Nine-Year-Old Books A Disneyland Holiday After Guessing Her Dad’s PayPal Password

Consider this one hell of a Public Service Announcement!

A little girl in the UK has managed to book a fabulous holiday in Paris, complete with flights, hotel, an Eiffel Tower tour, a train ride and ticket to Disneyland, totalling $1,700 AUD.

Nine-year-old Susan Wilson had no intention of bringing her family along, as all of the tickets were for one person only, and for the very next day!

Apparently, this wasn’t exactly an accident either – Susan crept into the lounge at midnight and guessed the password on her dad, Ian’s phone, then got into his PayPal account too.

First, Susan splashed out £400 ($688 AUD) on a flight and a hotel gift card.

Then she bought a VIP trip up the Eiffel Tower for £391.84 ($675 AUD) for 7pm that day. Next, she spent £214.08 ($368 AUD) on the Disneyland Express train and theme park tickets for the next day.

Ian, 53, only realised three days later when he saw three amounts totalling £1005.92 ($1731 AUD) had been taken from his bank account by PayPal.

Ian seems to have taken the news much better than I would have.

“I don’t think Susan really realises the enormity of what she had done. She’s said sorry and promised 10p to help pay it back.”

Susan booked the tours via German-based firm Getyourguide and the flights and hotel with budget airline Bravofly, admitting that she’s not sure how she managed to organise such a fabulous holiday for herself.

“I don’t know how I did it. I just like messing about with Dad’s phone. I don’t know where Paris is or what the Eiffel Tower is.”

A likely story!

Susan’s parents Ian and Tracey, from Lincolnshire in the UK, at first thought the missing cash was due to fraud and contacted their bank and PayPal.

“My immediate thought was that it was fraud so I phoned PayPal who told me that the payments had been made from a device they deemed normal for me and did not consider it to be fraud.

“That’s when I went through my phone history and found all these websites in my internet history. I asked Susan and she said it was her.

“She was absolutely brokenhearted and very remorseful. She had no idea what she was doing, I could not even punish her for it.”

The bank, PayPal and the booking firms refused to refund the transactions after their findings.

Ian was not happy about this and said “They just all washed their hands of it. They’re acting disgracefully. They’ll see the flight and none of the tours were taken up.”

After the family approached The Sun, the newspaper contacted PayPal who have now refunded the money as a “goodwill gesture”.

A spokesman said: “Young people are very savvy and it’s important that we keep our devices and accounts safe.”

Susan’s mum Tracey explains that Ian’s phone was the only device her daughter could have used to book the holiday.

“Susan really knows her way around her tablet but that is completely internet safe so she can’t do things like this. Ian’s phone isn’t but we will be keeping it out of her way from now on.”

Again, consider this a fair warning. If you have children, make sure your technology is locked down now before they realise that Disneyland isn’t as far away as they first thought!

Source: Facebook and Giphy