Wacky Wireless News: $15 Quadrillion Phone Bill

Posted on Oct 26th 2012

A phone service provider in France recently issued a bill for what amounts to $15 quadrillion to a woman who had recently terminated her contract.

The bill was issued to Solenne San Jose, who says she nearly had a heart attack – No kidding! – when she opened the bill that read she owed €11,721,000,000,000,000 (euros). “There were so many zeros I couldn’t even work out how much it was,” she told Sud Quest, a French news site.

San Jose called the service provider, Bouygues Telecom, who told her that the bill, which came after San Jose terminated her account with the company, was generated by a computer and they were not able to change the figure listed. Computers are never wrong, after all.

A Bouygues Telecom representative suggested San Jose set up a payment plan to take care of the bill. Paying off a bill that the BBC asserts amounts to nearly 6,000 times the annual output of France would take several lifetimes, so of course San Jose refused this kindly offered deal.

Eventually the company admitted that the bill was a mistake, a printing error apparently, and waived it. San Jose’s original bill should have been €117.21, which equals roughly $151.