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Amazon's Kindle Fire lets kids charge up a storm

St. Louis area software engineer Lance Durham says he decided to get a couple of Kindle Fires to give as presents to his children. He was loading some games before wrapping them and realized he couldn’t turn off the single-click ordering, which charges his credit card.

“There was no password or pin, nor any kind of confirmation - the purchase immediately went through,” he says.

So Durham called Amazon and says he was told the ordering from Amazon could not be disabled, and the company suggested he “deregister” the device after every purchase. That, he says, caused the downloaded apps to stop working.

He returned the tablets.

If you ever thought there was no downside to Amazon’s 1-click ordering, well, this is it. In fact, it’s severely hurting customer happiness.

It’s appalling that the company’s only recommendation would be to de-register the device. Essentially, Amazon is acknowledging that they have yet to identify and implement a quick solution to appease these disgruntled parents.

In the long run, this problem could really hurt Amazon. Tablets, though mostly used by adults, are provided to children at times for educational purposes and as gaming devices. The sheer idea that a kid can click through several 1-click buttons and make an indefinite amount of purchases — well, that has to be frightening for any parent.

Amazon must put out this fire (no pun intended) as soon as possible, or they are going to lose many customers to tablet competitors. And with the iPad 3 on the horizon, they better get this feature fixed post-haste.