Glitch with Visa leaves users with $23 Quadrillion charge

[Meian]

Glitch hits Visa users with more than $23 quadrillion charge - CNN.com

By Jason Kessler
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A technical snafu left some Visa prepaid cardholders stunned and horrified Monday to see a $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge on their statements.


Josh Muszynski noticed the 17-digit charge while making a routine balance inquiry.

That's about 2,007 times the size of the national debt.

Josh Muszynski, 22, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was one Visa customer aghast to find the 17-digit charge on his bill. Adding insult to injury, he had also been hit with a $15 overdraft fee.

He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while making a routine balance inquiry on his online Bank of America account. According to his statement, he had spent the profound sum in one pop at a nearby Mobil gas station -- his regular stop for Camel cigarettes.

"Very, very panicked," he jumped in his car and sped to the station.

Had they perhaps noticed any "outrageous" charges come across their books recently, he inquired of the cashier there. She checked the records. They had not. Watch the story of an astounded customer in Memphis, Tennessee »

Muszynski wondered aloud what he might possibly have asked to purchase for such an astronomical price. "Can I buy Europe on pump 4?"

He next called Bank of America, the issuer of his Visa prepaid debit card. The bank kept him on hold for two hours, during which time he contemplated the impossibly bleak financial future that might await him. He also felt a stab of fear that he had saddled all his unborn grandchildren -- and their grandchildren -- with a lifetime of debt. "Down the generational line, nobody would have any money."

Finally, a bank representative told him that the $23 quadrillion charge -- and the $15 overdraft fee -- would be stricken from his account.

Muszynski compared the giant debt reprieve to receiving "an amazing Monopoly card that says, 'Bank error in your favor.' "


In a statement, Visa said the rogue charges affected "fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions" and resulted from a "temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services ... [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts."

The company assured customers that the problem has been fixed and that all falsely issued fees have been voided. "Erroneous postings have been removed ... this incident had no financial impact on Visa prepaid cardholders."

How do you manage that?

[Norellicus]

Programmer fuckup.

Convert to hexadecimal and look at the digit pairs, then correlate to ASCII.

Edit: Rather than waving my intellectual superiority around and making people figure it out-

23,148,855,308,184,500.00 (or integer value 2314885530818450000; assuming turning a "dollar" figure into cents for the sake of integer manipulation, so multiply the original figure by 100, which nets the two extra zeroes) in hexadecimal is 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 00. ASCII hex code 20 is one way to represent a space (look at a web url with %20 in it, it's usually in place of a space in the phrasing of the url's word structure). So whatever processing system rang up this purchase for $46.08 (12 00 hex value) put a bunch of hex 20s on the front of it as a spacer/alignment method, rather than using actual zeroes or null characters.

[Qalbert]

Project Mayhem

[Yuri-G]

I don't understand why the account holders got so freaked out about this, I'm pretty sure if I saw a 23 quadrillion dollar charge on my acct I'd know it was a mistake that would be taken care of.

[Seraph]

Programmer fuckup.

Convert to hexadecimal and look at the digit pairs, then correlate to ASCII.

When you convert the decimal "23,148,855,308,184,500" to hex, you get "523DC2E199EBB4". Based on what you are saying, the digit pairs are as follows:

52, 3D, C2, E1, 99, EB, B4

The ones in bold do not represent any ASCII character...

[Norellicus]

Read my edit.

[Seraph]

Read my edit.

Well now. I'll just argue that 'intellectual superiority' might be interchangeable with 'bad explanations'.

[Norellicus]

I was making fun of myself for teasing it like that, not trying to sound cocky :/

[Seraph]

I was making fun of myself for teasing it like that, not trying to sound cocky :/

Nah, it's cool. I figured it out after I typed that up, so I just assumed something got lost in translation.

[Aksannyi]

I don't understand why the account holders got so freaked out about this, I'm pretty sure if I saw a 23 quadrillion dollar charge on my acct I'd know it was a mistake that would be taken care of.

Because that's what we do in America. We get what we want, and when we don't, or things don't go to plan, we freak out.

[Vandole]

i read this as

Glitch with Vista leaves users with $23 Quadrillion charge

i am dissapoint.

[Milkster]

I also read it as another Vista fuck up. Which made me go LOLVista again.

[Eliseos]

Because that's what we do in America. We get what we want, and when we don't, or things don't go to plan, we freak out.

And when we don't get what we want, or when we fall down open manholes, we file a lawsuit.

[guartz]

Speaking of Visa. I just got a txt from Visa apperantly, that says "suspicious activity, call (local number) now."


Thing is. I don't own any Visa. Just Mastercard.

Should I call or does it sound like phishing?

[MisterBob]

Speaking of Visa. I just got a txt from Visa apperantly, that says "suspicious activity, call (local number) now."


Thing is. I don't own any Visa. Just Mastercard.

Should I call or does it sound like phishing?

Of course it's phishing, why would you even think twice?

Btw I heard your car warranty is about to expire.

[Kryssan]

Sounds really fishy to me. If I ever have credit card issues with either Visa/Mastercard (have both) I always get a phone call right away, not a text message, and definately not a local number.

[Cephius]

Yeah, that's the newest scam running around I guess. I haven't gotten the factory car warranty in awhile, but me and a few coworkers have gotten the Visa one. You can tell pretty easily it's fake, I've gotten real calls before when making overseas purchases and it's always a real person, they identify you by name and card number and never ask for any info except the last 4 digits of your SSN. You can even request a callback number if you're unsure, a scammer will just give you a fake number and hang up.

[Plow]

I love our banks.

Adding insult to injury, he had also been hit with a $15 overdraft fee.

Best part is it probably would be the exact same if he went 10 cents over.

[MisterBob]

I love our banks.




Best part is it probably would be the exact same if he went 10 cents over.

What exactly is wrong with that? Don't be retarded when managing your finances.

[Plow]

You don't see the humor in being charged $15 for going 23 quadrillion dollars overdrawn?