9 invoices received this morning for ipad apps upgrades totalling £410

Beyond stunned.

She is 8 and does not know our password (as far as we know). No idea how she has downloaded pretty much every upgrade for every game on the ipad (£70 for jewels in a My Little Pony game!!!!!!) . She says she did not get asked for a password (though she may be covering herself)

Logged a case with Apple (talking to someone seems pretty much an impossibility!)

Anyone had a similar experience? Any joy on getting refunds? Any tips?

Not a good start to the week. :-(.

The password gets cached for a while I think

Prob in-app upgrades ….sort it out in your settings

My iOS6 iPhone 5 doens’t sk for the password every time – I’m sure my old (iPhone 4 with iOS5 on it) used to. I’m guessing there must be a setting to ask for password every time, or reduce the amount of time between which it has to ask you.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17728039

If you enter the password, it doesn’t ask again for 15 minutes – though this setting can be changed. You can also turn off in-app purchases – and all purchases in general. That’s what I’ve done on the iPad our offspring plays with.

Son ran up a bill of £650 in one month on texts (long story involving dippy spouse, top ups and debit card) Orange were very nice but we were told in no uncertain terms that he had used the service so suck it up!

Good luck, hope Apple are a little more flexible.

To be honest, I find the way that some kids’ games are free to download but actively encourage spending on in-game upgrades a bit shitty.

You need to…

• Disable in-app purchases
• Change your password (and don’t tell your daughter what it is!)
• Remove your credit/debit card details* from your account and only use iTunes cards

I’ve got no experience of getting refunds so I don’t know how flexible Apple are.

(*you may have to wait to see if they will refund first though as this would go back to your card).

Tips? There’s plenty of settings under “Restrictions” to stop this happening. As someone said above, turn off in-app purchases but also set “Require password” to immediately. You might want to change some of the other settings too. Have a look

And NEVER forget your restrictions password!

Thanks guys. Settings will be changed today. Password is already changed

Thing that is confusing me is that neither my wife nor I ordered anything yesterday. So even the first password seems like a mystery. Also she seemed to be placing orders throughout the day not just in a mad 15 mins.

I do fear we will get told to suck it up

Bye Bye new forks 🙁

Sorry to hear that OP – but it has reminded me to delete my card details off my kids’ Google Play accounts.

Only one sneaky paid download in that time – and it’s safe to say I got off light compared to you.

Know of someone who had same experience, kid made in-app purchases. They complained to Itunes stores and and got refunded in full.

I find it crap that Apple don’t send me receipts for my purchases for sometimes up to a week after the event. Google Play does so immediately.

what DD said it no accident they can easily do this and at such high costs – what adult would pay £70 for a my little pony upgrade for example?

Apple are VERY good about this sort of thing.

You can even “return” apps if you are not satisfied with them when your purchased them totally conscious and aware of what you were doing. Just open a dispute saying you don’t believe this App is worth 69p and you’ll get it back.

A colleague of mine – his son run up a £500 quid odd bill buying magic dragon eggs in a game on the iPad – he got all that back with no questions.

Apple customer service, best in the business.

My little brov managed this through in app games, some of them don’t even ask for the Password, he only managed £40 before dad found out though!!

what DD said it no accident they can easily do this and at such high costs – what adult would pay £70 for a my little pony upgrade for example?

Some adults are MLP fans… They call them selves Bronies… It’s a tad disturbing

Restrictions are the way forward. Sorry you had to learn the hard way!

Go to Settings->General->Restrictions and restrict “Installing Apps” and “In-App Purchases” as a minimum.

If you really want to lock it down use “Guided Access Mode” – locks them into one app which they can’t exit unless they know the code. You can even disable certain areas of the screen.

I managed to get an App purchase refunded too. Was a bit fiddly i seem to recall, but went through no problems, just said i’d purchased by accident.

Some adults are MLP fans… They call them selves Bronies… It’s a tad disturbing

you are worryingly informed …anything you would like to confess 😉

never knew that, it trully is a mad mad world

Wow, this puts my purchase of £11 worth of apps for my daughters Innotab in perspective!. Is there anyway you can prove that the downloads have not been used? occasionally I see similar incidents (but with mobiles) reported in ‘consumer champion’ articles in the papers, the bill usually gets reduced or even cancelled but only after the reporters get involved.
could be worth putting it to Consumer champions

the-muffin-man – Member
You need to…
• Remove your credit/debit card details

Can this be done and still download apps? cheers

I got £300 refunded by apple when my son (8) hammered the in app purchases. I had to go round the houses to actually get hold of an apple operative to explain….actually i think i emailed their customer complaints and they got back to me. This was a couple of years ago so maybe they are less inclined to offer refunds these days?

talk to apple – they’re pretty good about refundign in-app purchases.

The little rockets have their own iTunes account with no means of payment specified. Every now and then I buy them a gift voucher and they use that to credit their account. When it’s gone it’s gone.

To be honest, I find the way that some kids’ games are free to download but actively encourage spending on in-game upgrades a bit shitty.

I despise any “game” with this pricing model (called “fremium”). But you’ve got to give the public what they want! Sim City tanked when it was released for iOS (although to be fair the interface was a bit naff) but look how many city/kingdom/hotel/whatever “builder” games there are now, none of which require any skill, just the investment of time or – for the impatient – real money.

WHy don’t ipads have an easy to use account feature or an easy lockdown? IIRC restrictions have to be input seperatley. Why can’t you have a kids mode, couple of clicks to initiate, no web, use installed apps only, no upgrades. haven’t looked into this too much but it doesn’t seem to be doable, mac fans feel free to enlighten me.

When you sign up a user id, it FORCES you to add account details, is this right?

I’ve put Prepaid cards onto my kids Nexus’s. They can only spend what’s on the card, rather than my credit card limit.

That way they also get to manage it to a certain extent & I don’t get any surprises.

Apple are going to be really good on refunds of this type right now, as they are setting themselves up for a massive scandal on this. So many kids apps allowing vast amounts of money to be spent on in-game purchases, often with cynical timing of when you are told to spend money so that it is within the time limit after the password is entered to download it, and also sometimes things being ridiculously expensive, so expensive that no adult would ever buy them, but kids who don’t really know the value of money might.

The restrictions are great for people who have a clue, but given we are talking about a device that has a minimal manual it is supposed to be so easy to use, they really have to start assuming that people don’t have a clue and defaulting to things that stop your kids spending tons of money by accident.

Google currently are even worse. Personally I don’t have a credit card on my google account so I don’t risk this, but it is a pain to have to worry about this, and it has to be a big scandal at some point.

It is a pain, as games are heading to being primarily mobile, particularly kids games, and prior to in app purchasing letting kids go wild with their parents credit cards, no one had really worked out how to make lots of money out of them. Now they have, it is really sinister and immoral, and makes you long for the days when you could just buy a game for £20 for a gameboy, and that was sorted, no worries about ongoing cost to play or anything.

When you sign up a user id, it FORCES you to add account details, is this right?

If you mean bank account/credit card details then no, it doesn’t.

WHy don’t ipads have an easy to use account feature or an easy lockdown? IIRC restrictions have to be input seperatley. Why can’t you have a kids mode, couple of clicks to initiate, no web, use installed apps only, no upgrades.

This would only be a guess but I suspect Apple want you to buy separate devices for everybody!

WHy don’t ipads have an easy to use account feature or an easy lockdown?

They do – the Restrictions settings outlined above.

Seems pretty easy-to-use to me, a simple on/off switch controlling whether In-App purchases are allowed or not.

Why can’t you have a kids mode, couple of clicks to initiate, no web, use installed apps only, no upgrades

You sort of can – set up your kid with an account with no payment methods.
Use your account to download apps, then sign out and sign device back in as your kid’s account.
They can’t download or update without asking you to log back in as your account.
They can download free apps with their own password.

Works for me.

Hmm. This might be a Daily Mail opinion, but if you buy a £500 device, set it up with your credit card details, then hand it to a small child, you do have to bear some responsibility 😉

(That’s not to the OP, by the way, more a comment that Apple aren’t really to blame)

I’ve put Prepaid cards onto my kids Nexus’s.

Now this – how the hell do you do that?

The little rockets have their own iTunes account with no means of payment specified. Every now and then I buy them a gift voucher and they use that to credit their account. When it’s gone it’s gone.

That’s what I use as well but theoretically you aren’t allowed to create an account for someone under 13 :(. If you do by accident try then you need to wait for a day before you can try again with the same email address

• Remove your credit/debit card details* from your account and only use iTunes cards

This is an extremely strong arguement for kids having their own iTunes account with no credit card registered (so they only use iTunes vouchers, rather than the family sharing one account
I feel for you OP.

theoretically you aren’t allowed to create an account for someone under 13

Stupid isn’t it, but worth the hassle getting around.

WHy don’t ipads have an easy to use account feature or an easy lockdown? IIRC restrictions have to be input seperatley. Why can’t you have a kids mode, couple of clicks to initiate, no web, use installed apps only, no upgrades. haven’t looked into this too much but it doesn’t seem to be doable, mac fans feel free to enlighten me.

because not doing so makes them loads and loads of money