for 10-15 bucks with one item or set costing similar amounts, he must have bought dozens, perhaps hundreds of items o.O

While unfortunate i would recommend you to not link any kind of bank account to any of his accounts and have a discussion about purchases and do them yourself if you allow them when he wants something.

Minors are not legally allowed to engage in any kind of contract so try to push the case if possible.

[SL1200]

Wow. Good luck, I hope you're not responsible for those charges.

[Deleted]

wow.. that aint good..

[Reeve]

I don't think a minor is technically liable for any contract they enter into, right (lack of capacity)? You theoretically should be able to get the charges reversed on that basis I'd imagine (void the whole contract, which might destroy his account/ability to play SWTOR again), though reality often doesn't match theory. As it was taught to me in my Business Law class in California back in the day, minors can enter contracts, but have the ability to void them at any time due to lack of capacity. The person on the other end of the contract cannot void it through the same means. Any contractual considerations (in this case the cartel coins and the payment for the cartel coins) would have to be returned by both parties. I'm not a lawyer though.

Either way, I'd say never give a kid the rights to use you credit card.

[Dawnseven]

1) There are almost always you can place parental freezes on cards that are used for games.

An example is with blizzard, there's a way to make it so an account can't charge existing things to his/her account.

Just FYI on this point. Blizz has pretty good parental controls, yes. SWTOR doesn't have any. You put in a credit card to pay a sub fee, the card goes on file, and it's a free for all after that apparently.

[Temp name]

Well, he just used his allowance for the rest of his life..

[Stop Pretending]

The purchases were not authorised by you and are thus void because a minor cannot engage in a contract so you don't have to pay dick. Shit like this is pretty common now, especially with smart phones.

Not true at all. I JUST dealt with this with Capital One, with my 13 year old. It's not fraud,and they considered it a civil matter, and did not reverse the charges.

[Theinquisition]

I'd beat that ass.

Anyway, most credit card companies will tell you that if you clam the purchases to be fraudulent and unauthorized that they WILL pursue legal actions against whomever did the crime. They put you between a rock and a hard place.

I'd suggest in the future that you purchase pre-paid time cards for your child.

[Deleted]

Not true at all. I JUST dealt with this with Capital One, with my 13 year old. It's not fraud,and they considered it a civil matter, and did not reverse the charges.

Read your contract. It is a matter of unauthorised purchase, those can be refunded.

[Dawnseven]

3000 dollars on Cartel Coins.. You get about 1000 of these for 10-15 bucks with one item or set costing similar amounts, he must have bought dozens, perhaps hundreds of items o.O

I haven't played since before it went F2P, so I really don't know what you can get, but yeah ... I can see charges of $39.99 10 to 12 times a day sometimes. I don't know how many coins he got then (2K, 2500?), but this month he was buying 14,500 coins at $99 a pop. WHAT he could possibly have been buying with them I don't know.

I'm just numb now, except that I do still need to throw up.

[Choptimus]

Parent of the year.

[Reeve]

I'd beat that ass.

Anyway, most credit card companies will tell you that if you clam the purchases to be fraudulent and unauthorized that they WILL pursue legal actions against whomever did the crime. They put you between a rock and a hard place.

I'd suggest in the future that you purchase pre-paid time cards for your child.

I'd suggest not letting your child play subscription games for a LONG time.

[Archiul]

Speaking as a law student

The purchases were not authorised by you and are thus void because a minor cannot engage in a contract BUT

If goodwill of the third party is applicable here, the third party (the seller) will be protected, therefore you will have to pay for your child, because the third party wouldn't be able to tell if you authorised all these payments or not but then again the numbers are ridiculous and I can't tell if goodwill is applicable or not.

[Orange Joe]

Read your contract. It is a matter of unauthorised purchase, those can be refunded.

They also generally require going after the person that mode those purchases. So yeah you can say that and risk your child being prosecuted for it.