16 Jul 2009

Price of fags just went up - to $34 quadrillion

9:10 pm on 16 July 2009

An American man has bought the world's most expensive packet of cigarettes.

Josh Muszynski checked his debit card and found that a pack of cigarettes he'd bought at his local petrol station in the state of New Hampshire had cost him $34 quadrillion.

That's a 17-digit number: $US23,148,855,308,184,500, to be precise, or $NZ34 quadrillion, to be there or thereabouts.

Mr Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with the Bank of America trying to sort out the error. The bank eventually accepted that there had been one and refunded his money the next day - as well as the $15 overdraft fee it had charged him.