Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Wachovia says your over drawn by $211 trillion

Looks like I'm not the only one noticing that the errors are getting bigger out there, check out this one according to Techdirt a Georgia man was notified that his Wachovia bank account was over drawn by some $211 trillion dollars, which makes the national debt at 9 trillion look like pocket change. I wouldn't want to be in charge of the QA Department at Wachovia right about now.

Here is the article in Techdirt: Oops, Your Balance Is: ($211,010,028,257,303.00):

A few years ago, an honest Virginia man reported a bank error that resulted in an extra $1.8 million dollars in his bank account -- not once, but three times. Where did all of that money come from? Perhaps they have now found the source. This week, a Georgia man was notified that he had a negative balance of $211 trillion at his Wachovia bank account. His debt makes the national debt, which is only slightly over $9 trillion, seem like small potatoes. Luckily for him, Wachovia reports that the balance was caused by an isolated banking error, and that he was not liable for any charges related to the negative balance. In this case, the error was that his account number was entered in place of his balance. Like the $218 trillion phone bill we saw in 2006, why are errors of this magnitude not be caught by some sort of bounds checking algorithm in the bank's software? Furthermore, if an error this size gets through all of the checks and balances, then what other, less noticeable errors are falling through the cracks every day?

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