Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore
Kids these days! Hawkins writes, "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday [my teenaged daughter] charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store." You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high. What Visa actually did was slap a $20 "negative balance" fee on it, of course. Update: Here's what happened!
The embarrassingly-named VISA BUXX card is a debit card for teenagers: parents get reports, control, etc. My daughter has one.
My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store. That's 2,000 times more than the national debt, which is a paltry 11 trillion.
The ever-vigilant folks at VISA added a $20 "negative balance fee," and have suspended the card.
When I called, they said that there was a "system problem," and that the "help desk was working on it."
Note: Some readers have speculated that the number is the credit card number, but the OP says in the comments that it's not:
Wow, I didn't think of that before I submitted this story to Consumerist. Wouldn't that be ironic cosmic retribution? Jerky consumer puts VISA's honest programming mistake on display for the world to make snarky sarcastic comments about... but then it turns out that he's just posted the debit card number!
Happily, this is not the case. Please carry on with the caustic commentary.
In that same thread, another commenter named mlcastle points out the series of digits fails the Luhn check, a simple checksum formula invented in the 1950s, and so cannot be a valid credit card number.
Update 2: Hawkins posted a follow up on page 3 of the comments:
I have an update, if anybody's interested.
The issue was with VISA, not with CVS. Apparently lots of VISA debit card users were affected by it, at several different merchants. Each victim was charged exactly $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.
The folks at VISA have removed the 23-Grillion dollar charge, but not the $20 negative-balance fee. They promise to do so "as soon as this is all sorted out."
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Comments:
On the plus side, that's a heck of a credit limit. Where do I sign up? There's a small country I'd like to buy.
Holy cow. And I thought MY kids wanted alot of money!
In three years that will be worth about $43.
She should have asked for the generic version of the prescription and saved a few million.
Hmm...if I had a 23 quadrillion dollar limit...I would have no problem living on minimum payments.
@Ezra Ekman: You could start negotiations with some very large countries when you reach the quadrillions, actually.
Quadrillion. Learned a new word today :p
Maybe the bank mistakenly converted the charge into zimbabwe dollars?
@Radi0logy: Yeah, and people think we are ruining our kid's future. Seriously? I mean just look at them. They very much deserve whats coming to them.
That is some potent contraceptive. You cant get pregnant if your dad strangles you on seeing the bill.
@Bob Lu:
Really? You're not familiar with the numbering system above million? It follows latin... bi, tri, quad, quint, sext, sept, oct, non, dec...
Pay up, deadbeat.
Well, this is a drugstore, and a teenage girl, so it's only LIKELY that it's a mistake.
Would have been cheaper to just buy the franchise.
So the stimulus IS working after all...
This amount of money can only be quantified in magnitudes approaching "Dr. Evil." Are you CERTAIN your daughter isn't outfitting ill-tempered sea bass with frickin' lasers?
She didn't use a coupon?
@Bob Lu:
Trebek: Keanu got the answer wrong. Let's see how much he wagered... Eleventy billion dollars?"
Trebeck: That isn't even a number
Reeves: yet
Honestly though, I want to know what she bought and how it POSSIBLY could have rung up for that much. I used to work at CVS and i'm pretty sure the computer would explode to try and do a sale that high.
@trunkwontopen: Apparently this is how much they charge if you don't get one of their stupid ExtraCare cards.
Like, the USA for example. Apparently we're on sale.
...on the other hand, think about how awesome your credit score would have to be with a $23 quadrillion credit line. Presuming of course you aren't carrying a $10 quadrillion balance.
In her defense let me just say that make up and hair products are expensive! A girl has to look pretty, you know.
with that limit, should've asked for cashback.
I had the same thing happen to me. I went to a local burrito place. My bill was for $7+ dollars but my checking account was debited for $1170! They fixed it but took some time.
I'd blame it on Palin quitting, but we all know she can't even count one-1,000,000,000/th as high as that.
No matter. I sense that this young lady has a rewarding career ahead of her as a Big Pharma rep.
@K-Bo: Mr Melton appears to be correct.
The issue seems to be affecting multiple customers: when you call the bank to ask them about it, you get a recording mumbling about "if you're calling about an incorrect balance, please be aware that we're working on the issue..." and then they hang up.
Which is helpful.
@lpranal: Dude their currency uses the same font as "RockBand"! Look at those "N"'s working those jagged points.
Soooo...CVS is now the most powerful entity on planet earth?
I used my $quadrillion credit card bill as proof of income when I got my mortgage...The mortgage broker made copies to use as backup for her entire portfolio.
Well, that's one city thankful for its 0.0825% sales tax!
@YouDidWhatNow?: Actually, they had a $45 quadrillion credit line a few months ago, but Chase lowered it to 23.5 quadrillion last month after they made a large payment.
If Walgreen's had kept their Saver's Club, she could have gotten an additional 10% back if she'd put it on a gift card.
I would be concerned that the number we are seeing is a credit card number that a cashier typed in. I suppose it is too late to take down (it has already been cached), but that is a possibility.
@Trai_Dep:
Huh? .0825%? That's damn low. I think you mean 8.25% sales tax (otherwise written as .0825, whereas .0825% is also written as .000825).
Supposedly, It's a debit card but if it were a credit card, I would hate to see what the "minimum" monthly payment would have been on that balance... Yikes!
@Brent Woodle: This is entirely possible. I almost did something similar last year, but the computers are SUPPOSED to flag it if it happens.
@Brent Woodle: I don't think so...the first number in the price is a "2". No credit cards start with a "2".
And besides, the numbers don't add up to the correct amount of digits for a credit card account number.
@Gramin: or we could post to a person and try to make them look foolish only to realize that we are double posting every time we do this for some odd reason...
See. This is all Obama has to do to fix the national debt. Look to the kids for the answers!