Earlier this year, a Wolverhampton man got a nasty shock when he opened his credit card bill. He found that his son had unwittingly racked up debts of more than £1,000 on XBox Live, upgrading his online characters playing video games like Call of Duty.
The father’s credit card, which had been registered with XBox to pay the monthly subscription, was also charged for the upgrades. The man had little choice but to pay up and learn his lesson the hard way: you should not hand over your credit card details without reading the small print first.
Whether we can avoid this type of mishap altogether is open to debate, and XBox Live certainly does its bit to warn users when they are accessing paid-for content, but through education we can do more to prepare our children and young people for the financial realities of modern life and hopefully steer them clear of the pitfalls of debt, however it may occur.
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