The story of parents being caught off guard by their children secretly using credit cards to top up games and then frantically crying and going through the refund process with the game publisher is no longer a “rare occurrence” as it once was. In fact, as oversight loosens and children gain access to devices like smartphones at an early age, this story is becoming an increasingly common reality in many places around the world. However, there are also quite the opposite cases, epitomized by an 11-year-old gamer girl mentioned here. Not secretly at all, she openly asked her father for money to top up her game, but in the end, the result was still the same, with the parents being the ones left in shock.
Specifically, the “victim” in this story is Steve Cumming – a British parent. During the time when his 11-year-old daughter had to stay home due to the pandemic, he generously allowed his daughter to play Roblox – a relatively kid-friendly game. However, he forgot that he had linked his credit card to the Google Play store on the device. But nothing happened at first. In April, his daughter asked him for £5 to top up her game (approximately 150,000 VND). This amount wasn’t too much, so Steve agreed. However, that was the beginning of his nightmare.
Specifically, in mid-May, when logging into his credit card account, Steve was shocked to find that in just one month, the deficit had reached nearly £5,000 (approximately 150 million VND). Upon reviewing the statements, it turned out that his daughter had made over a thousand transactions that month. Asking for £5 was just for one transaction, and 1,000 transactions at £5 each makes it clear how massive that amount was.
Steve immediately called the bank to cancel his debit card, but it was too late to stop everything. Fortunately for him, the developers of Roblox, after learning about the situation and receiving a letter from Steve, expressed their willingness to cooperate and refund him but advised him to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
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