Sucheta Dalal :Just $23148855308184500 for a pack of cigarettes!
Sucheta Dalal

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Just $23,148,855,308,184,500 for a pack of cigarettes!  

July 16, 2009

 

Imagine buying a pack of cigarettes or eating out at a restaurant and being charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 i.e. $23 quadrillion for it on the credit card.
 
This shocking incident came true for New Hampshire's Josh Muszynski and North Texas's Jon Seale when the 17-digit amount appeared on their credit card statements, reports PTI.
 
Muszynski swiped his card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was shocked to learn that he had been charged $23 quadrillion, 148 trillion, 855 billion, 308 million, 184 hundred thousand and 500 which is about 2,007 times the size of the US' national debt.
 
Seale had gone to eat at a dining restaurant, Five Sixty, by Wolfgang Puck and was charged the same whopping figure on his credit card.
 
"For that amount of money, I could actually own Wolfgang Puck himself," Seale was quoted saying by NBC Chicago.
The astounding credit card bill was the result of a programming error faced by some Visa prepaid cardholders. Visa said the error had been corrected and all the falsely issued fees have been voided.
 
"A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement.
 
"The technical glitch has been corrected and all erroneous postings have been removed," Swanson added.
 
Similar cases were reported in Tennessee and other parts of the country.

-- Sucheta Dalal