Woman receives $284 billion electric bill

Published 3:57 am Monday, December 25, 2017

ERIE, PA (RNN) – Right before Christmas, a 12-figure electric bill gave one Pennsylvania utility customer the shock of a lifetime.

Mary Horomanski went online earlier this month to check her electric bill and was stunned to see she owed $284,460,000,000.

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“My eyes just about popped out of my head. We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong,” Horomanski told the Erie Times-News.

The full amount, thankfully, wasn’t due until November 2018, but Horomanski’s minimum payment for December was $28,156.

Horomanski’s son called Penelec, his mother’s electricity provider, who said the amount was an error.

The online statement was soon fixed to the correct amount: $284.46.

Mark Durbin, a spokesman for Penelec’s parent company, says obviously a decimal point was accidentally moved, but he doesn’t know exactly what caused the error.

“I can’t recall ever seeing a bill for billions of dollars. We appreciate the customer’s willingness to reach out to us about the mistake,” Durbin told the newspaper.

Horomanski says after getting the $284 billion bill, she told her son she wanted a heart monitor for Christmas.

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