The possibility of being without power is a very annoying aspect of living through a storm , a possibility that came true for many during Storm Arwen late last year.
One U.K. power company tried to make things right by sending out compensation checks for those affected by the power outages. To the surprise of the recipients, those checks were for far, far more than anyone could have expected.
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Gareth Hughes of Hebden Bridge, England, had his power knocked out during a storm.
Called Storm Arwen, it was an extremely powerful windstorm that swept through the U.K., Ireland, and France. Hughes was without power for a few days thanks to the gale.
Though an inconvenience, it seems to have been well worth it.
Not long after his power was returned, he received a compensation check from his power company, Northern Powergrid, for over £2.3 trillion. That’s over $3.1 trillion USD.
Of course, figuring it was an error, he reached out to Northern Powergrid on Twitter.
“Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this?” he asked in a tweet that’s since gone viral, adding the hashtag #trillionpounds.
It’s not just Hughes getting these checks either.
In a reply to his own Tweet, he mentioned knowing of at least four other people in his area that received outrageously large compensation amounts.
One may be Dani Henderson, whose tweet above shows her getting a check for over £1.5 trillion, or just over $2 trillion USD.
Many replies to the tweet were thinking of ways to take advantage of this obvious clerical error.
There were tons of people telling Hughes and other recipients to cash it anyway, like one reply that read, “Bank it.. then tell them they have to submit refund requests on writing and wait 28 days for it to be processed.. and pay a 1 percent admin fee .. sorry it’s company policy. Computer won’t let you bypass it.”
In the end, Northern Powergrid did find Hughes’ tweet and respond to it.
They said, “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please DM us your contact details including address and postcode so we can correct this oversight.”
In a statement to LADbible, they said, “We thank those customers who were honest and contacted us and we have been making contact directly over the weekend with all 74 customers affected to make them aware, apologise for the error and reassure them that a correct payment will be issued to them on Monday.”
h/t: LADbible
