Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore

[walkthaplank]

July 14, 2009

Kids these days! Dale writes, "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday [my teenaged daughter] charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store." You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high. What Visa actually did was slap a $20 "negative balance" fee on it, of course.

Dale writes,

The embarrassingly-named VISA BUXX card is a debit card for teenagers: parents get reports, control, etc. My daughter has one.

My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store. That's 2,000 times more than the national debt, which is a paltry 11 trillion.

The ever-vigilant folks at VISA added a $20 "negative balance fee," and have suspended the card.

When I called, they said that there was a "system problem," and that the "help desk was working on it."

Source:
Consumer Reports
http://consumerist.com/5314246/unrul...n-at-drugstore[/QUOTE]

Ummm... oops

[JRScott]

First off teenagers without having gone through a financial planning course should not have a credit card or debit card. If us adults aren't responsible enough with em how can we expect kids to be....

[Bandit]

That looks more to me like the lack of integrity as the problem.

You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high.

if you were high?

hmm

[AngelinaCatHub]

My humble opinion is; that teen would be a great Financial Planner, or CPA. LOL. 'Hub

[AngelinaCatHub]

That looks more to me like the lack of integrity as the problem.



if you were high?

hmm

Like again, "if you were high?" Oh, drug store. Hey, that teen will end up owning real neat wheels with a car attached that goes up and down with power struts and black tinted windows.

[BigJohn]

I would have told the child to return every last item, and being the account was closed, demand an immediate refund in cash.

[Bex]

Lol!

I would have told the child to return every last item, and being the account was closed, demand an immediate refund in cash.

ahahaha love it! Teach those kids fiscal responsibility!!

[JRScott]

There's more to this.

Consumers Get $23 Quadrillion Credit Card Bill Because of Visa Glitch

Wednesday, July 15, 2009



A New Hampshire man was shocked to learn that when he purchased pack of cigarettes he also got charged $23,148,855,308,184,500, or more than $23 quadrillion — a number that rivals that of the national debt.

Josh Muszynski swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and a few hours later noticed the exorbitant charge when he checked his account on the Internet, WMUR-TV reported.

"I thought my card had been compromised. I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," Muszynski told the station. "It was very concerning."

Muszynski told WMUR-TV that he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers — and the $15 overdraft fee — but the company couldn't explain what exactly happened.

"She just tried to assure me that everything would be fixed, and I couldn't see something like that being fixed," Muszynski said.

The bank corrected the error the next day.

Bank of America said the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

Muszynski is not alone.

An unidentified teenager was reportedly charged the same amount at CVS, according to Consumerist.com.

The girl's mother told the Web site that the charge showed up on her Visa Buxx debit card, and when she called the company, they told her there was a "system problem."

Two more cases of the $23 quadrillion charge showing up on credit card statements for packs of cigarettes have been reported in Memphis, Tenn., and in Texas.

Jason Bryant bought a pack of Pall Malls at a Memphis Exxon and was flabbergasted to see how much he was charged.

"I paid for the deficit multiple times over," he told WREG-TV in Memphis.

And a North Texas man got the same charge on his bill when he went to Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck.

"For that amount of money, I could actually own Wolfgang Puck himself," joked Jon Seale, according to NBCChicago.com.

Visa said it was a glitch that only affected some customers with prepaid cards, according to the Web site.

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532740,00.html?test=latestnews

[Scott50]

My humble opinion is; that teen would be a great Financial Planner, or CPA. LOL. 'Hub

or a future politician..

[needachance]

Visa made an error but they wouldn't admit it at the time. Funny how people read that and don't even register the number....

you could have bought every drug store in America and probably in the world for that number!

[Bandit]

A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services
Foxnews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,...est=latestnews

Wow. Banks have errors with all this great techonology. Who would of thought
Better keep watching every dollar I spend and every penny they mistakenly take and keep saving the reciepts for a long time. I remember an old bank of mine taking out a penny very month. Every month I had to go to the bank and have them give me back my penny to balance. It is amazing the errors banks make and consumers never know.

[Bandit]

Like again, "if you were high?" Oh, drug store. Hey, that teen will end up owning real neat wheels with a car attached that goes up and down with power struts and black tinted windows.

I get it one way, but I dont get it fully. I must be real dense. I see what you mean about the teen taking the perscriptions and making a fortune but I still dont get the quote where it is at, so I was wondering if they wrote it wrong?

Oh drug store, please make me high

[BKOnce]

Either :

1. The email/story/paper is Hoax... (for the purpose of gaining popularity, or make up story to teach their kids, or making fun of CC company, etc.), or


2. The computer server of crecit card company had actual "Glitches" causing math overflow or CPU calculation mistakes, or


3. Someone in accounting dept. intentionally made up these numbers to either screw up the CC's system, or causing the news controversy, the credit conspiracy, etc., about how much they hate all the CC companies!!


I truly believe ... there is no such number possible shown without the CPU's & system overflow errors & system shutdown for maintenance !!

[OhioFiler]

Maybe that string of numbers is actually the credit card number somehow placed in the wrong field.

I'd pay a $15 over limit fee for a $23 trillion credit line.

[BigJohn]

chargeback please!