VISA - 3 strange cases: hackers, bugs or market manipulation???

THREE separate cases of problems with VISA have occurred in the last couple days...


Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore

Visa recorded a $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 purchase on Consumerist reader Dale's kid's prepaid Visa Buxx card: "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store.

consumerist.com...

NH man charged 23 quadrillion dollars for smokes

A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

www.sfgate.com...

Credit card company says Trophy Club man ate $23 quadrillion meal

A technical glitch via Visa's billing department led Jon Seale of Trophy Club to receive a $23,148,855,308,184,500 credit card statement (that's $23 quadrillion, folks). The charge in question came from Wolfgang Puck's new restaurant, Five Sixty, which is expensive, but not that expensive.

www.pegasusnews.com...


Case #1. $23,148,855,308,184,500
Case #2. $23,148,855,308,184,500
Case #3. $23,148,855,308,184,500

My thoughts on the matter...

These charges appear temporarily in VISA's books as money owed to them until the issue gets cleared up. Are these things not errors or bugs but something more sinister?

Can that temporary value be used to influence markets and buy stuff? It sure can so keep your eyes open to other similar oddities.

UPDATE

Visa said a technical glitch caused the trouble, but it did not say exactly how many accounts were affected.

"A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement. "The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed."

A Visa representative said affected customers will have any overdraft fees removed.

today.msnbc.msn.com...

Technical glitch...haha
Since they billed people the wrong amounts, I wonder if the reverse is also possible. Have they mistakenly credited anyone with huge sums of money?

About 14-15 years ago my mother got a surprise when she got her bank statement. She had an extra 6 million in the account. She immediately went to the bank and reported their error. I would have waited 6 months, supposedly the legal time a bank has to fix the error before you can keep it; then transferred it to another account and moved.



[edit on 15-7-2009 by warrenb]

Wow, I read about one of these earlier, but had no idea that this has happened three times. I do not think however that the idea of this being used as collateral for money owing could work however, as I don't believe any where close to 75 quadrillion dollars exists in the world. However I find it odd that it happened 3 times, once on a prepaid card, once on a debit, and once on a credit card. Maybe some sort of test?

This is pretty funny unless you're the one with the hefty credit card bill. I don't think this is an attempt to inflate their books, if only temporarily, by nearly 70 quadrillion dollars. To me it looks like a glitch in their system.

If they really wanted money, they could have overcharged everyone using plastic by small amounts. At least then they'd have a good shot at going unnoticed instead of trying to sneak a few ridiculously large charges by the public.

Btw, where can I get a prepaid card with $23,148,855,308,184,500 on it?

I can't figure out how three separate events could occur with the exact same monetary amount? It must be a glitch of some kind in their software, but it is odd that the event occurred on three separate account types which makes it even odder!

I've got a banker buddy, I'll show him this post to see what he thinks.

Well Obama has to find some way to pay for his stimulus package... maybe these three looked like they had a spare quadrillion dollars lying around???

Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) U.S. credit card defaults rose in June as unemployment increased and Americans struggled to pay their debts, but the figures were better than expected and the company's shares rose 3.2 percent

Capital One, one of the largest issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards, said accounts at least 30 days delinquent -- an indicator of future loan losses -- fell for fourth straight month, to 4.77 percent from 4.90 percent.

For U.S. auto loans, Capital One's charge-off rate rose to 3.89 percent in June from 3.62 percent in May, while the delinquency rate increased to 8.89 percent from 8.59 percent.

Their losing Millions everyday and over all they took a bigger loss this month than last...

Yet the News people are saying this in an indicator that things are getting better????

My vote is market manipulation... or at least spin doctoring to make things sound better than what they really are


[edit on 15-7-2009 by DaddyBare]

reply to post by DaddyBare


When they write off a ton of debts, their delinquency rates improve drastically!

Statistics are so easy to manipulate. When I used to run a corporate store, we took bad months and lumped all our expenses, special purchases, maintenance, etc. Then we took our good months, limited supply purchases, cut payroll, let stock run low, and reaped great bonuses!!

Edit to add:
No way the delinquency rate on fixed (i.e. Auto) loans goes up, but credit card delinquencies come down. People pay their car notes before their credit card bills in most cases!

[edit on 15-7-2009 by getreadyalready]