This is an example of just how ridiculous glitches can hurt us. From the OZ ABC news site,

A French woman who received a telephone bill for an amount equivalent to nearly 6,000 times the country's annual economic output has had the real amount she owed waived - after finally convincing the company they must have made a mistake.

Solenne San Jose, from Pessac in the Bordeaux region of south-western France, could not believe her eyes when she opened the bill to discover she was being asked to pay 11,721,000,000,000,000 euros ($A14,676,614,570,049,452) to close her account.

"There were so many zeroes I couldn't even work out how much it was," she said.

Ms San Jose's alarm increased when operators at Bouygues Telecom told her they could not amend the computer-generated statement or stop the balance from being debited from her bank account.

Only after a series of frantic calls did the company finally admit the bill should have been for 117.21 euros.

Bouygues Telecom said the mix-up had been due to a printing error and a subsequent misunderstanding between the client and staff at their call centre.

AFP

"after finally convincing . . ." Sheesh!

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