As friends and colleagues may know, I am fortunate to have much good fortune in my life, what a religious person might call “many blessings.” My two sons, Sam and Noah, are both intelligent, playful and loving boys with smart-aleck senses of humor and a taste for the good old-fashioned tickle fight. They are also special education students who have diagnoses of relatively profound autism. Sam in particular is a lover of music and, after a prosperous month last year, my friend and the children’s mother Sunday Stilwell together bought the fellows each an iPad. (I don’t own one, but the fellows do.) Sam tends to use his for making and playing music while Noah tends somewhat more toward making art and watching an unbelievable volume of Dora the Explorer and Baby Einstein videos.
Due to some inadvertence, Sam managed this evening to crack the security measures on his iPad to keep him from buying, well, every iPad App in the App Store. And of course, when Sam went on his illicit buying spree, he plunked down a “buy” on the $999.99 ArtJam Universe music/video synthesizer (?) app from SoundSelecta. Sunday responded about the way you’d expect a reasonable human being to respond – with shock – but got it together and contacted both Apple and the publisher of the app. While Apple has not responded officially yet, SoundSelecta’s CEO Andy Richman has promised his full assistance in making sure that Apple and his company do not charge my boys’ mother $1000.00 for this purchase, and even offered a demo promo code to Sam for him to test the software out! (We will probably decline this exceptionally generous offer so as not to reward Sam for his 9-year old juvenile delinquent act of theft against his mother.)
A maximum “thank you” to Mr. Richman and the highly ethical SoundSelecta not only for approving this reversal but for doing so on a Sunday night on a holiday weekend (at least here in the States, as SoundSelecta appears to be headquartered in Canada.) Please go check out the company and the software; they deserve your respect and possibly your business if making music on your iOS is your entertainment. I certainly wish this company all the best.
I wrote a follow up email to Andy Richman this morning singing his praises and telling him I would be writing a blog post about the matter and recommending his apps to my friends who are also raising children with autism who love music.
Also, I have heard from Apple and they are “reviewing the matter” and will get back to me soon.
Hi Bruce
Totally not a problem and thanks for your very kind words. I sent an email to Sunday which outlines reasoning for pricing etc and never in a million years did we figure on this type of situation. Anyway, I have also written to Apple and I am sure this will be reversed pretty quickly. Let me know asap if not.
Best wishes and enjoy the rest of your holiday.
Andy Richman
Sound Selecta Inc.