Anybody Have a Spare $23 Quadrillion?

I came across a very funny article late yesterday which is from the NBC Dallas-Ft. Worth website but has been picked up by Yahoo, entitled “Wow! A Quadrillion-Dollar Credit Card Bill”. The article talks about a bill that a man got from VISA with a charge for over $23 quadrillion.

That’s a mighty hefty bill that no one on our planet could even come across to afford. It must have been quite the surprise.

This is what it looks like: $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.

Here’s how to say it: 23 quadrillion,148 trillion, 855 billion, 308 million, 184 thousand and 500 dollars.

It’s more than 2,000 times the national debt — and, according to Jon Seale’s online credit card statement, it’s what he spent July 13 at Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck.

“For that amount of money, I could actually own Wolfgang Puck himself,” Seale said.

Now I don’t know if he could actually buy Wolfgang Puck for that amount. I’m not really sure what the going rate on humans is these days, and I’m sure it would be more for someone famous.

Mr. Seale even went on Facebook to see if he could find the actual Wolfgang Puck, and I guess regal him with his tale about that expensive meal. Unfortunately, his efforts were unsuccessful. So I’m gonna to publicly make a plea on here to Wolfgang Puck to look up Mr. Seale and maybe deliver him personally a meal. I think that would make a great story, and would be a good PR move on Puck’s part.

Mr. Seale was not the only one this happened too either. Visa said it was a technical mistake that affected a few of its prepaid customers. There is a man in New Hampshire who’s come forward and bought a $23 quadrillion pack of cigarettes.

That must be quite the shock to open up your credit card bill and see that charge looming. I can imagine its a fairly odd call to the customer service number as well. I’m sure they initially must think it has to be a prank call or later that you are too dumb to know how to read your bill.

I’m glad things got fixed for the customers rather quickly. After all, I’m sure that being $23 quadrillion in debt would do wonders for your credit score. I can imagine being told at the car dealership, hello Mr. Jones we pulled your credit and we’re sorry to say your score is a -56,778. That’s going to be a little bit out of our risk range.

To give them credit Visa did acknowledge their mistake, of course it was pretty obvious, and explained this way…

“A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts,” said Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement. “The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed.”

Also, have no fears if you’ve been charged the $23 quadrillion. Your good friends at Visa are going to take care of that $20 overdraft fee for you as well.