Expensive electricity in Georgia

You thought your electricity bill was high, but a Georgia woman named Scarlett Hall was billed for a billion. With a B. As listed below, she does get a fifty million dollar early payment discount.

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Here's the link to the story. It sounds like the bill was actually delivered, but quickly adjusted to $287.

http://www.popfi.com/2010/10/19/woman-gets-billion-dollar-electric-bill/

Last one out turn off the lights.
     Posted By: gdanea - Thu Oct 21, 2010
     Category: Utilities





Comments
The electric company claims to have a system in place that catches these unusually large bills and "allows" them to be taken care of quickly. So, why was the thing allowed to be sent out in the 1st place?
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 10/21/10 at 11:46 PM
yeah, it catches them just as soon as the customer calls in freaking out. that's the system, phone in alerts. :roll:
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 10/22/10 at 08:44 AM
the error in the bill is in the base charge. if the meter reader messed up the error would be in the energy charge.
the error seems to be a "stuck key" type, hence a full field of nines in row one.
Posted by Tyrusguy on 10/22/10 at 11:30 AM
This was blamed on the new self-reporting meters. Because the value is 0.01 less than a trillion I'd almost bet that some negative number was generated causing the value to 'roll over' to the maximum.

In computing &b111111;can be either -1 or 255 depending on how the program's code wants to interpret it.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 10/22/10 at 11:00 PM
Nevertheless, what a <<shocking>> surprise to get in the mail. 🐛
Posted by done on 10/23/10 at 02:05 AM
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