How To Disable ThreePay For My Son

[Bluemonkey]

I have a contract phone in my name for my son. Recently he has been addicted to a phone game with in-app charges and ran up threepay bills of £200 a month. I called Three to disable threepay, which they said they could not do. I then removed threepay as a payment option on the device itself. My son readded it and the next month I had another £200 charge. Clearly, I will have to remove the sim and give him a pay and go. However I have a year of this contract left that I will not be able to use as I can't remove this payment method for a child. It is maddening.

I have been told to call Google, who tell me that the Google account is not in my name so they can't speak to me. The Google account is not set up with any parental locks because the child set up themselves. 

I have complained to Three who say, sorry nothing we can do. So they provide a credit payment option but are unable to block it and will charge me an early termination fee for ending the contract.

It doesn't seem like a legal way to behave.

[sc1999]

I have had a look at the scant terms and conditions that 3 publish and there is nothing about minimum age for users. Google pay won't allow under 16's. I think that if you son is under 16 then I would hold three responsible and complain to the fca as they are allowing a minor to gain credit.

Other than that it will have to be tough love but check that you can control his payg spending.

[JonathanB]

Hi @Bluemonkey,

This sounds really frustrating, particularly when you've taken steps to address this and ThreePay was reinstated from the phone.

If you take a look into Google Family Parental Controls there are many options to place restrictions, including purchase approvals so that the user can't purchase content, as well as options to prevent additional Google accounts being added to the device in order to bypass the controls once in place.

You may need access to the existing Google account, or to remove it in order to get this initially set up, but once you've done this your son shouldn't be able to make further purchases on Play store apps.

Hope this helps,
JonathanB

[Moocats]

A family member who has a sim only on my account has run up a 3pay bill of just over £100 which they can’t now afford to repay leaving me stuck with it as an obligation meaning I’ll not make rent this month. Why on earth can’t we have the option to disable 3pay on the three accounts t for any or all attached lines. Ridiculous.