9 Things Kids Accidentally Ordered When They Had Their Parents’ Phone. Virginia Parents, Beware

A dad hands his six-year-old his phone at bedtime and gets thirty minutes of peace out of the deal.

Not long after lights out, a stranger left a bag of food on the porch.

Then another stranger did.

These are the things kids accidentally order the second a parent hands over the phone. Take this as your warning, parents in Virginia.

1. Seventy Thousand Lollipops

A Kentucky mom hands her eight-year-old her phone as a reward for good behavior.

He likes to window-shop on Amazon, filling the cart with things kids love and leaving the order button alone.

One Sunday he pressed it.

Liam ordered 30 cases of Dum-Dums, which worked out to be more than 70,000 lollipops and a charge of $4,200.

His mom found her account in the red the next morning while she was getting ready for church.

Amazon told her to refuse the delivery, so she stayed home to catch the truck.

Twenty-two boxes showed up on her porch with no warning anyway.

2. Takeout From Across Town

A kid with a food delivery app open can order from every kitchen in range, one tap at a time.

Over in Chesterfield Township, Michigan, a dad handed his six-year-old his phone for thirty minutes before bed.

Mason went to bed without a fight, which almost never happens.

Then the doorbell started ringing.

Five orders of jumbo shrimp came, then chicken sandwiches, chili cheese fries, grape leaves and ice cream, for a total of over $1,000.

His bank declined a $439 pizza order as fraud.

Another $183 of pizza went through anyway.

Grubhub offered the family $1,000 in gift cards once the story spread.

3. Her First Sports Car

A 14-month-old in Portland, Oregon, was supposed to be playing a game on her dad’s phone.

But Sorella placed the winning bid on a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite instead, at $202.

An auction app raises the stakes because a bid is a promise instead of a browse.

Her dad opened the eBay email and figured it was a phishing scam.

It wasn’t.

That car needed an engine, a transmission, brakes and a roof.

The family kept it anyway and started rebuilding it as a sixteenth-birthday present for a toddler who couldn’t walk steadily yet.

Put a 1962 Sprite on antique plates in Virginia, and it skips the state safety inspection altogether.

The trade is that an antique car can’t run the school route, and pleasure drives stop 250 miles from the owner’s house.

4. Every Chair in the Cart

A New Jersey mom filled a Walmart cart with accent chairs, meaning to pick a few of them later.

Her 22-month-old ordered the whole cart from her phone.

Boxes showed up at the family’s Monmouth Junction house for a week, nearly $2,000 of chairs and flower stands.

His parents blamed each other.

Ayaansh was still learning to count.

Retailers route an order like his through buildings full of servers before a single box ships.

Nearly 300 of those buildings sit across Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties, handling more than a third of the world’s online traffic.

The Kumars kept a few chairs and sent the rest back.

Then they pulled their debit card off their account.

5. Your Next Couch

The Amazon app sat open on a page of couches when a San Diego mom’s two-year-old walked up asking for the phone.

She handed it over and thought nothing of it.

One tap did it.

Rayna pressed Buy Now With 1-Click.

A $430 tufted couch turned up at the house a few days later.

Sending it back meant a $79 restocking fee plus roughly $100 in return shipping.

Her mom listed it on OfferUp instead.

Anybody who has wrestled a sleeper sofa up a third-floor walk-up in Old Town Alexandria understands why the return trip is the part that decides it.

Amazon refunded her in full on July 3 and told her to keep the couch or donate it.

A company representative switched 1-Click off for her account while they were at it.

6. Nine Hundred Popsicles

SpongeBob is what did it for a four-year-old in Brooklyn with his mom's phone.

Noah ordered 51 cases of SpongeBob popsicles, which came to 918 popsicles and a charge of $2,618.85.

He had the whole load shipped to his aunt's house.

Nobody eats 918 popsicles.

Fifty-one cases fill a chest freezer and then some.

Work that math out on a driveway in Chesapeake in August, and you have about ten minutes to do it.

Amazon wouldn't take a frozen return.

A classmate of Noah's mom at New York University set up a fundraiser for the family.

The full cost came in within 24 hours.

Three days later, more than 200 people had given over $7,000.

7. Thirty-One Cheeseburgers

A two-year-old in Kingsville, Texas, was playing with the camera app on his mom's phone while she worked.

Barrett opened DoorDash instead and ordered 31 cheeseburgers from the McDonald's out on Highway 77.

The burgers cost $61.58.

App fees and a $16 tip pushed the total to about $92.

He doesn't even like cheeseburgers.

Barrett ate half a cheeseburger and left the rest alone.

His mom posted the rest on a Kingsville community page online.

A pregnant woman took six, a mom with a big family took 18, and neighbors cleared out the rest.

Thirty cheeseburgers would carry a Fredericksburg travel team through a Saturday doubleheader with nothing left in the cooler.

8. Ten Pairs of Cowgirl Boots

In Westport, Massachusetts, a mom handed her five-year-old the phone to keep her busy in the car.

Lila shopped.

Five pink motorcycles, five blue motorcycles, 10 pairs of cowgirl boots, and a Jeep came to about $3,000.

Her mom worked it out when the packages started arriving.

Lila's own account of the method was that you press the yellow button, then you press the brown button.

The run from Richmond down I-64 to Virginia Beach takes about two hours on a clear day, which is a long stretch to leave a kid alone with a phone.

Amazon had the order marked as non-returnable at first.

The company took the whole order back once her mom explained what had happened.

9. Mom's Sleeping Thumbprint

A six-year-old in Little Rock, Arkansas, wanted her mom's phone and waited for her to fall asleep on the couch.

Then she pressed her mom's thumb to the fingerprint sensor, opened the Amazon app and ordered 13 Pokémon presents for herself.

The bill came to $250.

Only four of the items could go back.

Her parents assumed the account had been hacked.

It hadn't.

Ashlynd told them she had been shopping, then pointed out that she got the shipping address right so nothing would go astray.

Her mom told her Santa had heard about the fingerprint trick and wouldn't be bringing everything on the list.

The Wall Street Journal broke that story a few days before Christmas, which is how a six-year-old from Arkansas ended up in the business press.

Settings Nobody Turns On

Purchase approvals are free on every phone in the house.

Hardly anybody digs through the settings to switch them on.

Apple calls its version Ask to Buy.

Depending on the child's state or country, Apple turns it on by default and blocks anyone from switching it off for a child under 18.

Every download and in-app charge then goes to a parent's phone for a yes before it goes through.

Amazon's version sits in the Alexa app under Settings, then Account Settings, then Voice Purchasing.

Purchase controls there can be set to nobody at all or locked behind a four-digit voice code.

Refunds do happen.

Epic Games agreed to pay $245 million over Fortnite charges the Federal Trade Commission called unwanted.

The agency mailed another $126 million to nearly a million players in June 2025.