This kid most certainly made the naughty list this year!
6-year-old George Johnson secretly racked up more than $16,000 in Apple app store charges for his favorite video game, Sonic Forces — leaving his mom shocked and no doubt mildly pissed off.
While working from home during the pandemic, Wilton., Conn., real estate broker Jessica Johnson, 41, didn’t realize her youngest son had gone on a shopping spree on her iPad. Over the month of July, George bought add-on boosters, starting with $1.99 red rings and moving up to $99.99 gold rings — that allowed him to access new characters, more speed, and he spent thousands to do it!
Clearly Jessica didn’t realize she can place parental blocks on her Apple account. Uh-oh!
One day, while Jessica was working from home — one room over — her son racked up a whopping $2,500 in charges!
“It’s like my 6-year-old was doing lines of cocaine — and doing bigger and bigger hits,” she joked of her first-grader.
When Jessica discovered Apple and PayPal were withdrawing hefty sums — $562 here, $601 there — from her Chase account, she assumed it was a mistake or fraud and called the bank, confused by the un-itemized charges. “The way the charges get bundled made it almost impossible [to figure out that] they were from a game,” she said.
Still chaving zero clue that George was being a little dink and causing all of this, Jessica filed a fraud claim in July when her bill reached $16,293.10, but it wasn’t until October that she was told by Chase that the charges were indeed hers and she needed to contact Apple.
She realized it was George only when she reached out to Apple and was walked through a “buried running list of all the charges. You wouldn’t know how to [find] it without someone directing you,” Jessica said. When she saw the Sonic icon, she knew it was George.
“[Apple] said, ‘Tough.’ They told me that, because I didn’t call within 60 days of the charges, that they can’t do anything,” said Jessica. “The reason I didn’t call within 60 days is because Chase told me it was likely fraud — that PayPal and Apple.com are top fraud charges.”
Apple, Chase nor Apple have commented on the situation.
“These games are designed to be completely predatory and get kids to buy things. What grown-up would spend $100 on a chest of virtual gold coins?” says Jessica.
When Jessica spoke to her son about the charges, he offered to pay her back and he had no clue that the money was real. (Cute) but clearly not likely to happen as the kid is six.
She’s now scrambling to pay off his debt. “I didn’t get a paycheck from March to September,” said the mom, who works on commission. “My income has decreased by 80 percent this year.
“I may have to force this kid to pay me back in 15 years when he gets his first job.”