16 year old son spent Ј500 on online gaming

A question about : 16 year old son spent Ј500 on online gaming

Just found out my son has been buying games for ps3 and this amounts to Ј500. Terms and conditions state if under eighteen then parental consent should be sought. I feel sick with the amount he has spent. It is his own money that he has earned from his paper round. Don't think he realised how much he was spending. Do you think it's worth ringing Sony entertainment or will it be a waste of time. Btw we have now closed the account. Just think its too easy to lure people into this.

Best answers:

• he's 16, pretty sure he knows what he is spending.
  Not sure how PS3 works, but on Xbox you either have to buy points (or used to) or have a credit card on file, if it's the latter did you not monitor your statements?
  I think you should make your son pay for what he has purchased, let it be a lesson to him and move on. Make him take responsibilty for his actions.
• It was his own debit card and his own money earned from working. - just cant believe how easy it is to rack up the bills.
• I hope he learns from this experience.. teach him some moneysaving tips. It's alot of money, but like you said he could afford it.
  I recommend that don't let him buy stuff online, it's just numbers.. I suggest getting him to physically have the money in his hand. A money jar or something? I like those Coca Cola bottles.
• The biggest problem I see with this is that your son spent all this money, and all you want to do is get a refund for him now he has tested the games and figured out what he does not like.
  I am against all this online games refund malarkey, if you buy it then you pay for it, even if your 3 year old son gets some games on his iphone. Young kids should not have advanced phones so the fault clearly lies with the parents.
  "Terms and conditions state if under eighteen then parental consent should be sought"
  They are more like guidelines than strict rules, it is your job to monitor what your kids are buying and you should be monitoring what they are buying, since you did not do this it is not on them to rectify it.
  The word "should" is a million miles from the word "must"
• i agree with sparhawk here.
  it came from his card and his money, technically it has nothing to do with you, he's the bank account holder, youll be lucky if Sony even talk to you about his account and his money.
  if you were so concerned for him saving up, you should have retained his debit card, so he has to ask you for it, you can give him a slap on the wrist but i bets he has saved the card details to his online account, so he doesnt physically need the card to purchase games anyway and keep on doing it till you get him to show you how he buy's the games and look at the debit credit card field on the screen and see all the details preloaded into them .
• Over what period of time did this happen? I hope not all in one month as some ISPs would say it violates their fair usage policy. That's assuming you even have an unlimited Internet package. It's worth checking you haven't been charged for this as if you have my advice is charge your son for the extra!
  On the bright side there are far worse things to waste money on
  (Oh and introduce him to CEX, it's cheaper than downloading and he can flog what he doesn't like on eBay!)
• It was he who didn't comply with their terms and conditions so there's no chance Sony would do anything about it.
  It's actually not easy to rack up bills on there, it always shows you the amount and asks you to confirm and so on so he would have been fully aware what he was spending.
• I think you should congratulate any 16 year-old who earns enough money to pay for his computer games.
• The fact is, this is a differnce in opinion. My little sister got given near Ј150 for her birthday and she brought 3 teddies at Ј30 each (she has 4 of them now so thats Ј120 on teddies!!) and some pet toy plastic things I cant remember name.... I just can't justify that money wasted like that but its what she wanted to do with her money so Mum let her.
  If we didn't have bills to pay, and were alot better off - I think my OH could easily rack up Ј500 or so on the PS3 because its his hobby.
  In some cases you can ring up the company and ask for a refund as they have illegally used your debit card..or were to young to know...but at 16 with his own money he was simply spending his money doing what he wanted to do..the ps3. You might not understand it but he certainly does..and I bet he doesn't regret it either.
• Ј500 from a paper round? I'm in the wrong line of work
• if hes been buying games to store on his hard drive then i'd advise him to buy from shops in the future. if hes spending large amounts like this on games then at least he'd be able to sell them back or trade them in at a shop at a lower price and recoup some of his investment in the future
• "Just think its too easy to lure people into this."
  'Lured'? How?
• He spent his own money, sort of lost track how much he was spending .......this could be a really good lesson for him in budgeting and deciding how much he REALLY wants something before spending his hard earned cash.
  Do you REALLY want to negate that by even trying to get him a refund and him thinking.... It's OK there's always a way out ?
  My son never learned to budget til it was his own money he was spending.....after he made a bad buy or two his whole attitude to money changed.
• I'd estimate that over the course of the last 10 years alone I've spent a minimum of ten times that amount - guess what, no one's to blame for it other than me, myself & I. At 16 you're old enough to make your own decisions, so I don't get where you're upset here, his money, just because you don't approve of how it was spent doesn't make it Sony's problem.
• Just got back from the supermarket. I was lured into doing a week's grocery shopping. Horrible company lured me into buying icecream. Will ring them for a full refund later, pretty disgraceful.