Think twice before letting your kids get hold of your phone--or at least turn off the apps.
A Michigan couple learned this the hard way. Keith and Kristyn Stonehouse say their 6-year-old son, Mason, spent some time playing on his dad’s phone Saturday night before he went to bed. After Mason’s bedtime, GrubHub delivery drivers began dropping off orders, his parents totally unaware.
“Time after time again, and it’s piles and bags of food. ‘What is going on?’ They’re dropping them off at the door, so, I’m not communicating with the drivers,” Keith Stonehouse said. He stopped one of the delivery drivers and asked what was going on. “I said, ‘What is going on? Why are you bringing me food?’ He said, ‘I don’t know you. You ordered from the shawarma place,’” the father said.
As it turned out, the 6-year-old spent nearly $1,000 on food from GrubHub without telling his parents. There were multiple orders from several different restaurants. Dad said “I think I had left the app open, and he saw that when he was playing with my phone and just started going to town. He ordered multiple orders: chili cheese fries, the chicken pita wraps, ice cream, pizza.” Fortunately their bank stopped some of the charges.
“Then, I get an alert on my phone. My card has been declined for fraud from a pizza place for $439,” Keith Stonehouse said. Dad finally talked to his son about this, finding a way to explain that the food he ordered costs money.
“We grabbed his piggy bank and showed him all this money that comes out from the piggy bank. One by one, that was this. That was this bag of food. That was this, and you could see his face, you know,” Keith Stonehouse said.
Photo: Getty Images