And you thought cigarette prices were bad where you lived?

[Munky]

NH man charged 23 quadrillion dollars for smokes


Wed Jul 15, 9:11 am ET


MANCHESTER, N.H. – A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.
Josh Muszynski (Moo-SIN'-ski) checked his account online a few hours later and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars).


Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee. The bank corrected the error the next day.


Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090715/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_quadrillion_dollar_debit

[silversharkXD2]

Lol..

[hyunelan2]

My pharmacy had a former cash register that occasionally would charge you the card number when you swiped your card - so instead of a $15 prescription, it would come up as being your 16 digit account number with a "$" in front of it. Luckily the cashier was always watching for that to happen. They have a new register now.

[Gman]

Must be the new scam to get smokers to pay off the national debt.

[hyunelan2]

Does $23 quadrillion dollars even exist? I mean, the whole U.S. debt is $11.4 Trillion, with an annual budget of a hair over 1 Trillion. All the money in the world probably doesn't add up to one Quadrillion, yet BoA lets a charge go through for $23 quadrillion.

If I had a credit card that would let me overdraft even a Billion dollars, I would and buy a small island with a small army to keep Bank of America out.

[jalmir]

If I had a credit card that would let me overdraft even a Billion dollars, I would and buy a small island with a small army to keep Bank of America out.

Best idea EVAR!

lol

[SuperGLS]

Yes, good call Mike. Can I come live there? And actually I understand there are quite a few small islands in the caribbean for sale.

In a sort of related note I once charged some guy over $3000 for a library fine. When we ring up credit card transactions (it's in an online system) we have to put the amount of the fine in one box and the last four digits of the library card number in another. Well, I somehow managed to mix them up and boom, $3628 or something like that. Good thing was that when the receipt was printing I noticed it and said to the guy "I'm guessing you don't really want to give us $3000, right?" and he was cool about it, we voided it, rang up the right charge and laughed about it. A lot of times people don't look at all, they just sign, so had I not noticed he might have had quite a shock next time he checked the card's balance.

[silversharkXD2]

Yes, good call Mike. Can I come live there? And actually I understand there are quite a few small islands in the caribbean for sale.

In a sort of related note I once charged some guy over $3000 for a library fine. When we ring up credit card transactions (it's in an online system) we have to put the amount of the fine in one box and the last four digits of the library card number in another. Well, I somehow managed to mix them up and boom, $3628 or something like that. Good thing was that when the receipt was printing I noticed it and said to the guy "I'm guessing you don't really want to give us $3000, right?" and he was cool about it, we voided it, rang up the right charge and laughed about it. A lot of times people don't look at all, they just sign, so had I not noticed he might have had quite a shock next time he checked the card's balance.

what happens if i were to say, hypothetically, have books out for ten years

[SuperGLS]

If you have books out for 50 days past the due date we send you to collections because we are hardcore like that. Obviously things are different in different places though.

[jalmir]

^ happen to me once ... forgot the book, moved and then went back to the library a year after (had totally forgot I had a book due for more then a year there! ha!)

I had to pay the price of the book + some fees and that was it (something around 40$ total I think).

[SuperGLS]

Right, generally we send a note that says "We sent your *** to collections." Then people come in and complain about it. If they've lost the book it's the price of the book plus a $3 processing fee (and a $10 collections referral fee).

[jalmir]

haha ... since I moved I never received any letter and since I didn't had my address changed at the library I guess they stop sending letters when they started getting them back! haha

[UrbanerMezei]

The banks should have a safety to prevent transactions over a certain amount, I mean obviously that number is bogus, the system should have caught that and tossed it.