PSA: Ordering something on a friend's tablet

[AimeeM]

So for a friend's son's birthday, I ordered the kiddo a game he'd been wanting on his tablet. I did input my credit card information on his tablet, but his mother immediately erased it from the tablet.

 

Little did we know that because it was Amazon Digital, it stored in her Amazon account. Amazon Digital is, apparently, one-touch ordering. 

 

My husband called and asked if several purchases over the past couple days were valid purchases (we have a 6 year old hacker). All were small amounts charged by Amazon Digital services. I looked in my order history for Amazon, and then realized that none of our tablets/phones are Amazon Digital related (we have devices that run itunes or or google play). 

Then my husband looked back at the bank account and realize that since May, purchases had been made for small amounts several times every month, charged by Amazon Digital. 

We hadn't noticed because it was small amounts (between .99/cent and $8 or so). I *do* order games for the boys from google play several times monthly, so seeing small charges like that wasn't abnormal.

I called Amazon. After tossing me a round a bit from person to person, they asked if I'd given my debit card information to anyone else, because the Amazon account linked to those specific purchases wasn't mine. I replied that I (of course) had not given my debit card information to anyone. They told me that the purchases were pretty much entirely apps and games.

Then they told me the first name of the person linked to the Amazon account they had been ordered from.

My friend's name :D Lol.

I called her. Awkward call. "Hey, I think your kid has been ordering things on my debit card."

I had Amazon take my debit card off her account. 

 

It's all figured out now. We aren't worried about the money - but I did want to let her know what her kiddo was up to. She's going to check her Amazon account. I told her to tell me if she can't find the purchases, because if she can't, then I need to call Amazon. 

 

So, in the future, my husband told me to just buy friend's kids an Amazon gift card - not buy it through their tablets. We had no clue that it would store them on their account - we assumed erasing it from the device itself took care of it. 

 

:lol: