Twitch—as we all know—is a popular place to watch professional gamers and athletes play some games and interact with their fans. Of course, donations are encouraged to support the streamers, but things can get tricky if a teenager gets access to money that they didn't earn. Luckily, one mother was able to recover nearly $20,000 in Twitch donations that her son had spent in the span of 17 days.
The story began when she posted about the problem on the Twitch subreddit a little over a month ago. Apparently, her son had been able to access the family's savings through a card that had been given to him, which was meant for school lunches and allowances from completing chores. The mother is not sure how he got access to the rest of the account, but he did, and he began spending nearly $1,200 a day on the site.
When confronted, the teen said that he knew he had been spending a lot of money, but that he wasn't aware of the fact that he had racked up nearly $20,000 in charges. As reported in Dot Esports, in cases like this—where someone associated with the account spends large or "unauthorized" amounts of money—the bank doesn't have the ability to refund the money unless charges are pressed. Meaning that it wasn't possible to get the money back without pressing charges against her own son.
In a since-deleted post on Reddit, the mother explains what she went through to try and get the money back. Not only had she contacted the streamers (who included Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kurt Benkert, and Miami Heat’s Meyers Leonard) directly to see if they could work something out, but she went as far as sending physical registered mail to the CEOs of Twitch and Amazon. She got no response from anyone until she got in touch with the company Xsolla, who processes payments for Twitch.
Another parent who had suffered the same issue had found the payment processor and directed this mother to it. Within a matter of days, the vast majority of the money was recovered, under the condition that the account which made the donations would be permanently blocked from the site. In response to her Reddit post, some people who had done this with their family's money came forward to express how the lost their relationships with their parents and urged her to maintain her relationship with her son.
He is now apparently limited to one-hour of supervised "playtime" and is going to counseling. She says that he is remorseful, and that they are working through the issue to come out stronger than before. If there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, its that your children should never have access to the family's resources. If you are going to give your kids a bank card with some spending money, make sure they have their own bank account that can't access yours.
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Source: Dot Esports