LAST week’s front page story travelled way beyond Redditch, Studley and Alcester – 3,787 miles in fact to the United States of America.
We told how grandparents Robert and Syliva Boyd were horrified when they discovered their 10-year-old grandson had run up a bill of nearly £400 by buying ‘V-bucks’ on the computer game Fortnite as he played on his PS4.
Robert had resigned himself to never seeing the money again, but wanted to warn people of the perils of letting youngsters play on consoles without parental controls in place.
He had contacted Sony but they remained unmoved and an email to the game’s creator, Epic Games, had gone unanswered.
Then last weekend….“I checked my emails on Saturday morning and there was one from Epic, apologising for the delay and saying they had reached out to Sony to get a resolution,” said Robert.
Redditch Standard editor Ross Crawford also received an email from Epic on Saturday, saying they had seen the story online and were acting to address the situation.
Robert then received an email from Sony saying Epic had asked them to refund the money in full.
“We are absolutely delighted, and it’s all down to the article appearing in the Redditch Standard,” he said.
An Epic spokesperson said: “We’re always committed to doing what’s best for our players. When we learned of this situation, we worked quickly to make it right, resulting in a full refund for the unauthorized purchases.”
Robert said: “This was never about getting the money back, but to warn people in a similar position to us on how important it was to have parental controls on these consoles.
“We were totally honest with Sony and Epic and admitted our errors and this has been their response.
“It also means our grandson can get the birthday present we promised him; he turned 11 on January 4 and I’d said we’d buy him a computer game, until all this blew up.
“Well he can have it now, and he’s happy with that.”
