One would have thought that a phone bill sent to an individual in the amount of €11,721,000,000,000,000 would have immediately been recognised at least as a ‘possible’ glitch by the telephone company. Not in France, despite it being 6,000 times the economic output of the entire country.
When Solenne San Jose from Pessac, near Bordeaux, quite naturally called Bouygues Telecom they initially told her there was nothing they could do to amend the computer-generated statement. However, they later offered to set up instalments to pay off the bill. Duuuuh.
Fortunately, the company eventually admitted the bill should have been for €117.21 only, and eventually waived it altogether, putting the incident down to a printing error and a subsequent misunderstanding between the client and staff at their call centre.