Weird news: Woman receives €11,721,000,000,000,000 phone bill

A French woman received a phone bill for nearly 12 quadrillion euros

Published October 11, 2012 9:26PM (EDT)

    (Lisa S.)
(Lisa S.)

Solenne San Jose, a former teaching assistant who lives in France, recently received a phone bill for  €11,721,000,000,000,000. Upon receiving the bill, she "almost had a heart attack." There were so many zeroes I couldn't even work out how much it was," she told BBC.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not, considering they didn't catch the mistake to begin with) the company, Bouygues Telecom, told her that nothing could be done about it, and later offered to set up installments to pay off her bill--which was  nearly "6,000 times France's annual economic output."

The company later acknowledged the printing error, admitting that the true amount of the bill should have been €117.21. In the end, they retracted the bill completely.

h/t BBC


By Prachi Gupta

Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com.

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Bouygues Telecom Euro France Phone Bill Weird News Of The Day