Amazon Will Refund $70 Million Worth of App Purchases Made by Kids

I was going to ask whether Amazon was truly in the wrong here and how parents should actually, you know, parent, but it sounds like the blame is justified. The FTC complaint, which was originally filed in 2014, would suggest that no password or other kind of consent was required for charges in kids’ apps. Amazon has finally given up and agreed to pay back for this oversight.

Last year, Amazon was found guilty of illegally billing some of its customers. Specifically, the issue was that many parents had been charged for purchases made, without their consent, by their children. This week, the company has agreed to end its efforts to appeal that ruling and give those parents their money back. The amount—more than $70 million—covers in-app purchases made by kids between November 2011 and May 2016. A federal judge found Amazon guilty of failing to warn customers that in-app charges could arise after an initial free download of a game. Similar actions against Google and Apple in recent years also resulted in large refunds—$32 million and $19 million respectively.

Holy crap.

Why wait for court for 70 millions

Oh hey. I'm 7.

This isn't surprising. All three systems were crafted stupidly to start. Apple is the only one that fixed it the first go around as far as I could tell. Google has had multiple glitches that have caused my kids tablet/my account to revert back to not requiring a password for every transaction. Amazon put in place a fix, and then introduced a whole bunch of requirements to access their free apps that required essentially leaving your account logged in. So they couldn't buy a million starts or whatever, but they could buy any damn thing at amazon, including other non-free apps. Fortunately the android OS has advanced enough in terms of multi-user support that you can work around that now. No idea if they fixed it.

I don't think I was ever out more than about $7-8 total over these things, but that was largely not due to google or amazon, but that fact my credit card company allowed me to get instant notification of any charges over $1.

Having owed 2 Kindle Fires (planning on getting a 3rd for my kids) I complete understand how this happens. When you download an app they put these adds and in-app payment options the kids a just tapping away and mis-hit a button and it asked to buy something. Luckily i know because my kids always say "daddy its not working" and then i see that its trying to charge something, and wants a password. Glad they "fixed " it and are actually facing the fact that it needed to be addressed so people aren't getting charged for accidental button presses.

Wait who is paying for these? Are the app makers getting money taken out of their accounts?

SonicTron said:

Wait who is paying for these? Are the app makers getting money taken out of their accounts?

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I assume Amazon is paying the entire bill. It is not the fault of the app maker that Amazon was "illegally" charging customer s.

Oh, this was all by design and not crafted stupidly. Them and Apple thought they could get away with it but got caught eventually.

70 million dollars?

that's 20 more than chelsea clinton.

rush hour reference please don't ban me

Couch change for Amazon. They should have just STFU from the start and simply settled up.

I have some games on the iPhone that when you're playing them, a quick ad pops up or the "Buy More" icon pops up right where you're tapping. And, it goes for a purchase. They do it on purpose, and I doubt anyone could say otherwise.

Amazon footing the bill is good, but them fixing it was the good play.

Ur_Mom said:

I have some games on the iPhone that when you're playing them, a quick ad pops up or the "Buy More" icon pops up right where you're tapping. And, it goes for a purchase. They do it on purpose, and I doubt anyone could say otherwise.

Amazon footing the bill is good, but them fixing it was the good play.

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It's 100% intentional and part of the design of quite a few games. Before they started to fix it, some kids games were intentionally designed to have a kid hit a button to keep something alive (like a fish). The kid didn't want the fish to die, so they'd do it, and the parents would pay $2k or so.

I have had 2 kindles for my son over the years, due to their superior parental controls. But due to bugs with OS updates, twice now parental controls gets disabled even though it "appears" to be enabled. This caused it to stop asking for passwords, even though it was enabled in settings to do so. You had to then turn Parental controls OFF and back ON again to fix the glitch. This was a few years ago, hasn't happened in at least the last year/newer kindle devices.

The first time this occurred my son was watching his kids shows via Amazon, and he subscribed/purchased entire seasons of video shows for a few hundred $$$ overall. Called Amazon and asked how this can happen with parental controls fully enabled and in-app purchases disabled/protected, and we discovered this bug and then immediately refunded all the purchases. The second time my son knew better and stopped and brought it to me to fix.

So even with these settings fully enabled, bugs can still allow these purchases through.

So how much do I get from Amazon then LOL?

I despise the mobile gaming market. I wonder if they money they make from ridiculous micro transactions is worth keeping away customers that won't participate? There are a few good games that just sell you the game outright but some of these games want to sell you play tokens and often have bundles that go up to $99 - and after you do that, you can still run out and need to buy more. That's madness.

DoubleTap said:

I despise the mobile gaming market. I wonder if they money they make from ridiculous micro transactions is worth keeping away customers that won't participate? There are a few good games that just sell you the game outright but some of these games want to sell you play tokens and often have bundles that go up to $99 - and after you do that, you can still run out and need to buy more. That's madness.

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freemium has made piles of money.

That being said there has been a recent upsurge in flat priced, non-free games. As a segment, it is much less buried in shovelware.