Parents fork out £30million on accidental purchases made by their children on smartphones and tablets
Children buying apps without permission or making accidental purchases on mum or dad's smartphone are costing parents £30million nationally, according to new data.
On average parents have spent an extra £34 on their mobile phone and tablets bills because of accidental app and in-app purchases made by their kids, research by Windows Phone has claimed.
Over a quarter of parents with smartphones have fallen foul of the trap and eight out of ten of these have seen a bigger bill as a result.
It has resulted in a third of parents resorting to hiding their smartphone and tablet for their kids.
It found eight-year-olds tended to run up the highest bills, adding an average £59.59, while more than a third (36 per cent) of children aged four and under have made purchases without permission.
More... Orange sold me a faulty mobile phone for £60 and will only offer me repairs, not a refund 'I recovered my taxi and saved £20,000 thanks to an app': What to do if your smartphone is lost or stolenLast month the Office of Fair Trading launched an investigation in to free smartphone and tablet apps that are targeted at children and encourage them to buy extra features – racking up substantial bills.
It has written to companies who offer such games asking them for information on how they advertise to children.
Shocked parents have complained about sums as much as £70 for a single item being taken from their bank accounts after very young children purchased extras.
Child's play: Research found that eight-year-olds tended to run up the highest bills, adding an average £59.59.Brett Siddons, head of consumer marketing for Windows Phone, said: 'Our research reveals parents are worried about the impact of app and in-app purchases on their bills and we understand the stress this can cause.
'With technology becoming more and more intuitive, it’s important that parents can trust in the technology they use and feel as safe as possible when handing over their smartphone and tablet devices to their children.'
Windows Phone conducted the research to promote the launch of its phone-within-a-phone feature, called Kid’s Corner, that allows parents to select which apps and features children can use – helping stop shock bills.
WARNING: Groupon nightmare shows mistakes are easy to make on smartphonesIn January, This is Money revealed the case of child daycare manager Helen Gaze, 29, who let her 5-year-old nephew Harry play with her mobile phone - only to noticed two weeks later that £519 was missing from her account.
Little Harry had strayed from looking at photos and playing games to unwittingly buying a trip to Nepal on the discount shopping app Groupon.
'My details were already stored from a previous purchase with Groupon online, and this meant that with just one click the holiday was paid for out of my account,' said Helen, from Manchester.
'I had no idea that this would happen and I was in complete shock. There is no warning on the app and with just one click he managed to spend over £500.'
Because she didn’t notice the missing money immediately, Groupon would only refund her credit for the website. But through a ‘chargeback’ scheme run by major banks that offers some protection against losses to debit card users, she eventually got the money back.
A Groupon spokesman said: 'Customers can prevent this happening by not storing their details on their account if they are not the only person who has access to their computer or mobile phone.
'This means that they will have to enter their card details each time as an extra precaution. If they have their details stored, a purchase can be made more easily.'
Helen pointed out, though, that she was not notified when downloading the app to her phone that her card information was automatically stored from previous purchases and she wasn't alerted the she might need to put a security measure in place.
