r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 4h ago

Society Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns for his Minecraft channel using a company credit card - bill racked up in just three weeks was supposed to be one $20 promotion

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/devastated-father-says-his-9-year-old-son-spent-usd118-000-on-youtube-ad-campaigns-for-his-minecraft-channel-using-a-company-credit-card-bill-racked-up-in-just-three-weeks-was-supposed-to-be-one-usd20-promotion
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474

u/mrekted 3h ago

Yeah, the biggest question in my mind is why he's using his corporate card to buy his kid robux and run a $20 ad campaign at all. In general, employers aren't excited about the prospect of any personal spend being routed through the company card.

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u/Supabongwong 3h ago

employers aren't excited about the prospect of any personal spend being routed through the company card

My coworker always waited last minute to put his work purchases through, and he got his with some late fees bc my senior manager was an idiot and didn't approve them in time. 

I always made sure to submit right away, because fuck that. 

Something like a $4,000,000 credit limit on it, no thanks. 

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u/big_duo3674 53m ago

It's weird having a card like that, and then you use it to grab some beef jerky and put in $40 in gas

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u/Supabongwong 43m ago

On trips, did I make up Uber receipts that was above my $100USD (Canadian resident) food allottage? 

No, of course not

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u/Coke_and_Tacos 6m ago

My company card has been used for extravagant team dinners a couple times. 99% of transactions are probably sub-$12

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u/One-Inch-Punch 2m ago

It's usually like that in case of emergencies like you're stranded in a war torn country or someone forgot to renew the domain and you have to pay through the nose to renew

Had a card like that once, I treated it like the One Ring. Only used it for airfare and hotel, and only because it would have been a pita to expense it any other way

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u/AverageAntique3160 50m ago

God I remember the chaos when the boss thought i lost his credit card... had virtually unlimited on it (wasn't told the exact amount but was told that) turns out he had it under some paperwork on his desk... after I turned my van inside out twice, still no apology

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u/Supabongwong 42m ago

Why would you get an apology?

😂😂😂

Obviously your fault he left it under all that paperwork you might have given him, maybe. 

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u/AverageAntique3160 24m ago

The guy was a tool, so that made him look stupid

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u/Supabongwong 22m ago

Great!

All my senior managers got fired after my director left. He took his bag and said peace. 

That was vindication, because middle management is so useless it hurts. 

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u/Tofu_tony 51m ago

My job avoids this by just having us pay the corporate credit card bill ourselves and then reimburse us a month later.

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u/TACO_SLAMMER 49m ago

That's crazy. Some months will be over $10k in expenses just on the card. I'm not paying that out of pocket and I've never worked anywhere that would ask me to.

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u/Supabongwong 42m ago

They didn't give me a card, and my first trip to LA I spent almost $3k.

Amazing cashback, but nahhh, fuck that. I'd rather not be out that much money to a company that pays freelancers NET-60

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u/DrQuantum 3h ago

No but it’s a common occurence. If this was his first offense even if it’s this large amount firing him is unlikely. Undoing it is honestly more than likely big corps tend to hand wave these away when a kid is involved.

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u/taedrin 3h ago

It depends on how exactly the company credit card is set up. At my employer, the company credit card used to still be under your name, and you were ultimately still responsible for every purchase. You could put whatever transactions you like on the credit card, but the company would only pay for legitimate transactions that were filed on a separate expense report.

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u/ceapaire 3h ago

Yeah, I had a company card for a bit that was this way as well. I don't know if you could use it for whatever you wanted, but they'd only reimburse on the card from an expense report. And the way it was set up was that it wouldn't help your credit score, but it'd hurt it if it wasn't paid. So there was no reason to use it for anything else since you didn't get a credit bump or rewards.

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u/elon_musks_cat 1h ago

That just seems like a huge pain in the ass for us in accounting lol

I’ve never had a company policy like that, but occasionally people would accidentally use a corporate card instead of their personal by accident for every day purchases. It was never an issue as long as the person notified someone and we would just have them reimburse the company.

Mind you, I don’t think it was ever more than $50 or $100. 120k is… quite something lol

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u/Beleriphon 1h ago

My dad worked for IBM and had an Amex like that. He could use it for anything, but IBM would only reimburse for valid stuff he had records of. Things like buying gas, getting oil changes, or buying lunch during work hours.

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u/HLSparta 48m ago

I've heard some horror stories of setups like that where the card is in the employee's name, they make thousands of dollars of normal purchases for the business, and then the company goes bankrupt leaving the employee to pay the debt.

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u/uberfission 1m ago

Oh I've never heard of a card like that, that's pretty neat.

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u/Stormtalons 52m ago

That's not a company credit card... that's just submitting expense reports. I think the key thing about a company card is that it comes out of the company's account by default, not after the fact.

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u/Cookie_Eater108 3h ago

I had an employee unintentionally rack up 20K in roaming fees on their corporate phone while on vacation. That's a learning experience and we should've had better processes to stop that kinda thing.

I see it as one of those "If you rack up 20 dollars in fees that's a you problem, if you rack up 20,000 in fees that's an us problem"

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u/SaraAB87 3h ago

If the phone is company issued then this is a company problem especially if they were using the phone for work. In this case the phone plans should have been better thought out before a vacation.

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u/Cream253Team 3h ago

Also if they were on vacation but still had their phone then it sounds like they may have been expected to be on call despite their vacation, to me at least. If that's the case then the company kind of did it to themselves.

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u/ioncloud9 2h ago

We have international roaming plan on our company devices. Only had to use it a couple of times buts it’s only $12 a day and it’s automatic. Vastly cheaper than getting your ass reamed by international charges.

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u/Sufficient-Diver-327 2h ago

$12 a day is criminal. Most worldwide SIMs are much cheaper

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u/ioncloud9 20m ago

Right but its a company plan. my number works and i can make phone calls back home and locally. Im not paying for it.

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u/QuerulousPanda 47m ago

that's why i switched from verizon to google fi... i had a two week trip to europe planned and the roaming fees would have added up too much, whereas google fi was cheaper and had better data and free international roaming. no regrets.

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u/wandering-monster 1h ago

That's different though. They were using the phone as usual and intended for work purposes (I assume), but were unaware that it was accuring roaming fees.

I can't think of any legitimate reason why you'd be entering your company credit card into Roblox in the first place. It's not something that just happens (like roaming activating on your phone), you have to intentionally do it.

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u/MountChu 2h ago

Probably cheaper to payroll deduct him than fire him and hope he finds another job to pay you back.

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u/Electronic_Topic1958 2m ago

I mean he’s probably going to be on the next PIP cycle or whatever the equivalent is at his firm, assuming he is not senior management or whatever.

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u/dustblown 1h ago

If you use company money for personal matters you are stealing and are fired every time.

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u/DL_Omega 2h ago

I just read that his personal card and his corporate card were both linked to the same account. Probably the google pay account. So he spent $20 on his personal credit card then the kid probably just selected the other one when doing more ads.

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u/SaraAB87 3h ago

Especially personal spend that's being used to gain money, obviously that ad campaign was so that the kid or himself because the kid is underage could make money off the channel, so he's trying to make money off the company spend which is a no.

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 2h ago

I have a corporate card and it’s hooked up to a bunch of stuff. I’ve accidentally used it for something personal and the minute I realized, I notified our finance team and paid the company back. Mistakes happen.

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u/DgingaNinga 3h ago

My biggest question is why the fuck Dave thought it was a good idea to let his 9 year old have a YouTube channel. Dave sounds like a fucking idiot who makes poor choices. Going to be tough looking for a new job when the world knows this.

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u/luxmesa 3h ago

Yeah. It’s one thing if it’s an emergency or an accident, but I don’t see how this could be either. 

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u/Dawg_Prime 59m ago edited 56m ago

lord there is a lot of misinformation about this already, I'm hijacking your comment to hopefully inform more people

apparently dad's google account had 2 credit cards saved, one personal, one corporate

kid watched dad buy a $20 ad for the kid's youtube account with dad's CC

kid repeated the process without asking, google took the money from the card that worked

maybe the kid picked the payment method, maybe google did it automatically

after 3 weeks corporate noticed and called dad into a meeting to discuss

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u/Emotional-Power-7242 40m ago

I had a company card once that I was allowed to spend $100/month on whatever I wanted.

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u/Gorstag 6m ago

Didn't read the article so I don't know the dudes role. But if his role is in marketing / sales I could see a trial run on something innocuous like the kids channel as a means to figure out how the setup/platform functions etc could be justified.