Cigarettes Getting More Expensive

[Garry Russell]

Should disuede folks from the habit :roll:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm

Garry

[nigelb]

I gave up that habit years ago when the price reached over $2 a pack. Call me cheap. :roll:

I am amazed but not really surprised he had to spend two hours on the phone with Bank of America to get the error corrected! That's why I don't bank there anymore.

[Garry Russell]

How can that happen???

So kind of them to let him off the $15 overdraft charge :roll:

Garry

[Quixoticish]

The better half and I were in a bar last week buying a round of drinks on a card and the charge went through as £300,000 rather than £30. Strangely enough the order went through just fine, however we then received a phone call thirty minutes later from the bank saying that they suspected that my card had been stolen. The bank were quick to sort it out once we explained what was happening and all was well. However I can understand how you can get from £30 to £300,000 (sticky keys coupled with slight inebriation resulting in a failure to check the receipt) but to get from $15 to $23 quadrillion is quite comical.

[Garry Russell]

I does make you wonder how many times you may have been charged 30 instead of three and most people wouldn't notice.

Hopefully it works the other way too

He must have had a good credit limit for that to go through

Garry

[SkippyBing]

Someone at the register posted the explanation that if the charge field is transmitted as hex but with the blanks as spaces (ASCII 20) it looks like 202020202678687 which when converted back gives you a really expensive pack of smokes. Basically poor QA on the software rather than finger trouble, there've been something like 300 similar cases recently including possibly the world's largest restaurant bill of $24 Quadrillion!

[nigelb]

I does make you wonder how many times you may have been charged 30 instead of three and most people wouldn't notice.

Hopefully it works the other way too

He must have had a good credit limit for that to go through

Garry

Gary, I am afraid the first rule of banking dictates that it hardly ever works the other way around! If it does, the rule further stipulates that the correction applied will be the original correct amout trebled. A 'processing fee' may also be added at the bank's discretion and of course, interest charges will apply. ;-)

Nigel²

[Garry Russell]

That figuers :-(

Garry

[Chris Trott]

I am amazed but not really surprised he had to spend two hours on the phone with Bank of America to get the error corrected! That's why I don't bank there anymore.

According to other reports, it took 2 hours for them to get back to him (not 2 hours holding on the phone) because they discovered that 30,000 other accounts had the same problem at the same time. They then responded to him electronically (aka "on line") that the problem had been resolved.

[nigelb]

OIC. My experience with BoA was that by the time you navigated through the "press button" menu and finally figured out how to talk to a human (always the very last selection available), you went into a "all our customer service representatives are busy" queu for twenty minutes (complete with obnoxious background music and plugs for other banking services), you reached someone who's native tongue was obviously not English who put you on hold, asked you to explain your problem again, then transfered you to someone who asked for blood samples, asked you to explain your problem yet again, then wanted to transfer you back to the original department and so on, ad infinitum, you spent the best part of two bloody hours to resolve the problem. And that is if you did not get cut-off at some point in the process!

Nigel²