My son Hunter, who is obsessed with playing Halo on the xbox, wanted to be able to play Halo online through a feature in the xbox called xbox live. I was dubious at first letting my ten year old into the online world, but I soon found out that most of our neighbors had xbox live and felt it was safe, so we said yes to the free trial to check it out.
I have to admit the technology was really cool. Hunter could enter this vast connected world of friends and kids playing halo. Instead of playing against predictable computer generated opponents by yourself, you could play against really thinking similarly obsessed kids. This is definately a step up from Pacman and Asteroids that I played when I was ten.
When the free month was up for all practical purposes so was Hunter's 'purpose' in life. It was the begining of summer time and he did a lot of moping and complaining--"there's nothing to do, it's to hot to play outside, none of my friends can play, no I don't want to read a book or play with my sister, and you won't let me watch any more TV, please, please, please, let me get xbox live again"!!!! After enough tears and promises Sandra and I agreed to sign Hunter up. [And before you think that we are terrible parents who let our kids waste away their lives playing computer games--He only is allowed to play for an hour or two every other day and only after his chores and summer homework are done].
In typical Microsoft form, you had to give them a credit card number with the only option of automatic renewal. It was my responsibility to remember the renewal date and proactively cancel it before that date if I didn't want it to renew for another year. If I forget I will automatically renew even if I didn't want to. Frustrating, but I had no choice. It took forever to register because I had to enter everything on a game controller through the xbox. Scrolling through the entire alphabet, number pad and symbol pages picking one character at a time like old school texting. Eventually he was in and life was great again. His summer finally had meaning!
Two months had gone by and all was well. Hunter could play but only for short spells and after his daily chores and study time. Then, yesterday morning I received an email stating that $19.95 was charged to my credit card for purchases made on xbox live. "This must be an error", I thought, "there is no way that Hunter could know my password to have purchased anything". At the time I received this he was away at a friend's birthday party so I couldn't ask him about it. So I contacted xbox live support.
I was greeted by Josh who was ever so friendly and empathetic. "I can certainly understand your frustration" he said, and "I've helped a lot of people with similar complaints, let's see what I can do to help resolve your concerns". After about going through 7 layers of security including identifying my name, address, phone number, xbox serial number, last 4 digits of my credit card on file, my User name, and answers to my secret questions that I filled out when registering, Josh was finally able to get access into my account.
We discovered the purchase was for Microsoft Points. These points were like tokens used at Chucky Cheese that could be spent at will at the various money traps in xbox live. Apparently, Hunter was able to purchase these Microsoft points and then spent all of them on different outfits and accessories for his avatar figure on xbox. So he spent $20 on digital clothes to dress a cartoon!!! Josh just oozing with empathy apologized, but regrettably he was helpless in refunding the money because it was already spent.
I then said, how is it possible that xbox allows 10 yr old boys to have access to spend money on their parent's credit card? Is there no security, no pop up for a password or way to validate that the owner of the credit card is authorizing the purchase? It took me twenty minutes of security validation to talk to a representative at xbox live, yet my son and apparently anyone who has access to our xbox can freely spend all the money on my credit card!? Again, he excreted his obviously well trained, "I can certainly see how that would be frustrating, let me transfer you to a technical support specialist to adjust your settings on your xbox and see if they can help you prevent this from happening again".
I was put on hold for nearly ten minutes and was transferred to Tristian who quickly apologized, but he specialized in another area of security and could not help me, but that he would transfer me to another specialist who would be able to help me. Another five of six minutes later Joan connected and apologized for the wait. She explained that parental controls are not set as a default and needed to be set by the user. She then walked me through the labyrinth of screens to where the settings were supposed to be. "Huh", she exclaimed, when the setting option was not there. Not only was it not set as a default to protect my credit card from frivolous non-authorized purchases, apparently my xbox was missing the setting all together!
She then exclaimed--"there is no way to block access to purchases on your xbox. The only way to prevent future unwanted purchases is to remove the credit card, which would subsequently cancel Hunter's xbox live account". Fortunately for Hunter there was a way around that, by way of gift cards. Apparently you can buy short term 1-3 month xbox live membership time. All you have to do is redeem the code 16 digit number on the gift card to extend your membership. Joan sent me 4 sixteen digit codes that I had to go into the xbox and once again with a control pad old school painstakingly text them in. Eventually, after over an hour trying to figure out and correct this mess the xbox was finally safe and Hunter could keep his precious xbox live, however, he will be doing so major chores to pay us back!
I just can't believe how purposefully dishonest and predatory Microsoft is! How many millions they must earn everyday by enticing and allowing children to purchase electronic content at their whim on their parent credit cards with no security or restrictions of any kind. How is that even legal? Shame on Microsoft.
