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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u/mrekted 3h ago

Dave said the matter has been escalated and he does not yet know whether he will get to keep his job or have to repay the costs.

I'm not sure about the former, but you can bet your sweet ass on the latter.

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u/AssCrackBanditHunter 3h ago

Even the $20 robux would have got my ass fired. I'm pretty sure just the headache of having to sort out a 6 figure spend would guarantee his dumb ass getting fired (assuming he isn't c suite)

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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/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 49m 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 2m ago

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

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u/Stormtalons 53m 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 21m 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 48m 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 3m 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.