Remember those unintended charges your kid racked up on your Amazon account? You can finally get a refund for that. Amazon announced this week, after teasing in April, that they’re opening up their refund system for those old charges. You may recall that Amazon got in to some trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for being too lax on in app purchases. This caused thousands of parents to see charges show up on their accounts that they weren’t responsible for. Their kids could buy gems, gold pieces, upgrades, or whatever else in the games they were playing with no secret pin or passcode required. At the time Amazon added the parental restrictions but were still working on a way to give out all of the refunds.
They will be emailing users who are eligible for a refund and you can follow the steps from there. There is a one year deadline to submit for your refund and them the time is up. These refunds will cost Amazon up to $70 million dollars and are available to users who had this problem from 2011 through 2016. If you think you’re eligible but didn’t get an email you can visit https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/refund-orders/in-apprefund/ to find out if you qualify.
What Parents Should Know
Obviously you should get your refund if you qualify but these charges can still happen if you don’t have your settings right. You can set up purchase permissions on iTunes, Amazon, or Android’s Google Play store. You also have to set individual permissions on most of your devices. This will allow you to require passwords and pins in order to make a purchase, thus keeping you from seeing strange charges on your credit card or bank statements. I’ve made a video to help you with your Apple devices. Hopefully you can use these steps to keep from having to apply for any refunds for purchases you didn’t make yourself.