Have you ever received a bill for more than the gross domestic product of a mid-size country? So it went for Mary Horomanski, an Erie, Pennsylvania woman who found a note in the mail from her local electric company, Penelec, for more than $284 billion earlier this month.
“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” Horomanski told The Erie Times-News. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.”
Out of the goodness of its heart, Penelec said Horomanski could have until November 2018 to fork over a sum roughly equivalent to the GDP of Colombia or Pakistan. For December, her minimum payment was merely $28,156.
Rather than make the payment, however, Horomanski texted her son, who in turn reached out to Penelec. He found the bill was in error, which would have been little surprise unless his mother was, undercover, the world's most prolific Bitcoin miner. Mark Durban of Penelec's parent company, First Energy, confirmed the situation to the Times-News and said he'd never seen a sum like the one on the bill, which had a decimal point out of place.
“I can’t recall ever seeing a bill for billions of dollars,” Durbin said. “We appreciate the customer’s willingness to reach out to us about the mistake.” Is there anyone alive who would have just forked over the first 28-grand without first being "willing to reach out" to the company?
Like any good late-capitalist feel-good story, the Times-News missive ends with the charming detail that "the $284 billion bill caused" Horomanski, who is 58, "to ask her son for a different Christmas present this year."
“I told him I want a heart monitor,” she said. What a world. Happy holidays.
