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Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/devastated-father-says-his-9-year-old-son-spent-usd118-000-on-youtube-ad-campaigns-for-his-minecraft-channel-using-a-company-credit-card-bill-racked-up-in-just-three-weeks-was-supposed-to-be-one-usd20-promotion
18•vanburen•1h ago

Comments

theandrewbailey•48m ago
This is one reason why I don't save my payment method for anything. No saved payment method means one less way for surprise charges.
joshstrange•30m ago
The craziest part of this story, for me, is it was on the dad’s _company_ credit card. Which might not be as surprising except the reason it was already on file is because the dad used his company’s (not _his_ company, the company he works for as an employee) credit card to buy Roblox for his son previously.

Is this common? I’ve had access to company credit cards before on a one-off basis (never in my name). Do people legitimately make this mistake? “oops, I put it on the company cards”?

beanjuiceII•26m ago
if you can get away with putting it on the company card why not? (other than that time ayour 9 year old son spent 118k) hehe
psp99•21m ago
I don't know, morals, perhaps?
lo_fye•18m ago
Because it’s theft even if you don’t get caught.
functionmouse•26m ago
Some people are not very smart.
pelagicAustral•22m ago
I havent had a company card for a while, but when i had one the end of the month auditing was exhausting, I dreaded having to put together the report... Unfortunately for me, no one else wanted to take on the responsibility so I just had to do that for years...
iLoveOncall•20m ago
I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to put personal expenses on my company card but I anyway always have to upload a receipt and for personal expenses I will have to reimburse them (FAANG).

This isn't a bad system because it allows for use in case of absolute emergency, but you have the safeguard of anyway requiring a receipt and a justification.

viraptor•6m ago
When I had a corpo card that was basically it - I can use it for any personal spending as long as it's reimbursed by the next payment. Which could get a bit scary in theory because there was no reasonable limit on it as far as I can tell. "I wonder if I could buy a helicopter on that card" (or other weird things) was a running joke.

The article just says he used that card. They did not say it wasn't paid off.

leumon•10m ago
[delayed]
ghaff•6m ago
I used to have a company credit card which I didn't use much--and avoided using whenever I could because I got more personal benefits on my own card (and that was a pretty universal attitude among most people to the annoyance of the powers that be). We were personally responsible for the monthly bills ourselves in any case. Never had a corporate card that the company just paid off no questions asked.
chasd00•6m ago
> Do people legitimately make this mistake? “oops, I put it on the company cards”?

i've done this with like a cup of coffee but not something like a game for my kids! What happens in my case is the charge is not approved for reimbursement and it's up to me to pay the bill. I feel bad for that father.

kristopolous•22m ago
This can be a fairly pure case study on the convergence rate of youtube ads.
lo_fye•19m ago
Do not let that kid (or his dad) anywhere near an OpenClaw instance.
hacker_homie•19m ago
They should have to ask for the ccv every double in billing average.
zwischenzug•17m ago
Didn't the card have a limit?
ChrisRR•6m ago
Literally the first sentence in the article

"The button said approved every time as nobody had set a limit."

viraptor•2m ago
Corporate cards often have huge limits. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49725666
nkrisc•13m ago
There are so many things wrong with this story before you even get to the headline.

From the information in the article, I can’t really blame Google for this one. This was a series of deliberate blunders on the part of the father. The first blunder was letting a 9 year old have a YouTube account.

Putting aside whether a 9 year old should be making videos, the father should have been the one with the account and managing the channel.

wccrawford•6m ago
The article doesn't call it out very loudly, but...

"to a company credit card the father had saved to his own Google account, which his son also used"

It sounds like the son didn't have an account. It was just the father's account, with billing info attached with no limits.

nkrisc•4m ago
But how was the 9 year old able to do any of this unless they had access to some account?

It says his son also used it, so he gave a 9 year old access to it. Same difference.

amelius•6m ago
Well, at least he has the YouTube ads.

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