It was surely the most astronomical phone bill in history. When an unemployed childminder in south-west France received a bill for €11,721,000,000,000,000 (that's 11.7 million billion euros – more than 5,000 times the gross domestic product of France) – it took her days of wrangling with helpline staff to stop it being debited from her bank account.
Solenne San Jose. of Pessac, a Bordeaux suburb, had just lost her job and wanted to end her phone subscription, when the final bill arrived. She told her local paper, Sud Ouest: "I nearly had a heart attack. There were so many zeros that I couldn't even work out how much it was."
She called Bouygues Telecom, the phone company headed by Martin Bouygues, a friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, but was told by shrugging staff there was nothing they could do. One said: "It's calculated automatically." Another told her she would be contacted about paying in instalments. Several calls later, an adviser admitted it was a mistake: San Jose owed €117.21. The company has apologised and let her off the real bill.
gelftheelf on October 13rd, 2019 at 12:40 UTC »
I had a cellphone back in the late 90s early 00s. I got a bill from AT&T once for several thousands of dollars. When I called them and spoke to a rep I explained how there is no way I was on the phone for that long and suggested my account got mixed up with a business one or something.. They refused to believe me.
I had them do the math with me about how many minutes there are in a day and for a month and even with that math in front of them they said, "you're responsible for the bill" and that's how the phone call ended.
I got a call 3 or 4 days later from someone apologizing and fixing my bill.
I never used AT&T for anything ever again.
EDIT:
Just wanted to add. A couple months after I cancelled the phone, all of a sudden billing sprang to life again and I got a month bill from AT&T with 0 minutes of usage. I called about that and they said that sometimes the stores you bought your phone from re-activate them (when they shouldn't).
proxyproxyomega on October 13rd, 2019 at 12:02 UTC »
“Another told her she would be contacted about paying in instalments. “
So, we can offer you 20 years zero interest instalment plan. That would be 48,835,000,000,000 per month.
RishOuttaWater on October 13rd, 2019 at 11:56 UTC »
How could you possibly even begin to try to defend that the bill was correct?