The $23 Quadrillion Pack Of Cigarettes
UPDATE: The Real Reason Behind The $23 Quadrillion Errors
Josh Muszynski was one of the many people hit yesterday by a VISA system error that charged them exactly $23,148,855,308,184,500.00. In his case, it was a pack of cigarettes at a gas station. He later spent a couple of hours on the phone with Bank of America unravelling the charge and the $15 fee. I don't know what's more absurd, the fact that the transaction was approved or that it took two hours to get the $15 overdraft fee removed. Reports the AP, "Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank."
NH man charged 23 quadrillion dollars for smokes [AP] (Photo: TheGlassPeople)
PREVIOUSLY: Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore
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Comments:
Hmm, really? The exact amount Dale reported his daughters VISA BOXX card was charged at a pharmacy. Is this Josh just riding the limelight?
Yeah, it's an expensive habit. {smirk}
$15 overdraft fees! Sign me up!
I'd be interested to know if the POS/receipt was correct.
The cigarette taxes have gotten a little out of control... I mean 2000 times the entire national debt seems a little steep for a pack of smokes....
"Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank."
The entire story can be summed up with this line from the article.
This should cover the cost of national public health care. Thanks for stepping up, Josh!
Too bad it wasn't a rewards card. You can go lots of places with 23 quadrillion miles...
Srsly, are they not teaching common sense to CSR's these days? Unless they were waiting for the approval of someone who went on a massive lunch break (and I doubt it), there's NO excuse for why the overdraft fee took TWO HOURS to clear up.
Why can't they make this kind of error for me when processing a cash advance?
Thing about computers is, when you tell them to do something they do it. Even if it's wrong. When you run multiple transactions through the same code with a bug, you see the result of the bug multiple times.
I'm guessing that the error occured when the amount was applied to the account not at the approval level.
@mianne: A lot of accounts get a smaller fee for the first x number of overdrafts. It's just Bank of Americas way of playing "just the tip, just to see how it feels".
who overdraft 23 quadrillion dollars and the fee is only 15 bucks??? I need one of these cards
I think this story is fake. Not only was another story posted earlier and had proof, but this one is for almost the same amount. I'm thinking he is making it up just to seem famous.
Yes, the two hours is a problem. There probably is a script reading customer service person he talked to who had to -absolutely- make sure that he didn't make that charge...
Imagine the cigarette taxes you could get off that!
HEY!! I used to smoke those Kamel REDS.. Those things were harsh! But they were free, so...
/FWIW, I have been smoke free since 2002.
@theblackdog: I would imagine that such a high amount "rolled" the amount. I doubt Visa, or any credit card agency, devoted enough bits in their programs to hand quadrillion dollar transactions. Heck, I bet one billion would roll it.
I'd love to see what the computer saw...
@Paul Carr: OTOH, thanks to the smokers, we can pay off the national debt AND provide health care for not just the cancer caused by smoking, but also liver diseases caused by drinking, drug rehab, gunshot wounds, abortions, AIDS medicine, prescription contraceptives, and hiking trips to Argentina.
Hmmm, I'm assuming that part of that dollar amount is actually his credit card number.
Using deduction and a bit of luck, I've figured out his account number guessing that it was a Visa card and his bank was the First Bank of New Jersey in Whasituya.
A-ha... his password is a combination of his brand of hair jel and his favorite exit number.
There, I just purchased subscriptions to ConsumerReports.com for everyone on Reddit.com
There are more stories like this [tinyurl.com] Maybe someone at the consumerist could call the PR at Visa to see if they have a statement
@ZManGT: Either that, or much more likely that theres a bug in the system, that happened to read two consumerist readers.
@Slottsherre: There was a note in the BOXX card story where someone at the bank or Visa confirmed that this was a glitch in their system that caused a lot of people to be charged the exact same amount. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few more stories role in.
SCARY!!! Banks can compute balances that HIGH!? No computer system would be able to use bignums like that under normal circumstances. I hate to be alarmist, but:
THEY MUST BE PREPARING FOR RUNAWAY INFLATION!
@katstermonster: I just think most people have no frame of reference for what a quadrillion is.
Remember that many people are born without critical thinking skills, too.
@MostlyHarmless: Not even smokers, plural; just the one smoker.
What we could have done if only he'd bought a carton.
That's one way to get people to stop smoking and get rid of the National debt...
@ZManGT: Would you really waste your 15 mins of fame on a post on consumerist that doesn't even have a picture?
I haven't done the calculation, but this number appears to be perhaps a "ceiling" amount for some binary string. IOW instead of sending ones and zeroes as the string, being the real transaction amount, a string of all 1's was sent instead.
If that's the case then ... again, just guessing wildly here ... it'd have to be on the order of 54 or 55 bits. What earthly reason would Visa have for setting their standard transaction amount to a binary number of that size? No real-world transaction could ever possibly be anywhere close to that size.
@PsiCop: "No real-world transaction could ever possibly be anywhere close to that size."
You are forgetting the price of Monster cables.
@theblackdog: Yeah it is the exact same number from that article: $23,148,855,308,184,500.00
So something is differently fishy with the Visa Network
@mianne: Or Zimbabwe now (as noted by Freakonomics, among others). Either way it's still poor design.
Total geek alert:
Take the ridiculously large number and multiply it by one hundred so you get the number of cents.
That number is slightly more than can be represented by 61 bits (binary digits). Someone just got their new 64 bit operating system and screwed up the software.
@Ben Popken: Wow. Great response from an "editor". No wonder this site needed money from CR to stay afloat.
@PsiCop: It actually would make sense that the programmer would set it to a number higher than would be possible, so that there was no possibility of reaching that limit.
Maybe we wouldn't have smokers if cigarettes were that much..
Perhaps charging $23,148,855,308,184,500 for the bloody things would get the drug addicts who use them to stop.
si they were charged slightly more than normal price?
They are already TOO high.
What impresses me most is that BoA only charged him $15 for the overdraft in the first place. Instead of the more common $29-35 nowadays.