Urban myth???
This is a true story with an excellent outcome.
In March 1999 a man living in Kandos(near Mudgee in NSW, Australia ) received a bill for his as yet unused gas line stating that he owed $0.00.
He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another bill and threw that one away too.
The following month the gas company sent him a very nasty note stating that they were going to cancel his gas line if he didn’t send them $0.00 by return mail.
He called them, talked to them, and they said it was a computer error and they would take care of it.
The following month he decided that it was about time that he tried out the troublesome gas line figuring that if there was usage on the account it would put an end to this ridiculous predicament.
However, when he went to use the gas, it had been cut off.
He called the gas company who apologised for the computer error once again and said that they would take care of it. The next day he got a bill for $0.00 stating that payment was now overdue.
Assuming that having spoken to them the previous day the latest bill was yet another mistake, he ignored it, trusting that the company would be as good as their word and sort the problem out.
The next month he got a bill for $0.00. This bill also stated that he had 10 days to pay his account or the company would have to take steps to recover the debt.
Finally, giving in, he thought he would beat the gas company at their own game and mailed them a cheque for $0.00. The computer duly processed his account and returned a statement to the effect that he now owed the gas company nothing at all.
A week later, the manager of the Mudgee branch of the Westpac Banking Corporation called our hapless friend and asked him what he was doing writing cheque for $0.00.
After a lengthy explanation the bank manager replied that the $0.00 cheque had caused their cheque processing software to fail. The bank could therefore not process ANY cheques they had received from ANY of their customers that day because the cheque for $0.00 had caused the computer to crash.
The following month the man received a letter from the gas company claiming that his cheque had bounced and that he now owed them $0.00 and unless he sent a cheque by return mail they would take immediate steps to recover the debt.
At this point, the man decided to file a debt harassment claim against the gas company. It took him nearly two hours to convince the clerks at the local courthouse that he was not joking.
They subsequently helped him in the drafting of statements which were considered substantive evidence of the aggravation and difficulties he had been forced to endure during this debacle.
The matter was heard in the Magistrate’s Court in Mudgee and the outcome was this:
The gas company was ordered to:
[1] Immediately rectify their computerized accounts system or Show Cause, within 10 days, why the matter should not be referred to a higher court for consideration under Company Law.
[2] Pay the bank dishonour fees incurred by the man.
[3] Pay the bank dishonour fees incurred by all the Westpac clients whose cheques had been bounced on the day our friend’s had been processed.
[4] Pay the claimant’s court costs; and
[5] Pay the claimant a total of $1500 per month for the 5 month period March to July inclusive as compensation for the aggravation they had caused their client to suffer.
And all this over $0.00.
Remember, these “people” walk among us and breathe the same air we do, …….and they BREED!!!
By: TwoBoomsAreBest - 23rd June 2009 at 22:49
You couldn’t make it up could you?:D I am often astounded by the stupidity of some of these people
Aah, the joy of people, eh? Companies like that are dumber than we give them credit for, usually :p
By: swerve - 13th June 2009 at 20:52
I’ve spent the last 11 years working on billing systems, & have previously worked for companies which wrote & sold them, though not on those particular products. Every one I’ve encountered has had provision for zero bills. They’re still sent out, because otherwise customers wonder what’s happened to their bill, & the enquiries people are swamped with calls, but marked “for information only” or the like. The system knows that there’s nothing to pay, & the procedure for pursuing payment is not triggered, either by automatically marking the bill as paid, or requiring there to be an unpaid balance >0 before payment is pursued. Back in the 1980s, when I first worked in IT, this was a standard requirement for a billing system, had been as far back as anyone could remember, & has been ever since.
Bank systems don’t fall over on zero payments. They also have checks built in. I’ve tested varied financial systems, & one of the standard requirements for any test plan is limit testing. You put zero, negative numbers, & numbers bigger than the system can process through it, to make sure it will not fail when it encounters them.
I suspect this is an urban myth.
BTW, by an odd coincidence, I visited Mudgee (nice wine) about the time this case was supposedly heard, & I don’t recall anyone talking about it. But that’s not exactly proof of anything, I know.
Dammit, I should have checked the Snopes link first. Yeah, well, it agrees with me. The fractional cent thing is usually dealt with by having a check for bills of at least 1 cent/penny/yen or whatever. It’s cheaper to put such a check in the code than deal with the hassle of people complaining that they’ve got final demands for £0.00.
By: mike currill - 13th June 2009 at 07:18
Urban myth???
You couldn’t make it up could you?:D I am often astounded by the stupidity of some of these people
By: MishaThePenguin - 12th June 2009 at 22:53
You wouldn’t believe how often these sort of things are highlighted to those of us who work in the public sector as examples of just how badly we are doing our jobs!
By: Arthur Pewtey - 12th June 2009 at 20:38
Who employs these people? Maybe nobody does.
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June 12, 2009 at 4:24 am