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Cheers - AE

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Idiot.

I must be approaching middle age to read this and immediately think 'idiot'.
Sierra Leigh may be only three but she's tech-savvy, knows her way around an iPad, and likes a little online retail therapy from time to time.

The Sydney toddler settles down in a chair with the iPad she is supposed to share with her siblings and lets her fingers do the walking ... all the way to the Apple store.

So it came as something of a shock when her 29-year-old mother, Lisa, of Moorebank, received a bunch of email invoices from Apple for apps she knew nothing about.

It seems Sierra had managed to buy - with her mother's credit card - about $50 worth of different apps that took her fancy.

"She's a big fan of the iPad," Leigh said.

"She uses it every day for a few hours, but I didn't think anything of it.

"She was just playing with it until later when she had gone to bed and I was checking my email and I saw that I had paid for a whole bunch of apps that I didn't remember buying."

She also looked back over old emails and saw it wasn't the first time Sierra had gone shopping online.

"I checked over the list and one of them was $17 - I didn't think you could buy an app that was that expensive!" Leigh said.
I can only assume it's because iPads and even computers in the home weren't around when I was three, but I cannot believe my parents would have let me play with a $600 plus piece of electronics. I can almost hear the words, 'Angry, put it down, it's not a toy.' Still, maybe it's different when you buy it for the kids in the first place.

Wait, what? (My emphasis.)
"So I picked up her iPad and looked at them and there was all these new apps on there that I hadn't bought and then I realised she had somehow got in and bought them...
Seriously?
As for her daughter owning her own iPad, which Leigh says was actually meant for all her children but hogged by the three-year-old, "she's not really good with the [computer] mouse, which is why the iPad is so good.
/facepalm

Oh, well. It's your money, love. But the people I know with three year olds seem to find their happy with brightly painted wooden blocks and plastic things with hidden bells that go DING when they hit them over their siblings' heads, and if my own memories of childhood are accurate that was pretty much where the cutting edge was 35 years ago.

5 comments:

Angry Exile said...

Is Sierra her actual name, do you think? I'd assumed her mother had just given them call signs. It's okay for Charlie, Mike and Oscar and obviously you can get away with calling a girl Delta in Australia, but pity poor little Hotel and Uniform. As for Papa, that brings up all sorts of weird possibilities that is illegal everywhere except really sick jokes.

Bucko said...

As long as Papa isn't doing the naked Foxtrot with young Sierra after a Kilo of Hotel Whiskey.

microdave said...

If any young kid of mine (don't worry, it 'aint gonna happen) wanted their own iPad, they would be told in no uncertain terms to Foxtrot Oscar.

Why didn't her stupid parents call her Sierra Cosworth??

Give 'em a Meccano set and let them learn how to build something.

What a bunch of Charlie Uniform November Tango's....

Angry Exile said...

Bucko, you're a sick Papa, er, puppy.

microdave, this is Down Under we're talking about. The equivalent would be Falcon XR8 or Commodore GTS or something, and even Frank Zappa would have thought twice before saddling his kids with either of those.

SadButMadLad said...

The Watchdog TV programme here in the old mother country had a piece on iPods and how they run up enormous bills when in the hands of kids.

Apple allow through their heavy handed vetting certain games which are aimed at kids through the use cutsy graphics but which allow the buying of "tokens" to extend/enhance gameplay. Normally, the kids wouldn't be able to buy the tokens because they wouldn't know the PIN. But iPods (and iPads) remember the PIN for some time after entry to allow multiple purchases. So if an adult entered their PIN for something, then handed their iPod to their kid, the kid could buy things without knowing.

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