Reply to 13 yo & unauthorized charges on our credit card

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Reply to "13 yo & unauthorized charges on our credit card - WWYD?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]An aside, but I think it is crappy of you to expect Apple to refund you the $300. I get the technical point that he isn't an authorized user but still he's your kid. He should pay off the charges with chores or other work around the house.[/quote]

They do this generally.

Same situation with my eldest son. Around $600 worth of music purchases when he was 13/14 (longer period of time). Actually only reason we contacted Apple was because of another issue, and it came up and they were quick to refund the money. Honestly, I was surprised because we had actually linked our card to his account ourselves (this was in 2007-08, so me and DH were not tech savvy, we didn't know that by adding our card all the info was saved and he could buy whatever he wanted).

I wish I could offer advice. We instituted a laundry list of chores so he could 'work off the debt' (all the money he earned actually went into a college savings account), took away his IPod (he didn't have a phone at the time), video game console/etc.

We also watched our finances more carefully. Which made us realize he had figured out where we kept all our cash on hand and was also skimming cash on top of the iTunes theft. For the next three years we tried everything to help him - therapy, loss of any and all privilidges, tough love, chores, etc.

I wish I could say something worked. But he is now 24, addicted to several hard drugs, living out of a dilopidated house in another city and (barely) supporting himself by working service industry jobs. He never went to college (he was actually a good student, 3.9gpa, well liked by teachers, etc) despite being offered a very generous scholarship and having thousands saved up in his college account (sadly most due to our attempts to have him "pay us back").

The biggest thing I would do is keep a sharp eye on your finances. Honestly, when the iTunes robbery came to our attention we just assumed he was 13 and didn't really understand what he had done - at the time it was 99cents/song and we assumed he decided to download a song and didn't ask us about it because we weren't around. And then just continued to do it.

But once we realized he had been skimming cash it became clear that not only this 13/14 year old know exactly what he was doing but he also had a very clear plan and system to it.[/quote]

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