A mom is devastated after finding out her teenage son spent close to $20-thousand dollars on Twitch, a popular streaming platform for gamers. The teen used a debit card linked to his parent’s bank account to pay for donations, subscriptions and bits, which are a kind of virtual currency gamers can buy to encourage other gamers during their streams. His mom had no idea what he was buying until she checked her bank account and found he’d blown through $19,870.94 between June 14th and 30th.
When she checked her balance and realized that years of her savings was gone in a matter of 17 days, the mother was stunned. She immediately got in touch with her bank and the debit card was canceled, but she’s having a tough time getting the money back because the bank considers the charges to be “friendly fraud” - which is where a consumer, in this case the teenager, makes an online purchase with their card and then requests their money back. The bank told the mom they can’t help with returning the funds unless she presses charges against her son.
In aRedditpost on the Twitch subreddit, the mom shares the details and writes that her son was “shocked” when he saw the huge bill he racked up. She’s reached out to the streamers he sent donations to and is waiting to hear back from them, and she’s also trying to reach Twitch to see what they can do. But she says ultimately, it comes down to her and she accepts the blame for not paying close enough attention to what her son was doing online. She now wants to know why he did it and to make sure that this mistake will be the only “big one” he makes.
Source:Moms.com