July 17, 2009
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News: Wow! The Cost of Cigg's Just Went Up
In case you haven't noticed lately, a pack of cigarettes just got more expensive; to the tune of $23,148,855,308,184,500. That's right, 23 quadrillion, 148 trillion, 855 billion, 308 million, 184 thousand and 500 dollars. Now that's a mouth full. If you haven't yet kicked the habit, getting a credit card bill in this amount, might make you think twice about lighting up. Several Visa customers across the nation discovered the charge on their credit card statement after making small purchases. Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire, said he noticed the error while checking his account online. In an interview with WMUR-TV, Muszynski said when he noticed the error, he thought "somebody had bought Europe with" his credit card.
In another incident, Jon Seale, a father of five in Dallas Texas, noticed the same mistake on his credit card statement for a dinner he charged at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Now that must have been some fine dining experience. Seale immediately attempted to notify Visa and Wachovia of the error; however, after several hours on the phone and reaching one voice mail after another, Seale notified MSNBC who was able to reach a real voice at the credit card company. Seale said he even tried to search for Wolfgang Puck on Facebook to make a comment, but had no luck. Seale is pretty calm over the error and says he isn't worried about the mistake being rectified, but says it's just an inconvenience.
Muszynski had spent over two hours on the phone also trying to contact Visa and was told the credit card company did not know what the problem was. They also told him they would be fixing the problem and he would be credited the over the limit penalty charge. According to Visa, this was an isolated incident that pertains to prepay cards only and that the problem has been resolved. In a release, Visa made the following statement: "A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts. The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed."