Remember those stories of kids racking up thousands of dollars of text fees – or back in the day in AOL hourly rate fees – or really back in the day long distance bills?  The parents get the bills and the jaw drops? Well I had the modern version of that happen this week. Over the last two months, my youngest kid (age 11) has charged more than $1500 on iTunes.

I thought I’d share the quick story and solution both to be helpful but as a reminder that technology is tricky. I think that’s why it can be a hard topic for policymakers – there are intricacies that we all need help understanding – and it’s not that this was a technology issue so much as an issue brought about by technology. That’s often the case.

I like to think of myself of being fairly tech savvy. I have talked to my kids about enhanced stranger danger online and the need to keep private info private but apparently I hadn’t discussed online economics – digital assets cost real money.

I called iTunes. The woman I spoke to was lovely and helpful. They refunded most of the money. They didn’t ask a ton of questions – just enough to figure out that I was me and I was responsible for the Apple account in question because – my daughter has her own Apple ID, which she needed for her iPhone. (He older sister use their Apple IDs for their school iPads too.) And Apple sent me two helpful articles to make sure this doesn’t happen again:

About Restrictions (parental controls) on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Change or remove your Apple ID payment information in the iTunes Store

All’s well that ends well. Apple made a potentnial very painful lesson a lot easier to take. We’re securing our phones financially and the silver lining I have a very repentant 11 year old who is going to help me rake leaves!