Fighting for your money

‘Our twins spent £2,800 on extras for computer games and Apple refuses to help’

QLast October my partner and I gave our 13-year- old twins permission to spend £4.99 each on the video game Call of Duty and we registered our credit card just for that purchase from Apple.

The original app was free to download but players are targeted to buy extra things via “in-app purchases”. It allows them to buy virtual items that do not exist outside the game that improve the look or capabilities of game characters.

Unfortunately, I forgot to remove my credit card details and 10 weeks later the twins had run up a bill of more than £2,800 without our permission. This gave us considerable hardship as it happened over Christmas and made us feel like totally inadequate parents.

I asked Apple if it would refund these payments but it refused. I also took the case to our credit card provider, which said it would class what happened as domestic fraud which would require us to report our children to the police to proceed. Even then it said it was unlikely that the losses would be refunded. Please can you help? – Anon A It can be hard for children – and adults, for that matter – to resist the temptation to add features in a video game once they are immersed. They make the experience much more fun. Since games often also have their own virtual currency that players use (“COD points” in the case of Call of Duty, the game your twins seem to favour), it can feel like it is not real money, particularly for those who are not paying the bill.

When a credit card is used to buy a game and in-app purchases, an email is usually sent to the account holder who made the purchase. It seems you did not receive this information as it went to your twins’ email accounts instead. This fact alone was a strong argument for requesting your money back so on that basis I asked Apple to take a look at your case again.

Its team spent some days investigating and came back to ask for details of your children’s purchases. Gathering the details proved to be a lengthy process, which you said you delegated to the twins “as part of their penance” for getting you into this fix.

There were dozens of payments listed for various in-app purchases, mostly linked to Call of Duty but also to other games, with sums ranging from £1.99 to £99.99 a purchase.

After my intervention, Apple agreed to return the £2,800 payments in full. You told me you were grateful. Your own penance was a gentle lecture over the phone from Apple about what steps to take to avoid a repeat of the problem.

The recommendations included setting up parental controls on your children’s devices and keeping passwords or other authentication well away from them. Other tips for parents with games-mad kids include ensuring that they are not allowed to register their own fingerprints on a phone or tablet. This means that purchases can be made only by the parent.

Importantly, parents should have access to the email receipts for purchases made, so they should ensure they are sent to the correct address. In your case, had you seen any of these notifications, the twins’ spending

The credit card company said we would need to report our children to the police

splurge would undoubtedly have been stopped in its tracks.

Apple suggested that you could also consider implementing an “ask to buy” option, which would alert you to any attempted purchases and let you decide whether to let them go ahead.

Another more definitive step is to turn off all in-app purchases via the settings on a device. I contacted the UK Safer Internet Centre for further insight on in-app purchase pitfalls. At the top of its list was encouraging children to take a bit more responsibility for their own actions by explaining to them that buying virtual items or currency can cost real money and to persuade them “think before they click”.

Teletext Holidays won’t pay £4,184 refund for cancelled trip

QI am writing on behalf of my son and 10 of his friends to ask whether you can help them obtain a refund for their cancelled trip with Teletext Holidays.

They had booked a package holiday to Sunny Beach, Bulgaria, due to take place on July 13- 20 last year at a total cost of £4,184. Because of coronavirus, the holiday was cancelled. The lead passenger, who made and paid for the entire booking with his debit card, has been in touch with Teletext Holidays a number of times ( by phone and by unanswered email) and, when he was able to speak to someone, was promised a refund. But nothing materialised.

The boys appreciate that this has been a difficult time for travel companies, but they are students and the amount owed is not insignificant. I understand that, from a legal standpoint, the company should have refunded them within 14 days.

Now that nine months have passed since the date of the holiday, I do not think there is any justification for the company to continue to hold the boys’ money. Can you help? – CC, Wokingham

AI also tried to get in touch with Teletext a number of times on behalf of your son and his friends. But my phone messages and emails rudely went unanswered. I wasn’t entirely surprised, however, as over recent months it has emerged that many travellers are in the same boat as these young men, getting little or no response from the company and, more importantly, not receiving their refunds.

The situation has become so bad that, at the end of April, the Competition and Markets Authority, a regulatory body, threatened Teletext Holidays with court action over its failure to pay more than £7m in refunds to customers for holidays cancelled thanks to the pandemic.

The CMA wrote to Truly Holdings, the company that operates Teletext Holidays, in March, expressing its concerns and giving the company a chance to avoid court action by agreeing to refund those affected. The regulator said the company’s response was not adequate so it is preparing to take court action if it does not repay the outstanding sums, or commit to do so, without further delay. Teletext Holidays said it was disappointed with this decision and was working hard to refund customers.

Just before this development I had asked Nationwide Building Society to consider a chargeback claim as the holiday had been bought using one of its cards. Chargeback involves a bank reversing a card transaction until a dispute has been resolved.

Your son’s friend had requested a chargeback in December 2020 but had heard nothing. Nationwide found no record but then discovered that there had been a technical fault in its systems on the date he had submitted the claim. A number of chargeback requests had come through completely blank. A spokesman said the nature of the fault, which was fixed by January 2021, meant those affected could not be identified and so were not chased up.

After my involvement, the chargeback dispute has now been submitted to Teletext Holidays and Nationwide has meanwhile recredited the card belonging to your son’s friend with £4,184. Nationwide also added £150 for the delay.

For the sake of completeness, I contacted Teletext Holidays again earlier this week – and to my surprise its public relations agency responded. Apologising for not replying previously, it said it could not deal with individual press requests because “as you can imagine our client has been inundated”. Yes, I can imagine.