Amazon to refund up to $70 million in unauthorized in-app purchases made by kids

[Shawn Knight]

Amazon has elected to withdraw litigation in an ongoing dispute with the Federal Trade Commission regarding unlawful in-app purchases. The decision will expedite the looming refund process, the FTC said in a press release on Tuesday.

Amazon, which began allowing in-app purchases in late 2011, caught the attention of the FTC which claimed it hadn’t done enough to prevent kids from making unauthorized in-app purchases.

Andrew DeVore, an Amazon associate general counsel, said in 2014 that in-app purchase refunds were never a problem. When customers told them their kids had made purchases they didn’t want, he said they simply refunded the purchases.

Nevertheless, a federal district judge in April 2016 ruled in favor of the FTC, agreeing that Amazon illegally billed consumers for unauthorized in-app purchases made by children without their parents’ knowledge or permission.

With the legal shenanigans now in the rear-view, the refund process can move forward. The FTC notes that more than $70 million in in-app charges made between November 2011 and May 2016 may be eligible for refunds. Full details on the refund process, which Amazon will be in charge of, will be provided shortly, the FTC said.

A judge this past November rejected Amazon’s request to issue refunds in the form of gift cards, insisting that the company would no doubt recapture some of the profits that are at issue.

Image courtesy Christoper Furlong, Getty Images

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68808-amazon-refund-up-70-million-unauthorized-app-purchases.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Or, here is a great idea, parents can pay what their kids charged and learn a valuable lesson in actually parenting their kids!

 

[Uncle Al]

I can see the customers (parents) being given the benefit of a doubt for a single incident, but when the parents don't take the appropriate actions to prevent further occurrences, they should be held responsible. If that means taking away junior's PC, tablet, cell phone and any other "toys", then so be it. Without the proper punishment they are simply sending the unspoken message to the child "if you don't get punished, it must be OK to do again and again".

 

[p51d007]

Parents using the phone as a baby sitter, not watching what they are doing.

 

[davislane1]

Parents using the phone as a baby sitter, not watching what they are doing.

They may not want to watch their kids, but the bank certainly does. Like a hawk.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Some parents just shouldn't be parents. With the rate tech surges ahead possibly there'll be some gizmo or gadget in the future, or even an app that can analyze and forbid some people becoming parents at all by sterilizing them via special radio frequencies without them feeling a thing or even knowing about it. Neurological networks, advanced AI learning and all that jazz that a lot of people are 'dying' to embrace... for now.

 

[madboyv1]

On all of my devices, I do not store pay information for any app stores, and I have one click shopping disabled on any site that offers it. This requires me to be doubly sure I want to get what I am trying to purchase since I have to go through through the entire song and dance to make the purchase in the first place.

I'll take forced impulse control (kinda not really) over convenience any day ha ha ha. Probably has saved me hundreds, if not thousands because I was too lazy to get my card or log into x number of sites to authorize the purchase.

I only mention this because these parents should be practicing the same, especially on any device that their kids could be using. That and not saving passwords to shopping sites too.

 

[wiyosaya]

I can see the customers (parents) being given the benefit of a doubt for a single incident, but when the parents don't take the appropriate actions to prevent further occurrences, they should be held responsible. If that means taking away junior's PC, tablet, cell phone and any other "toys", then so be it. Without the proper punishment they are simply sending the unspoken message to the child "if you don't get punished, it must be OK to do again and again".

Seems to me the question is how did the child get the parent's login info? I agree, however, that the parent needs to exercise proper control over things like their login info.

 

[wiyosaya]

On all of my devices, I do not store pay information for any app stores, and I have one click shopping disabled on any site that offers it. This requires me to be doubly sure I want to get what I am trying to purchase since I have to go through through the entire song and dance to make the purchase in the first place.

My approach is to not store anything on a site such as address or credit card info. For sites like crapAzon, it is a PITA because they do not offer the choice of storing or not storing your credit card info and it must be explicitly deleted, but many other sites do. For sites that insist on an address, I usually put something like "no spam" in. If they want to contact me, they have an e-mail address, and that should be more than sufficient.

 

[Darth Shiv]

I can see the customers (parents) being given the benefit of a doubt for a single incident, but when the parents don't take the appropriate actions to prevent further occurrences, they should be held responsible. If that means taking away junior's PC, tablet, cell phone and any other "toys", then so be it. Without the proper punishment they are simply sending the unspoken message to the child "if you don't get punished, it must be OK to do again and again".

It's not the parent's responsibility to code Android/iOS or the Amazon store app properly.

America: Create dumb society. Blame them for being dumb. Complain about taxes that could pay for things like decent education and healthcare. Company sets up a mouse trap to scam money from dumb people. Complain about laws that prevent dumb people from being taken advantage of. Checkmate.