Man Billed $81 Billion for Gas Fill-up in Washington

After Filling Up His Gas Tank at a Conoco Station, Man Charged $81 Billion for Fill-Up

It was the shock of a lifetime for a Richland, Washington man when he received a notification from his PayPal account that he had a new charge. Taking a look at the account, he came to realize that he had been charged $81 billion for the fill-up. Yep, that's right, eighty-one-billion-dollars for a gas charge. Obviously a mistake, as it would be tough for a large company to have a gas bill that high, and the process soon began to try and correct what can best be described as a serious problem.

A single father of one, the Richland man stops at the same Conoco gas station to fill up all the time, and has to commute 100 miles to work every day. This stop however, turned out a little different, when he charged his account $28.00 for his regular fill-up and thought nothing else about it. He wouldn't find out for three days that he was being charged a different amount, and if not for the PayPal alert, he wouldn't have known that soon about the exorbitant charge he was being given. The most shocking thing here though, is that the company didn't figure it out before the man ended up having to deal with it.

Juan Zamora took seems to be taking this mistake a lot better than other people might have. He mentioned that it was a hassle to have to deal with the mistake and have it corrected, but that he would continue to go back to the gas station, as well as continue to use the same exact pump in the future. The heart of the mistake was due to a mix-up between the pump number and the cost of the gas (or so the company claims), but does this mean that gas pumps can just send out random charges, and not actually be verified by anyone at the station or the company, ever?