We’ve all heard the horror stories behind children who rack up hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on in-app purchases on Apple’s iTunes App Store, leaving parents furious, and even more so when Apple refuses to refund them. While Apple is currently working on helping certain customers get their refund on accidental/unintentional in-app purchases, they have refused to refund the purchases of a 13-year old boy who managed to rack up a bill of around $5,600. Taking place in the UK, Apple refused to give the family a refund, causing the kid’s dad, Doug Crossan, to take rather drastic measures.
According to Crossan, Apple argued that it was the responsibility of the parent to lock their iOS device to prevent such things from happening, and with parental controls available as part of iOS, to a certain extent we can see Apple’s point. So what Crossan did was he reported the action to the Action Fraud Hotline, and what this means is that his son could possibly be arrested and face charges. The goal here is to lodge the complaint as criminal so that his credit card company would have to foot the bill, instead of himself.
A spokesperson at the Home Office who runs the Action Fraud stated that it does not sound like fraud has taken place, and according to the Daily Mail’s legal source, they doubt that prosecutors would bother charging the kid anyway.