French phone company rings up a bill of €11,721,000,000,000,000

It was surely the most astronomical phone bill in history. When an unemployed childminder in south-west France received a bill for €11,721,000,000,000,000 (that's 11.7 million billion euros – more than 5,000 times the gross domestic product of France) – it took her days of wrangling with helpline staff to stop it being debited from her bank account.

Solenne San Jose. of Pessac, a Bordeaux suburb, had just lost her job and wanted to end her phone subscription, when the final bill arrived. She told her local paper, Sud Ouest: "I nearly had a heart attack. There were so many zeros that I couldn't even work out how much it was."

She called Bouygues Telecom, the phone company headed by Martin Bouygues, a friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, but was told by shrugging staff there was nothing they could do. One said: "It's calculated automatically." Another told her she would be contacted about paying in instalments. Several calls later, an adviser admitted it was a mistake: San Jose owed €117.21. The company has apologised and let her off the real bill.

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 October 2012

Complete Solenne’s story:

“I lost my job, and was going to end my (1) p………….. subscription. One day, when I was checking the post, I opened an envelope and found a telephone (2) b ……. .

I nearly had a (3) h……………. a…………… ! There were so many (4) z……….. , I couldn’t even calculate how much the total was!

Later that day, I telephoned Bouygues Telecom, but they were really unhelpful! I spoke to several members of (5) s……….. at the company, and all they told me was that ‘the bill was (6) c……………. automatically.’

Another employee told me that the only solution would be to pay the bill in
(7) i ……………... ! I panicked! I had no job and no money to pay anything!

Finally, one day, after numerous phone (8) c ……….. , someone at the company told me that the bill was a (9) m ……………….. .. Instead of owing 11.7 million euros, I actually owed 117.21! Although the company has (10 ) a………………….. and said I don’t need to pay them anything now, it doesn’t really make up for all the stress I’ve suffered.”



Key

1 phone 2 bill 3 heart attack 4 zeros 5 staff 6 calculated 7 instalments 8 calls 9 mistake 10 apologised