[at-l] Debit card errors

[Carla & Dave Hicks]

OK to make this trail related, have you ever worried about an error when using 
your Debit card at a resupply?

See: http://www.wmur.com/money/20057331/detail.html

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Man's Debit Card Charged $23 Quadrillion, $15 Overdraft Fee
Mysterious Bank Debit Leaves Josh Muszynski Bewildered
POSTED: 12:24 am EDT July 15, 2009
UPDATED: 11:05 am EDT July 15, 2009

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- When Josh Muszynski checked his bank account online, he 
didn't expect to find a $23 quadrillion debit.


"If it were to be true that someone actually compromised that money and got 
that money, they could do some severe damage with that amount of money," he 
said.

Muszynski expected to see a couple hundred dollars in his account, but a 
17-digit number that rivals even the national debt confronted him instead. The 
mistake alarmed Muszynski, who has downsized to an apartment in efforts to 
save money to buy a house.


"I thought my card had been compromised. I thought somebody had bought Europe 
with my credit card," Muszynski said. "It was very concerning."


What Did He Buy?
Muszynski swiped his debit card at a local Mobil gas station to buy a pack of 
cigarettes for a few bucks, Instead, his Bank of America account indicated he 
spent $23,148,855,308,184,500 at the gas station -- an amount for which he 
probably could have used to buy the entire company.

Muszynski may never know what went wrong. He also wondered what he would've 
done if he actually had money like that to spend.

What Would You Do With $23 Quadrillion? Click To Comment

If he had $23 quadrillion, Muszynski said he would give it all away, and maybe 
also bail out General Motors a few more times.

No One Could Answer Mysterious Charge

Hours later, after checking his account, Muszynski rushed back to the store 
but it appeared no one knew what to tell him. He wondered whether to call a 
debt relief company or how he'd pay it all off.

"The cashier says she couldn't help me at all. She didn't know anything about 
it," Muszynski said. "It's a lot of money in the negative, something I could 
never ever afford to pay back -- my children couldn't afford, grandchildren, 
nothing like that."

Muszynski called the bank about the string of numbers on the screen and a $15 
overdraft fee the bank tacked on to his mysterious debt. After two hours on 
the phone, Muszynski said, the representative on the line had no idea what to 
say.

"She just tried to assure me that everything would be fixed, and I couldn't 
see something like that being fixed," Muszynski said.

Nearly 24 hours after the hole formed in his bank account, Muszynski checked 
his statement again. The bank corrected his statement a day later.

"It was back to normal. They reversed the negative balance fee, which was 
nice," Muszynski said.

WMUR News 9 contacted Bank of America about the statement mishap, but 
representatives said the card issuer, Visa, could only answer questions. Visa, 
in turn, recommended that WMUR News 9 contact the bank.