A 12 year-old British boy has used his mother’s credit card to make purchases exceeding £900 in Facebook’s popular agriculture game, Farmville. In fairness, the lad plugged £288 of his own savings into this ill-advised investment. The rest of it was all on his mum’s plastic, though, and was spent completely without her knowledge: “The first use of my card was on 14 March,” she tells The Guardian. “I discovered it on the 29th and the card was stopped at that point. Any transactions after that date were already in the system, so what I thought was a £427 spend turned into £625 over the next few days.” And the rest, as they say, is history – just like the boy’s chances of ever being allowed back on the home computer again. To add insult to injury Facebook, which hosts the game, has cancelled the boy’s account too. Perhaps that’s because, at 12 years old, he’s actually too young to be playing it. Meanwhile it appears that the possibility of a refund from either the credit card company or the game’s makers is slim, since the credit card was supposed to be the mother’s responsibility. However HSBC, the card issuers, has said it may consider reimbursing the woman if she decides to file criminal charges against her son. “Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider,” is all she had to say about that proposition. So how did the lad himself account for his wayward spending spree? “...they had brought out good stuff that I wanted.” Blimey, kids eh? However the biggest irony in all of this is that Farmville is mostly free to play, with users purchasing extra items only if they want them. But therein lie many lessons about the dangers of supposedly free applications – as well as the pitfalls of leaving minors alone with their mum’s purse! http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/blog/article/10131/
I read about this yesterday. If his parent's are anything like mine, he would get his ass beat so badly he wouldn't be able to stand correctly without it hurting.
Well .. I think the mom can get reimbursement if it was in the US. That's why it's good to set limit on your credit card acct. I put it at $500 to $1000, I expect the credit card com to email, sms, and call me to confirm the transaction/s if they're over the set limit.
I think I saw my cousin play that game for a moment, so stupid of this kid to do this...he's going to work his ass off to pay it back some how.
i don't understand the idea of filing criminal charges against a family member, especially a minor of 12 years old. i would however understand the biggest ass wooping of the boy's life. imo, i prefer the latter, both as the parent or as the child.
Wow, like Kontra said, my parents would be my ass so hard... I mean, when I'm bored, I play facebook games like the next person, but I never ever put my own hard earned cash towards those types of games. So many of my friends play Farmville, I don't get it. Kids these days... I hope he got a good whippin.
you have a credit card with a 500/1000 limit? one of my credit cards has like a 20 thousand dollar limit :|
