5yr Old Racks Up A $4000 Bill on Amazon. Yikes!
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Technology has become more and more of a useful tool when it comes to entertaining children over the past couple of years. However, a mom from Massachusetts has recently discovered the dangers of letting your little ones run wild on your mobile phone.
Jesica Nunes had given her five-year-old daughter, Lila, her phone to play with on a car journey but instead of going on one of the games on the phone, she decided to head to the Amazon app and go on a shopping spree.
Racking up a bill of $4000, Jessica was left “stunned” when she started to receive endless emails from Amazon about shipping confirmations on the orders they had received from her daughter. Speaking to the entertainment site, People, Jessica said:
“When I opened the email confirming the ‘purchase shipment,’ my initial thought was that it was a spam email or a fraudulent charge. I was stunned when I pulled up my Amazon account and realized that Lila had made the purchases.”
Lila’s shopping spree
To spend $4000 in 15 minutes is quite an achievement for anyone, never mind a five-year-old who can’t yet read or write. Once Jessica realized what had happened, she headed to Amazon to see what exactly her daughter had spent the money on.
Among the orders in her Amazon history were ten dirt bikes, a toy jeep, and ten pairs of cowgirl boots. To make matters worse, when she confronted her daughter about it, she simply told her mom that she “wanted it, so I got it.” Speaking about Lila to Fox News, Jessica said:
“Lila has a big personality. She’s very intelligent – a little too smart I would say. She doesn’t have a phone, but she does play a game on my phone sometimes. It’s a little makeup game, so I gave her my phone so she could play it while I was driving.
I was particularly stressed about the dirt bikes because they were $1600 alone. I managed to cancel most of the orders, and Amazon was able to help her get everything straightened out.”
An Important Lesson for Lila
With everything now sorted and disaster averted, Jessica is hoping to take some positives from the situation. She takes full responsibility for what happened but believes that the situation can prove to be a positive learning curve for both her and her daughter.
Not only has it taught her the importance of getting better security on her phone but she hopes that it will teach her daughter about not being able to have everything she wants. Talking to People, Jessica said:
“My takeaway from the experience is to be more proactive about protecting my accounts with passwords and not storing financial information.
Secondly, I am using this as an opportunity to teach Lila about the value of money and the importance of working for things she wants. I don’t want to set the standard for ‘I want it, I get it’. She has started doing age-appropriate chores around the house for an allowance.”
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