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$23 Quadrillion Restaurant Bill

By Alex in Food & Drinks, Money & Finance on Jul 15, 2009 at 12:14 pm


A meal at Wolfgang Puck restaurant can be pricey, but $23 quadrillion? That’s what Jon Seale got charged on his Visa. And to make matters worse, he got charged an overdraft fee!

In New Hampshire, Josh Muszynski said he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and when he later checked his account online found that he had been charged the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500.

In North Texas, Jon Seale saw the same 17-figure bill on his credit card statement, presumably for a meal July 13 at a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, NBC affiliate KXAS TV reported.

"For that amount of money, I could actually own Wolfgang Puck himself," Seale said.

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COMMENT
  1. AVClayton
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    I wish I could remember where I saw this... On BoingBoing maybe. But there was an article recently where a teenager found the same amount on her (prepaid!) credit card bill, charged to CVS if I remember correctly.

    Same bank?

  2. JustinButNotTHATJustin
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    It's likely his credit card number which the employee swiped as the amount instead of the account number.

  3. Danny
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    haha Thats nuts, hopefully the bank will understand and refund his overdraft fee

  4. Alex
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    I think it's glitch in Visa's system - a number of people got the exact same charge showing up on their credit card statements ...

  5. Christophe
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Good tipper...

  6. Johnny Cat
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    And you can see where they indicated his Visa number, with the last four digits 5245. Also, the amount is one digit longer than a card number.

  7. clinton robert labombard
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    For $23Q he could own the Earth and probably it's moon called 'The Moon'. ...I wonder what his taxes'd be like.

  8. Kalel
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    He's lucky it was so much; Get overcharged by a slightly less unbelievable sum, and you'll be stuck with it.

  9. Josh
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    How could such a number even make it though as a transaction. That has to be most if not more than all the money in the world right now. If he had that much money we would be a completely debt free society even world.

  10. v.dog
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    There's an explanation over at /. ( http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/07/15/2050215/Software-Glitch-Leads-To -23148855308184500-Visa-Charges ). Apparently, space characters ' ' were used to align a value, and the computer read them as a number.

  11. Dude
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    Never mind, I thought the economy collapsed for a second.

  12. D Bozko
    Jul 15th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    It's a good thing he skipped dessert.

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