A woman from Pennsylvania got the shock of her life when she checked her electric bill. She was concerned that connecting a lot of Christmas lights may have caused her bill to spike. The electric company had warned its customers that there were a lot of higher electric bills during the month of December. But when she checked on her account she saw that she owed the electric company a whopping $284 billion.
“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” said Mary Horomanski. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.” She even told her son that she wanted a different present for Christmas. She wanted a heart monitor because she was so shocked at the amount due of her bill. Aside from the overly large bill, the minimum payment for the month was a huge partial payment of $28,156.
Horomanski’s son quickly contacted the electric company Penelec, which confirmed that the bill was an error. The bill was adjusted to a more realistic amount of $284.46. The electric company said in a statement that they were not sure what caused the error in the electric bill. The bill is so large that it is bigger than most debts of entire countries, including the combined debts of South Africa and Hungary. The bill was also around 2% of the entire US National debt. If Horomanski paid the minimum amount every month, she would be able to pay the entire bill in approximately 8,452 years.