$23 Quadrillion Charged on Visa Statements

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Epic fail of epic proportions? I'd demand that the other measly $5000 I owed be voided too...
 

mdillenbeck

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Timothy in the slashdot.org posting on this (they do seem to always be a few hours ahead of Tom's), stating:

23,148,855,308,184,500.00 * 100 (I'm guessing this is how the number is actually stored) is 2314885530818450000. Convert 2314885530818450000 to hexadecimal, and you end up with 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50. Most C/C++ programmers see the error now ... hex 20 is a space. So spaces were stuffed into a field where binary zero should have been.

Thought I'd share that explanation, as it helped clarify for me what happened.
 

computabug

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[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]Timothy in the slashdot.org posting on this (they do seem to always be a few hours ahead of Tom's), stating:Thought I'd share that explanation, as it helped clarify for me what happened.[/citation]
Genius programmers... I'm still taking baby steps with html >< by the time I graduate highschool I hope I'll have php and some java or c/c++.

Yes I think Tom leeches of other sites... I check OCC at lunch and they've got some cool news, then in the afternoon, Toms has the same news just paraphrased. And posted on a very buggy website.
 

okibrian

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Not the first time I seen this. I seen it happen a few months ago as well and it too was at a gas station. The guy filled his tank up and was charged millions or billions (I cannot remember which). He actually had to fight with visa over the phone about this. The dumb ass who took the call at visa really believed the system was correct. Anyway, they finally fixed it in the end.
 

spanspace

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"temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services which caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts."

Lol great job with the quotes. Working with the industry I knwo first hand that it was most likely a new processor that made the error.
 

apmyhr

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I love that VISA reassures us by saying he was one of "only" 13,000 people who were charged quadrillions of dollars. Makes you wonder how many people are falsely charged more moderate amounts and just don't notice it.
 

Parrdacc

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I'm wondering what kind of purchases were listed for this charge. So far seems like gas and a pack of cigs. I can only imagine the conversations at home about why the new drapes the wife bought where so expensive:)
 

neusiteexpets

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"I love that VISA reassures us by saying he was one of "only" 13,000 people who were charged quadrillions of dollars. Makes you wonder how many people are falsely charged more moderate amounts and just don't notice it."

Do you even think about how much transaction Visa do handles per second? If it were only of a small leak in their system, they would end up pilling gigantic sums of cash. It would suffice of only one customer starting to check a bit around and we could suddenly face the biggest fraud ever commit in history. Do you really think Visa would jerk with even a small sum while they make huge profit each years?
 

boss95

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"the site did point out that the total (per charge) is about 2,007 times the size of the national debit."

I'm pretty sure you mean the national DEBT, unless we are talking debits and credits from accounting.
 
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