back to article Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

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 …

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  1. bubba-bear

    Email purchase notification

    I have a card on a few accounts, such as iTunes and Kindle, and after buying anything, I get an immediate email detailing the transaction. Don't people watch this stuff, especially when it was going on for months? I could understand not reading email notifications for maybe a week, but ignoring emailed purchase notifications for even a month is beyond silly. Actually, I don't understand ignoring email notifications for even two days, but not everybody checks their email daily.

  2. Robbie
    Jobs Horns

    Don't give Microsoft your card details

    Back in the very early days of Xbox Live (on the original Xbox) I entered my credit card details into the Xbox console. Some time before the anniversary for renewal approached, I could see no way of *removing* said card, so to be absolutely sure of cancelling the subscription, I overwrote the card number with zeros (which it allowed me to do), changed the address and indicated wherever I could see, that I didn't want to renew membership.

    Around this time I moved house, forgot about Live and never took the console online again.

    I got charged an annual membership renewal anyway and ended up spending no small amount of time on the phone to Ireland (I think it was) trying to get a refund. In cancelling my account I had to run the gamut of the hard sell with a Microsoft operative hell bent on forcing me to justify why I was intentionally being such a fool for wanting to leave such a wonderful service. For the record, I don't overly enjoy self flagellation or protestation.

    I pay for a gold account on Live once again, purchased DLC etc, but I will never give Microsoft my credit card details. Ever. I rely instead on retail or online purchased payment scratch cards.

    This lady was probably a bit of a nerf for not checking, and I find it a bit incredulous that it went on for months without her noticing, but I have a *tiny* bit of empathy for her plight.

  3. Dick Emery
    Alert

    Xbox/PS3. What demographic?

    What demographic are these consoles mostly sold to? I don't mean who buys the things I mean who are the majority that use them? If under 18's then the parental controls should be ON by default. Not the other way around. If this is the case then MS ARE to blame as the demographic that uses it most need to be prevented from being able to do this kind of thing.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wake up call

    A lot of you are saying that it is right for Microsoft to assume that the purchase is being made by the authorised user of the card yet when there is a discussion about the recording or movie industries you are all falling over yourselves to point out that they can't assume the subscriber of the internet service is ths person illegally downloading stuff.

    What's the difference? Oh, I know, here we have some poor woman being shafted by big business and on the other we have us techies being shafted by big business. We are always right and poor computer illiterates deserve all they get.

  5. Alistair James 1

    Lets put this into perspective...

    The woman is pleading poverty, yet she can buy Brendan an Xbox, ok fair enough it might have been a gift. She used her debit card to buy the boy xbox live access, ok WHY NOT BUY A BLOODY CARD FROM TESCO YOU STUPID WOMAN!!!!! I am sorry but all you lot bitching about M$ making money off this and M$ being at fault, rubbish, there is one person at fault the mother.

  6. JohnG

    Proof of transaction

    Whilst this woman may have been a bit dim in not checking what she was signing up for, she may have a case against her bank. IANAL but as I understand it, the card issuer has to be able to prove that EVERY card transaction was authorised by the card holder. They may ask the supplier to show that they had provided the card holder with a record of the transaction i.e. a receipt with date, VAT, etc. Without this, they might have to refund the card holder.

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