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"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card!"

B

BoyBach

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 24, 2006
3,031
13
US smoker chokes on cost of habit

A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.

That is $23 quadrillion (£14 quadrillion) - many times the US national debt.

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," said Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire.

He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.

It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee.

"It was all back to normal," Mr Muszynski told his local television station, WMUR. "They reversed the negative balance fee, which was nice."

...

"It is a lot of money in the negative," he said. "Something I could never, ever, afford to pay back.

"My children could not afford it, grandchildren, nothing like that."

In panic, Mr Muszynski rushed back to the petrol station, but they were unable to help. He says he then spent two hours on the phone with the Bank of America.

Eventually, it assured him it would be fixed - and the next morning, it had been.

But no-one has yet explained to Mr Muszynski how such a astonishing error could have been made.
Click to expand...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm


That's one expensive packet of cigarettes! :eek:
 
John Jacob

John Jacob

macrumors 6502a
Feb 11, 2003
548
9
Columbia, MD
Looks like it was a technical glitch at Visa.

The Register said:
Visa says a technical glitch is responsible for a rash of notices warning customers their accounts are overdrawn to the tune of $23 quadrillion.

An anonymous Reg reader tipped us to one emailed statement, which claimed the accountof the tipster's son was on hold because of a charge made to an Applebee's restaurant for $23,148,855,308,184,500.00. The tipster continued:

"After checking with him to make sure he really hadn't purchased 23 quadrillion dollars worth of food from Applebees - he's really not that big an eater - I called to dispute the transaction. A tired-sounding customer service rep interrupted me: 'Are you calling about the $23 trillion dollar charge?' I corrected her "Actually, it's 23 quadrillion. I looked it up."

Visa representatives quickly blamed the notices on a technical glitch. The 17-digit charges were applied to holders of prepaid cards, they said, such as the Visa Buxx card, a service parents can offer teenaged children.

"Late yesterday, July 13, a temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services, caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," a statement issued on Tuesday said. "The technical glitch, which impacted fewer than 13,000 Visa prepaid transactions, has been corrected and erroneous postings have been removed. Importantly, this incident had no financial impact on Visa prepaid cardholders."

The Visa Buxx card is designed to help kids learn about finances by helping them track their purchases. It's already providing a valuable lesson in the importance of reading statements carefully.
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13,000 multiplied by $23 quadrillion is a heck of a lot of money. Easily more than the GDP of Planet Earth. Maybe even more than the GDP of the whole galaxy.
 
P

pelicanflip

macrumors 6502a
Jun 24, 2009
802
0
NYC
Hmmm...I wonder if that number is actually possible on a Black Card. Would be kinda interesting to test out :p
 
jbernie

jbernie

macrumors 6502a
Nov 25, 2005
927
12
Denver, CO
the question is.... if he returned them and got a full refund... would he have had that much money - $16?

then he could call up Europe and make an offer :)
 
arkitect

arkitect

macrumors 604
Sep 5, 2005
7,077
12,466
Bath, United Kingdom
He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.
Click to expand...

Typical of banks.
No matter how ludicrous the situation they display zero common sense.

It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee.
Click to expand...
He was lucky. ;)
Only got charged $15 for an overdraft of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00…
 
iBlue

iBlue

macrumors Core
Mar 17, 2005
19,180
15
London, England
arkitect said:
Typical of banks.
No matter how ludicrous the situation they display zero common sense
Click to expand...

Seriously! Twunts. :mad: In my experience Bank of America is a huge festering turd of a bank, they are even more unhelpful and irritating than the banks over here, and that's really saying something! :D
 
whooleytoo

whooleytoo

macrumors 604
Aug 2, 2002
6,607
716
Cork, Ireland.
If we sell Europe for 23 quadrillion, how much do we get, each? I think I'd be willing to sell my share for that price.

I, for one, welcome our new American very-heavily-in-debt overlords.
 
C

cdover

macrumors member
Mar 10, 2005
33
0
whooleytoo said:
If we sell Europe for 23 quadrillion, how much do we get, each? I think I'd be willing to sell my share for that price.

I, for one, welcome our new American very-heavily-in-debt overlords.
Click to expand...

Everyone would get just over US$31,600,000. Not bad!
 
jbernie

jbernie

macrumors 6502a
Nov 25, 2005
927
12
Denver, CO
whooleytoo said:
If we sell Europe for 23 quadrillion, how much do we get, each? I think I'd be willing to sell my share for that price.

I, for one, welcome our new American very-heavily-in-debt overlords.
Click to expand...

and we will then need to offload items to China etc to make the repayments :)
 
Y

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
Gasu E. said:
Which just goes to show that all of Europe is not worth $23 quadrillion. In fact, the entire Earth is probably not worth that much.

Especially in this economy. :(
Click to expand...

23,148,855,308,184,500 / 6.7 billion people = approx $3.5 million per person.

I'll take some of that :D
 
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