$23 quadrillion charge for a pack of cigarettes

[pam]

Can you imagine finding this charge on your bank statement?

Glitch hits Visa users with more than $23 quadrillion charge - CNN.com

[jameslentz]

and if it wasn't sensationalistic enough he ends by saying how he is going to now take all of his money and put it in a safe at his house....sucks how fixing the mistake is no longer enough in this country.

[LostSheep]

23,000,000,000,000,000 is a BIG number! How the heck do they make a mistake like that?

If you were to try and count to that number, saying two numbers per second, it would take you 3,644,130 years to get there.

[Moksha]

and if it wasn't sensationalistic enough he ends by saying how he is going to now take all of his money and put it in a safe at his house....sucks how fixing the mistake is no longer enough in this country.

Wonder if any potential burglars will know he keeps his money at home.

[ploomf]

We'll that's one way to lower the smoking rate in this country.

[Seanette]

I did like his line about "Can I buy Europe on pump 4?"

[boyando]

Doesn't this have something to do with TARP money?

[DigitalShadow]

23,000,000,000,000,000 is a BIG number! How the heck do they make a mistake like that?

If you were to try and count to that number, saying two numbers per second, it would take you 3,644,130 years to get there.

It's actually a pretty easy error. In hex values the exact number charged translates to 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50 cents. 20 happens to be the hex value for a space character, so it looks like someone probably padded the number for the cost of something with spaces instead of 0's. The amazing part is that there aren't any checks that would catch something like that.

[hordak]

We'll that's one way to lower the smoking rate in this country.

boo

[Mahone]

and if it wasn't sensationalistic enough he ends by saying how he is going to now take all of his money and put it in a safe at his house....sucks how fixing the mistake is no longer enough in this country.

That's a crazy statement for the guy to make. As digitalshadow said, the mistake is actually an easy one to make and I've seen similar happen multiple times. Did he really believe he and his family would be in debt for several generations due to the bill, like it said in the article? He lacks a thing called common sense. I'd have burst out laughing had I seen that on my bill - I certainly wouldn't have worried or panicked about it.

[DigitalShadow]

That's a crazy statement for the guy to make. As digitalshadow said, the mistake is actually an easy one to make and I've seen similar happen multiple times. Did he really believe he and his family would be in debt for several generations due to the bill, like it said in the article? He lacks a thing called common sense. I'd have burst out laughing had I seen that on my bill - I certainly wouldn't have worried or panicked about it.

I think a lot of people in the US are already more than a bit technophobic and all it takes is an incident like this to send them over the edge regardless of whether it was fixed or not. It's rather sad.

[Mahone]

I think a lot of people in the US are already more than a bit technophobic and all it takes is an incident like this to send them over the edge regardless of whether it was fixed or not. It's rather sad.

Haha, well if he was serious, he has just gone and announced to the world that he has a safe in his house that contains all his cash. What a 24 carat plonker.

[ploomf]

boo

What I want to know is, why can't anyone ever make a $23 quadrillion mistake in my favor? I'd have lots of fun with $23 quadrillion, buying Europe would only be the beginning.