April 08, 2010
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News: Boy Racks Up $1400 On Mom's Card
Moms and Dads, do you know where your credit cards are? One UK mom wasn't paying attention while her 12 year old son was surfing the internet. Thinking her son was just having fun planting trees, growing vegetables, and tending to his animals in his pretend farm on the Facebook game FarmVille. The boy first exhausted all of his own funds to purchase extra supplies before turning to use his mother's credit card. The mother discovered her son had used her card two weeks after the first transaction. She immediately cancelled the credit card.
It didn't end there, after canceling her credit card, the mother continued to get hit with additional charges that had not yet cleared at the time of the cancellation. Mom contacted Facebook and was told there was nothing they could do and refused to refund any of the money. She also contacted the sponsor of the game, Zynga. They too refused to reverse any of the credit card charges. Zynga is the developer of FarmVille along with other popular internet games including FishVille, Mafia Wars, PetVille, and Poker Blitz. Both companies say since the boy lives with the mother, she is responsible for the charges. The most that they could offer was to suggest that the mother use password protection in the future to block her son from doing the same again.
Each time the mother thought they had reached the end of the charges, more appeared. In total, the boy racked up over $1,400 on his mother's card in addition to draining out his own savings. FarmVille along with Mafia Wars have been very successful. In FarmVille, players can purchase seeds, trees, animals, buildings, farm vehicles, and land with play money. Players can also buy FarmVille money from Zynga. Most FarmVille products can be earned with the play money; however, players can choose to purchase additional items such as decorations with cash. Cash is purchased by using a debit or credit card.