23 Quadrillion Dollar Charges on Bank of America Prepaid Visas!

Virginia consumers beware: read your credit card account statements carefully to make sure you understand all of your charges. A stark example of the kind of error computers can generate is one by Visa that frightened 13,000 Visa prepaid cardholders who on Monday found charges like the $23,148,855,308,184,500 charge below on their statements.

Josh Muszynski of Manchester, New Hampshire found the 17-digit debit on his bill, and not surprisingly, he was charged an overdraft fee. His debt exceeded the world GDP and was incurred in one charge at a nearby Mobil gas station.

The same thing happend to Jason Bryant of Memphis, Tennessee, whose overdraft fee was later reversed. The reversal of the charge was not soon enough. Bryant told CNN he would be taking his money out of the bank and keeping it in a safe at home.

Muszynksi asked the Mobile station where he incurred his charge "Can I buy Europe on pump 4?"

Visa later that the said the rogue charges affected "fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions" and resulted from a "temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services ... [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts."

The company has indicated that the problem has been fixed and that all falsely issued fees have been voided. "Erroneous postings have been removed ... this incident had no financial impact on Visa."