A woman in south-west France, who received a telephone bill of nearly 12 quadrillion euros, has had the real amount she owed waived - after the company admitted its mistake.
Solenne San Jose, from Pessac outside Bordeaux, said she received a huge shock when she opened the bill for 11,721,000,000,000,000 euros (£9.4qn).
This is nearly 6,000 times France's annual economic output.
She had requested her account be closed after losing her job last month.
The former teaching assistant said she "almost had a heart attack. There were so many zeroes I couldn't even work out how much it was".
The phone company, Bouygues Telecom, initially told her there was nothing they could do to amend the computer-generated statement and later offered to set up instalments to pay off the bill.
In the end, the company admitted the bill should have been for 117.21 euros only, and eventually waived it altogether.
It has also apologised for the gaffe, which it says was down to a printing error and a subsequent misunderstanding between the client and staff at their call centre.
ColdbeerWarmheart on August 13rd, 2020 at 04:16 UTC »
"Computer sez No."
Radion4k on August 13rd, 2020 at 04:05 UTC »
A local radio station around here has a show where you can send in a copy of a bill and every week they draw one out of the pile at random that they will pay. Putting this bill in the pot would put them in an interesting bind!
benjaneson on August 13rd, 2020 at 03:26 UTC »
This was in 2012. For reference, the gross world product (sum of the GDP of the entire world) in 2013 was $75.59 trillion, or €56.83 trillion. So if she paid the gross world product every year, it would take her slightly more than 206 years to pay off the bill.
On the other hand, if the bill would have been in Zimbabwean dollars instead of euros, it would have equalled $0.34.