US smoker chokes on cost of habit

[tittenman]

A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm

 

[Johan]

Hahaha, nice, this may decide him to stop !

 

[Will E Worm]

Hahaha, nice, this may decide him to stop !

Someone either got his card number or the bank messed up.

 

[megaewok]

It could be a government conspiracy to pay off their debts and get a little extra on the side, who knows? :1orglaugh

 

[sproing99]

I hope he gets to keep the loyalty points

 

[tittenman]

Could be the banks trying to make their recent losses perhaps?

 

[calpoon]

That made my day. hilarious story.

 

[Funkwerkz]

That dude's bank has now a really really shitty bad debt. No stress test can cover it. That guy bought entire Solar System with that amount of money.

 

[tittenman]

That dude's bank has now a really really shitty bad debt. No stress test can cover it. That guy bought entire Solar System with that amount of money.

Not to mention change left over to buy up about 2/3 of the surrounding galaxy also and enough Big Macs to feed everybody in that vicinity. Do the banks really need ask why they are in the mess they are, cant even do some basic high school maths: units, tens, hundreds,thousands....yes in that order!

 

[Skyraider22]

I knew the price of smokes was going up but that is crazy sounds like some id thief:dunno:

 

[D-rock]

If I was in his position I would almost be tempted to say nothing and have them try to take legal action on my delinquent payments just to see how hilarious it would be when they or some judge found out the amount that was charged.

 

[24788]

The fuck kind of number is that?! I'd probably start crying.

 

[Member2019]

About 13,000 will be hit ...

Related thread ...
http://board.freeones.com/showthread.php?t=319469

And my commentary on the matter ...

This has now happened to thousands of people. These are just the first people who are getting their statements. It's estimated that up to 13,000 people are going to be hit.

The issue is with regards to UTF-8/ASCII string conversion and the leading spaces (20 hexadecimal, 32 decimal), are being interpreted as binary, hence the number.

Absolutely piss-poor coding practices, non-existent QA and, most likely, outsourced to the hilt. Welcome to the world I deal with every day.