I was reading this morning that a Swedish woman was rather surprised at her bank balance when she checked out her account on line recently.
The balance was the equivalent of $1.76 billion higher than she expected.
Cornelia Johansson logged on to her internet bank to pay some bills. I guess you could pay a lot of bills with that kind of money. The amount had supposedly been deposited as a correction for a credit card purchase. The money was still credited to her account the following morning but a few hours later it was gone as mysteriously as it had arrived.
A spokeswoman for Nordea Bank later explained the mystery as “a technical mistake made by a company”.
What would you do if you found that much extra money in your account? Buy a small country? Would you spend wildly and hope that no one noticed? Would you be straight on the phone to your bank to get things sorted out?
I wouldn’t mind if I had $1.76 billion in my account for just one day as long as I got to keep the interest it accrued for the day.
I admit that I do sometimes get surprised when I check my balance online but it’s not because there’s any extra money in my account.
Truthfully, I would be in shock for a bit, scared as to what it might mean, … and then, if I had my wits about me, hope for exactly your summation “I sure hope I accrued some interest out of all that
” Just to compensate for the shock;)
You know, the questions in my mind are … what is happening with money? How do you accidentally allocate that kind of money to the wrong account? Oops! a little error1