8-year-old spends $4,600 in App Store

Here’s a warning to parents who allow their kids to play with their smartphones: Your child’s technological savvy does not guarantee a firm grasp of finance.

A Jerusalem couple learned that lesson the hard way, after their eight-year-old son recently downloaded some NIS 17,000 ($4,600) worth of in-game purchases from the Apple App Store to their iPhone, Channel 2 reported.

Perhaps the family should have seen it coming. In a prior incident, the boy downloaded a “mere” NIS 2,000 ($540) in in-game purchases to one of their phones. When they received that shocking bill from Apple, the parents sat their son down and explained the situation to him. “He didn’t understand that it cost money,” his mother said, noting that at his age, he could not differentiate between real money and the animated money, diamonds and other riches in the games he was playing.

Apple, for its part, was very understanding; when the parents wrote to the cellphone giant asking to erase the debt, the company responded that even though all sales were normally final, it was willing in this instance to cancel the charges. The relieved parents changed the passwords on their phones and thought that the episode was behind them.

But one should never underestimate the resourcefulness of a bored eight-year-old. The boy apparently saw his parents entering their new passwords, and before long he had racked up another bill from Apple, this time for more than NIS 17,000. That sum was connected to only five games, all free for the initial download but each with extension packages and in-app purchases that caused the total amount to skyrocket.

When the parents appealed to Apple this second time, the response was not as accommodating. All sales are truly final, they were now told.

Some of the blame belongs on Apple’s doorstep, the parents say. The boy’s mother noted that the applications in question are “specifically aimed at children” and that “in games that focus on the idea of purchasing and winning, [children] lose the concept of real and fake money.” She added that the money used for purchasing the applications “usually doesn’t look real” to children.

The family is still hoping Apple might change its mind and offer another reprieve.