For Christmas, Santa delivered Kindle Fires to two very
deserving and very smart daughters in one family. Christmas night, the family sat down together
to discuss the rules of purchasing an app for their Fires. The rules were clear: Read the reviews and run
each and every download by their parents.
Two weeks after Christmas, the father discovered almost $300
worth of charges to Amazon.
Frantically, he called the mother, who gave their daughters the third
degree. In the meantime, Amazon shared
with the father that someone on the Kindle Fire account had purchased “money”
to be used on a certain app called “Top Girl.”
That’s right.
Purchased “money”.
The mother discussed this information with their daughters
and was informed by the younger daughter that she needed a new outfit in Top Girl and she only had $500 in her Top
Girl account. So, she purchased $1,000
through the app, then $1,000 more for a party that she threw in order to meet a
new boyfriend, and then $1,000 more for a new work wardrobe. Each of these translated
to a $99 charge on their Amazon account.
So, for $297, this daughter purchased $3,000 to be used in
Top Girl land. Confused?
Yeah, so were we… I
mean, them… Ummm… What I mean is that we were that family!
As The Dad was handling all the stuff with Amazon (and by
stuff, I mean convincing them to refund all of our money), I was going over the
rules with The Daughters again and again and again and reminding them about
proper procedures for downloading apps and books and games and such.
Daughter 2 – who was the (very well dressed) Top Girl
offender – pleaded with me that it wasn’t her fault. She had been deceived, according to her. She believed that she had money in the Top
Girl bank, according to her. “Show me
the money,” I challenged.
Within five minutes of struggling to stay a Top Girl – ya
know, dressing the part, working the job, flirtin’ with the men – we were
offered $1,000 of Top Girl cash for the low price of $99. Daughter 2 checked her Top Girl account and, according
to her Top Girl Financial Advisor, she had $580 in her Top Girl bank
account. This, my friends, is not enough
to buy any Top Girl bling, of course.
As I was trying to process it all (it was way more of a social life than
I even had in real life!), Daughter 2 purchased, yet another $99 worth of Top
Girl moolah with just the tap of a finger, thinking the money was not coming out of her completely drained Momma & Daddy's account, but from her Top Girl account.
Honestly, this is not a game that I as an adult would ever
play, so why is the cash option even offered to the kid – who is probably
real-life cashless? As a momma, who does
not have cash to drop every time my daughter needs a pair of leather boots (in
real life or virtual life), I was appalled by the game, by the charges, by the option to even make those charges.
At the end of that day, after we had been credited back our
real-life money, we had a long talk with The Daughters. I only hope that the real-life message sticks
with them for a long time: If money is
all it takes to be a “top” girl, that’s not how you want to get to the “top”.
