The $41 BILLION prime rib...

[draggar]

I had a call today.

The site was training a new server last night but instead of using a training login they used a live one.

I have no idea why outside of sheer stupidity they decided to rung up 10,000,000 190 pound prime ribs (for cookouts etc.).

That's a grand total of about $41,000,000,000 ($41 billion).

Normally that's OK if you void the check, delete the items, etc,, but no, they left the check all night so at end of day (where the system processes all the sales) it closes all open checks out to cash.

So, their deposit is now about $41 billion short.

* edit - that's $41 billion after taxes.

Oh, and going back to a previous day and editing that out is nearly impossible (fraud prevention).

[lordlundar]

Hmm, sounds like the number glitch happened again.

It's a weird one, it doesn't seem to have a rhyme or reason but every so often an astronomically high number will pop up in some code or another and screw things up.

[Aragarthiel]

I've heard of situations where servers entered their ID numbers instead of a price, like one incident I read about (but can't find right now) where a server charged a family over $4000 for a $20 pizza. IIRC, that one didn't end well. Maybe that's what happened here?

[notalwaysright]

Hmm, sounds like the number glitch happened again.

It's a weird one, it doesn't seem to have a rhyme or reason but every so often an astronomically high number will pop up in some code or another and screw things up.

lol, it's happened once at work. Not for this much, but a really high amount. Only a few stores company wide had the same problem. Around 10 out of what, like 700 stores.

[XCashier]

lol, it's happened once at work. Not for this much, but a really high amount.

Usually when this happens at my store, it's because someone forgot to put the decimal in the handheld and charges the customer for 75 yards of fabric instead of the 0.75 the customer actually got. Fortunately, errors like that are usually easy to catch.

draggar, I sure hope your situation can get sorted out quickly. Otherwise, someone had better be very, very hungry...!

[the lawsmeister]

I've heard of situations where servers entered their ID numbers instead of a price,

I did something similar once. I entered a 7 digit product code instead of the quantity that the customer wanted to order.
Only realised when the warehouse called me to ask if I really wanted to ship 10014567* units of stock


* number made up as it was so damn long ago I have no idea what it really was

[notalwaysright]

Usually when this happens at my store, it's because someone forgot to put the decimal in the handheld and charges the customer for 75 yards of fabric instead of the 0.75 the customer actually got. Fortunately, errors like that are usually easy to catch.

But I think as long as the person didn't actually pay for the wrong yardage, it's just a suspended transaction which will get cancelled. This showed that someone had payed (in cash!) tens of thousands of dollars.

Where those mistakes really hurt is when they charge for something similar, like Warm and Natural instead of Warm and White. Then the custy might not notice, and the store's inventory is really wrong.

[cindybubbles]

Wow. I have a book that chronicles electronic mishaps like this! One of my favourites is the "check that bounced to the moon", where a bank erroneously took $4 billion dollars out of a customer's account.

This story would definitely fit in my book!

PM me if you want to know the title of the book.

[lordlundar]

Wow. I have a book that chronicles electronic mishaps like this! One of my favourites is the "check that bounced to the moon", where a bank erroneously took $4 billion dollars out of a customer's account.

This story would definitely fit in my book!

PM me if you want to know the title of the book.

I think I have the same book. In fact, one of the stories in it is where I got the idea it may be that glitch.

[wolfie]

My mother once ran into some bank stupidity. She was a teacher in Vancouver, and at the time was a customer of $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province. One payday, the bank deposited the paychecks of ALL Vancouver teachers who dealt with them (and had direct deposit) into her account. She reported this, and they corrected the problem - by reversing the transaction. Slight problem - when they reversed the transaction, HER pay was taken out of her account at the same time the other people's pay was. Needless to say, this resulted in a number of automatic debits bouncing. Bank didn't want to refund the NSF charges that resulted from their error.

Soon after this, she switched to the Teachers' Credit Union.

[Dreamstalker]

Technically, there are training cashier numbers at my store, but they're never used except for scanning out returns/damages. Most newbie training is done on someone else's live numbers (usually one of the 'good' cashiers so their metrics tank and they get called on the carpet for any mistakes).

After the third time I was asked to explain major deviations (lot of voids, newbie entered some credit cards manually which is a HUGE no-no, manual check entry far over the allowed amount for cashback, etc) I had to put a note on the CDH paperwork that said my numbers were not to be used for initial training unless I was also at the register and they knew who was really ringing (and went to them about any issues).

[BPFH]

My mother once ran into some bank stupidity. She was a teacher in Vancouver, and at the time was a customer of $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province.

Ooh, this looks like it's finally the appropriate place to tell my story of dealing with $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province.

The note for my wife's student loans was held by that bank, way back in the dark days of, oh, 1998 or so. At the time, she was on welfare and trying to get her business off the ground, so she filed to defer the loan payments. This was the last such deferral she was eligible for.

$Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province lost the paperwork for the deferral. We have no evidence if it was "lost", or just lost, but conveniently, $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province didn't want to do student loans anymore at the time. Once the existing deferral ran out, $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province immediately referred the loan back to the federal and Ontario governments as uncollectable, having made (as far as we can tell) no attempts to collect at all.

It didn't take the collection agencies long to track us down, and they did so in mid-May 1999. The calls started right after we got back from our honeymoon. (I should point out that the collection agencies in question were polite, but persistent. Quite professional, really.) We made arrangements to pay off the loan, did pay off the loan, and went on with our lives.

Until July 2005, when we get a call from another collection agency, claiming that we'd only paid off part of the loan. (They were unwilling to provide proof, of course.) It was amazing how quiet they got when we lawyered up, and the lawyer pointed out to this collection agency that (a) they didn't have any proof that would hold up in court, and (b) even if they did, their "claim" was stats barred - even under the grandfathered-in older Ontario statute of limitations of 6 years.

All of this because $Bank_Of_Certain_Atlantic_Province didn't want to deal with student loans anymore. So yeah, I'm thinking that if we move to Canada there's a bank we won't be doing business with...

[Food Lady]

I tried to return a defective stake light at my store once and this is what happened: