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Girl, 11, unknowingly spends £4,642 using dad’s debit card on gaming app

Steve Cumming’s daughter unknowingly spent £4,642 on a Roblox gaming app (Picture: Roblox)
Steve Cumming’s daughter unknowingly spent £4,642 on a Roblox gaming app (Picture: Roblox)

A dad was shocked when he discovered his 11-year-old daughter had unknowingly spent £4,642 on a gaming app.

Steve Cumming, 72, permitted his daughter to spend £4.99 on the Roblox game on 16 April but when he checked his internet banking recently he found thousands of pounds had been used.

The father said his daughter was confused and thought she was using monopoly money instead of real cash on his debit card.

Cumming has now slammed the makers of the game and accused them of trapping youngsters.

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Roblox agreed to refund the money (Picture: Roblox)
Roblox agreed to refund the money (Picture: Roblox)

Roblox has since agreed to refund Cumming the money after he contacted BBC Radio 2's The Jeremy Vine Show.

He told the BBC: “When I first logged in nearly a month later I was astonished to see hundreds and hundreds of separate transactions, all between £0.99 and £9.99.

“I couldn't understand it. I thought I'd been scammed.”

He added: “How can these companies be allowed to trap minors in these games?”

Cumming immediately cancelled his HSBC debit card when he realised the purchases had been made but he still paid out a further £1,000 through his Google Pay account.

He admitted he did not read the terms and conditions of the game but said he was surprised the makers did not have a mechanism that would stop children spending vasts amounts of money.

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Roblox told the BBC in a statement: “We strive to prevent unauthorized purchases, by taking measures such as not storing billing information, and work directly with parents to provide appropriate refunds whenever possible, which is the case in this instance.

"We encourage parents to review their payment settings on third-party services, such as Google Play, as they typically have an option to require a password for each purchase made and/or to prevent any information from being saved in browser settings that could allow them to be reused.”

HSBC said it was looking into the matter after receiving a claim for a dispute for the payments.

Roblox is a “free-to-play” app where customers can make in-game purchases and has 100 million players globally.