ThisisBigBrother.com - UK TV Forums - Man charged $23 quadrillion for a pack of cigarettes

A man who was charged more than US$23 quadrillion (£14 quadrillion) on his credit card for a packet of cigarettes has said he is relieved he won't have to foot the bill.

New Hampshire resident Josh Muszynski checked his account a few hours after making his purchase and saw he had been charged a staggering US$23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars), reports The Daily Telegraph.

Sky News reports Mr Muszynski said he panicked and drove back to the petrol station, where the assistant was unable to help him get to the bottom of the extortionate fee - which was greater than the world's combined GDP.

Watch: man charged US$23 quadrillion for cigarettes

Muszynski told TV station WMUR-TV that he then spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers – and the US$15 overdraft fee. He was told the credit card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions back to the bank.

The bank corrected the error the next day.

Visa has since released a statement saying: "A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services, caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts.

"Visa regrets any inconvenience to our customers and has taken immediate steps to ensure this error doesn't occur again."