Thursday, April 21, 2011

Apple Gets Sued by Angry Parents

A band of parents have recently come together and sued Apple for allowing their children to destroy their credit cards in app purchases. They claim that their kids are granted too much access to purchase apps without their parent's consent and feel that they should make it harder to purchase from the Apple Store.

One individual in particular, Garen Meguerian, a father of two from Pennsylvania, is suing on behalf of every parent that is angry about this issue and believe that Apple is scheming against the kids to buy products without knowledge of their parents.

Meguerian stated that he allowed his children to purchase a couple of free games onto the device. But what he didn't know was that to play these games you would need to purchase items within the game itself in order to play. So once Meguerian found out that his kids had purchased items for money on accident, he was furious.

For instance, Smurfs' Village is a free download. Despite this, the object of the game is to build a virtual village, and you need "smurfberries" to build it. The children are provoked to buy these "smurfberries" for money. These smurfberries can cost up to $59!

Although to purchase an item from the App Store requires a password, this password up until recently only lasted about 15 minutes. Now it lasts longer. In just under a minute, some kids were purchasing over $100 in items within these apps without knowing it. Apple is taking millions from the parents of these kids who don't know better, when in reality they think they are getting their children a free game.

The Federal Trade Commission has confirmed an investigation on Apple for in-game purchases and we will likely see a change in their policy for apps.

If  Garen Meguerian is going to try and win a lawsuit against one of the biggest companies in the world, he is going to need a very good lawyer or attorney. Without a good lawyer or attorney, he will make it nowhere and will lose and Apple will reign once again.

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