And you thought that pack of smokes you picked up was expensive…

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And you thought that pack of smokes you picked up was expensive…

July 15, 2009 – 10:18 am – No Comment

$23,148,855,308,184,500.

That is one expensive pack of cigarettes, and apparently, a lot of things. VISA has a bug in its system that recently charged several debit card owners 23 Quadrillion dollars.

A New Hampshire man says he swiped his card at a gas station to purchase a pack of cigarettes and was charged that outrageous amount of money. He went to check his online statement and noticed the huge number and was floored.

To say the dollar amount outright it would be twenty-tree quadrillion, one hundred forty eight trillion, eight hundred fifty five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty four thousand, five hundred dollars.

He spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the multi-quadrillion dollar expense and the $15 overdraft fee associated with the bank error.

But, this isn’t the only case like this to be reported. Yesterday the Consumerist reported an eerily similar situation in which a teenager with a Visa BUXX card was able to go to a CVS store and buy $23,148, 855,308,184,500 worth of stuff.

In that case, Visa charged her a $20 over the limit fee and has yet to waive the fee.

Visa needs to stop trying to blame everyone else because they are the only link between the reports. And I personally don’t think that anyone would even be able to buy something (or a group of somethings) that totaled 2,000 times the national debt.