[bbfan1991]

A woman in France has received a phone bill for €11,721,000,000,000,000 (£9,456,000,000,000,000).

Solenne San Jose from Bordeaux, France had requested to close her account when she was told how much she owed.

Her operator Bouygues Telecom initially insisted that the statement would stand and that the money would be taken from her bank account.

San Jose eventually convinced the company that the bill was wrong, and they corrected the amount to €117.21 (£94.55).

"I almost had a cardiac arrest!" she recalled to French newspaper Sud Ouest. "There were so many zeroes, I couldn't even work out how much it was."

The mistake came about from a printing error, claimed Bouygues Telecom.