Yep. It's a blatantly obvious dark pattern. It's your credit card. Your money. Yet Apple gives you no way to cancel (or even view!) a child's subscription online. Heck, they won't even tell you which child made the subscription.
One of my younger kids bought $7,200 worth of currency and content on a game on a Kindle. She did so in a single afternoon. I contacted Amazon support and the refund was issued on the spot. After they issued the refund, the only question that was asked was why I had it set to allow her to buy online. I replied that it was because she could not use one of Amazon's services with the family account without having payments enabled (I think it was music). I'm pretty sure they corrected that... but I was struck by how pro-consumer and how little hassle there was. I do not think that either the Play Store or App Store would have issued that refund so quickly.
To be fair, Apple refunded and cancelled the subscription upon request in my instance too. But first you've got to notice the problem, and then jump through the hoops.
There's no good reason I shouldn't be able to cancel an auto-recurring subscription on my own credit card from some interface.
It's (IMO) intentionally crippled because it asks for every app install. Including free ones. Which is not only annoying, since kids play a lot of games, but also creates a time delay. For example, the child is in a special education program that requires certain apps. If he tries to install one at school and I don't approve it immediately then that's a problem.
There is no option to "ask for permission if it costs money" option. Which, let's be honest - is probably what most parents are looking for (and would be dead simple to implement).
Not only that, but it can only be managed from another apple device. If your kid has an ipad and you don't have an iphone, ipad, or mac; you can't use the child accounts.
Pretty sure I was responding to somebody else? But, if Family Share doesn’t let you view and mange a child’s subscriptions that you’ve approved, that is awful, no disagreement there.
