Boxes keep coming: 7-year-old goes on $3,200 Amazon shopping spree

A cautionary tale for grownups who sometimes let the kids play with their phone or tablet.

Leah Grabovsky is awfully smart for a 7-year-old. Her grandmother, Angela Grabovsky says, “Leah’s pretty quiet, but evidently very mischievous. Right, Leah? So, she is a leader of the pack. So, she is the one who always comes up with different ideas.”

She recently had one of those brilliant ideas while using her grandparents’ iPad. “Evidently Leah got bored with kids’ YouTube and decided to go on a shopping spree on our Amazon account,” says her grandmother.

Leah’s grandfather told her she could choose a gift worth $20, but within about 15 minutes, Leah had picked out 80 different items, racking up a $3,200 bill. The second-grader had to admit to her parents what she’d done.

Leah says she bought, “Smart watches, walkie-talkies.” While she bought toys for herself, Leah also got some gifts for her cousins and she ordered two refrigerators for her grandparents on accident. “In the afternoon, some of the boxes came and then the next day, even more boxes came, and the next day even more boxes came,” Leah says.

They were able to cancel a few shipments before they arrived, but the rest had to be returned and Leah’s grandparents are still waiting to get all of their money back.

“You have to start much sooner than seven explaining to children that money doesn’t grow on a tree,” Leah’s grandmother says.

As a consequence, Leah lost her screen time privileges. She also had to spend her holiday money on a gift for her class. Her grandparents say they wanted the second-grader to fully understand her actions.