British energy company compensates 74 customers with billions of euros

And this check was completely official and legally valid, although it is unclear how a bank employee would have acted if these customers showed up at the counter.

The affair broke when one of the recipients posted a photo of the check on Twitter with the words: “Thank you, but are you sure you can afford it?”

This Gareth Hughes was entitled to compensation of 2,324,252,080,110 pounds, converted into more than 2.7 billion euros. For comparison: this is about eight times more than the entire Dutch national budget. And Northern Powergrid, the energy company in question, had this kind of checks sent to 74 customersUK media report.

Columns swapped

The reason for this generous compensation was human error: two columns of the excel file had been mixed up for these customers: it was not the “amount payable” that had ended up on the check, but the identification number of the energy meter.

The energy company told the newspaper it has now spoken to all 74 customers. They thank them for not having tried to collect the sum. They will soon receive a good check.