Shutterstock / Doug Meek
I’m legitimately shocked that this bizarre news story doesn’t somehow involve Comcast. Typically, when there’s someone on the receiving end of a clerical fuck up of monumental proportions it’s Comcast-related, but this incident is all about electricity and not cable. So I’m just rambling here.
A woman in Erie, Pennsylvania received an electricity bill for $284 billion. Instead of immediately assuming that the computer had mistakenly added a few extra zeroes her first thought was that the family had put up Christmas lights and perhaps they’d strung those lights improperly. How Christmas lights would cause a $284 billion spike in your bill is beyond me but here we are.
Here’s what Mary Horomanski, 58, told the Erie Times-News:
“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” said Horomanski, 58. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.”
The good news, if you can call it that, was that Horomanski didn’t have to pay the entire $284,460,000,000 until November 2018. Her minimum payment for December was a relatively paltry $28,156.
Horomanski said the $284 billion bill caused her to ask her son for a different Christmas present this year.
“I told him I want a heart monitor,” she said. (via)
The electricity company, Penelec, fixed the clerical error. The bill was only supposed to be for $284.46. Somehow, I go back to Comcast here. I can imagine someone calling in and saying ‘you sen me a bill for two hundred and fifty-six billion dollars, this is wrong’ and Comcast responding with ‘Maam, have you recently hung any Christmas lights or added new light bulbs to your home?’