In this week’s episode of Tales of Stupid Parents Who Should Not Have Been Allowed to Breed in the First Place, we take a look at a story all the way from sunny United Kingdom. There, Dawn Matthews is blaming Microsoft for her son’s rampant spending spree over Xbox Live.
According to Matthews, she used her debit card to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription for her son. That enabled him to then utilise the saved debit card information to download £1000 worth of games and content over the Xbox live Marketplace. Of course, it’s not her fault that she failed to see this huge amount of spending on her account, despite the fact that it took six months for her eleven year old to blow an equivalent of R10 000. Not her fault at all; it’s Microsoft’s fault! It’s the bank’s fault!
According to Matthews: “The bank and Microsoft are blaming each other and no one is helping me. It has taken me ages to permanently get rid of my card details from the website. It was only when I made a complaint that they took all my details off.â€
Apparently, after Dawn explained to her son the errors of his ways, he became so racked with guilt that he now doesn’t want to play on his Xbox anymore. That’s a waste of DLC if I’ve ever seen it.
Matthews is refusing to admit that she is to blame for this, and insists that “companies should take some responsibility. They take advantage of vulnerable people.”
Microsoft is having none of it however, and released a statement that basically says: that’s why we included Parental Controls LOL!
“Microsoft’s goal is to provide parents and caregivers with tools and resources to manage their children’s gaming and entertainment experiences so that they can play in ways that are safer, healthy and more balanced. To accomplish this, we’ve built-in parental controls in every Xbox 360[…] It should also be noted that Live accounts registered for children’s use have online activity automatically defaulted to off, these can be enabled by the parent should they wish in the Family Settings section.”
Source: CVG
Last Updated: February 9, 2011
