Pennsylvania Woman Shocked to Receive a $284 Billion Electric Bill
A customer of Pennsylvania's power utility just got an electric bill worth $284 billion. Mary Horomanski was shocked when she saw the number of zeroes in her statement, wondering if the Christmas lights were somehow to blame.
"My eyes just about popped out of my head," said the 58-year old Penelec customer to Go Erie on Christmas day. The news outlet notes that her bill even beats out the national debts of Hungary and South Africa put together.
"We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong," she added, recalling the moment she went online to check how much she owes Penelec for the month.
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It all ends well, as Penelec confirmed that the statement, amounting to $284,460,000,000, was an error on their part. The utility company has also kept the lights running on her house, and she did not have to pay the initially quoted $28,156 either.
The company told her that she had until November 2018 to pay that amount, which, while a lot less than the initial billions, is still a bit larger than usual. A call from Horomanski's son fixed things right up, as Fox News reported.
Horomanski texted her son who got in touch with Penelec to determine the actual amount. To their credit, the company was quick to adjust her bill to the correct sum of $284.46, which is nine decimal places to the left of the original statement, as Mark Durbin, spokesperson for Penelec's parent company First Energy, expressed his own surprise.
"I can't recall ever seeing a bill for billions of dollars," Durbin said, adding that while he does not know how the error happened, it's obviously a few orders of magnitude out of line.
"We appreciate the customer's willingness to reach out to us about the mistake," Durbin continued.
As for Horomanski, she just got an idea for a new Christmas present from her son — a new heart monitor.
