Results tagged “quadrillion”

People, always check your bank statements. Eighteen-year-old Lydia Alcock was checking her Visa statement online when she saw that her off-peak Metro-North ticket from Grand Central to Goldens Bridge cost $23,148,855,308,184,500. Yesterday, the NY Times' Peter Abblebome wrote about the college student's amazement:

Ms. Alcock looked. She looked again. She gasped. She laughed. She shouted to her father: “Dad, you need to come here. Right now.” And then after realizing, to her chagrin, that she owed the staggering sum, not that she was the recipient of a tidy little windfall, she typed into Google: “How to say really big numbers,” and cut and pasted $23,148,855,308,184,500. It read: “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.”

It turned out that between 12,000 and 13,000 Visa customers were accidentally billed $23 quadrillion for various purchases. Visa fixed the error—and Wachovia waived the $20 fee for overdrawing on her account.