UK Power Refunds: Halifax & Newcastle Postcodes Receive 13-Figure Sums

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around a clerical error by Northern Powergrid, which resulted in customers receiving cheques for excessively large sums, specifically 13-figure amounts. Participants explore the implications of this error, the systems in place for cheque printing, and the historical context of number naming conventions.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants find humor in the situation, questioning if society has regressed to an earlier time due to the nature of the error.
  • There is a discussion about the lack of fail-safes in cheque printing systems that could prevent the issuance of excessively large amounts.
  • Some participants express skepticism about the feasibility of cashing such large cheques, questioning the financial capacity of Northern Powergrid.
  • Participants discuss the programming implications of allowing large numerical values in cheque printing routines, with some suggesting that risk management should flag such errors.
  • A historical perspective is provided on the evolution of number naming systems in English, highlighting differences between American and British conventions.
  • One participant mentions a specific case from their past programming experience, noting that automated systems in the past did not accommodate terms like 'billion' or 'trillion' for cheque amounts.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a mix of humor and skepticism regarding the clerical error, with no consensus on the implications of the cheque printing systems or the historical context of number naming conventions. Multiple viewpoints are presented without resolution.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various assumptions about programming practices and financial systems without providing definitive conclusions. There is an acknowledgment of the complexity involved in cheque printing routines and the historical evolution of numerical terminology.

anorlunda
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I would like to share this, just because it is so funny.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-60369098

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Northern Powergrid is paying tens of thousands of pounds to customers hit by days of outages in November.
But a number with Halifax and Newcastle postcodes received cheques made out for 13-figure sums.
Northern Powergrid said a clerical error was to blame.

If any PF members got this refund in the mail, please let us know.
 
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Are we in the early 20th century or am I crazy?
 
anorlunda said:
I would like to share this, just because it is so funny.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-60369098

View attachment 297333

If any PF members got this refund in the mail, please let us know.
It's interesting that the system has no fail safe to prevent excessively large cheques being printed. A cheque for, say, £20,000 might be more problematic, as it would be harder to detect after the event. And could be cashed.
 
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nuuskur said:
Are we in the early 20th century or am I crazy?
Worse, it's the UK.

UK friends please forgive me. That was not deserved, but I just couldn't resist the temptation. :biggrin:
 
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Maybe they devaluated their currency post Brexit? :wink:
 
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PeroK said:
It's interesting that the system has no fail safe to prevent excessively large cheques being printed. A cheque for, say, £20,000 might be more problematic, as it would be harder to detect after the event. And could be cashed.

What makes you think these couldn't be cashed?
 
Office_Shredder said:
What makes you think these couldn't be cashed?
I doubt that Northern Powergrid has 2 trillion pounds in its account.
 
PeroK said:
I doubt that Northern Powergrid has 2 trillion pounds in its account.
And especially not 2 trillion pounds per customer.
 
I wouldn't mind that much money!
 
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  • #10
StevieTNZ said:
I wouldn't mind that much money!
Just put it into my interest bearing account for a few minutes, please.
 
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  • #11
anorlunda said:
And especially not 2 trillion pounds per customer.

Seems like the bank's problem when the check bounces :)
 
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  • #12
Why would the character string 'trillion' be available to the program? Would 'octillion' be available too? What's up with that?
 
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sysprog said:
Why would the character string 'trillion' be available to the program? Would 'octillion' be available too? What's up with that?
If one is writing a generic routine to convert a 64 bit signed integer scaled by a factor of 100 (hypothetically) to a text string, then one would want to go up to quadrillions. It is someone else's job to sanity-check the numbers.
 
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  • #14
jbriggs444 said:
If one is writing a generic routine to convert a 64 bit signed integer scaled by a factor of 100 (hypothetically) to a text string, then one would want to go up to quadrillions. It is someone else's job to sanity-check the numbers.
Way back when ('80s) I wrote a program that included printing a word version of counting numbers, and it stopped at 'ten thousand' ##-## in the US, for a bank, that number triggers a lot of reporting requirements.

In the '90s I did data security work for a major bank that did DP (data processing) for over 700 other banks, and I can say with confidence that their automated systems at that time could not have written a check with the word 'billion' or the word 'trillion' on it ##-## the word 'million' presented the greatest lexical order of magnitude available for such a purpose.

I acknowledge that some general-purpose routine could go into 'trillion' or 'quadrillion'; however, 'risk management' routines should/would flag such an egregious amount, and because the words for an amount on a check are supposed to be a validator for the digits, it is not reasonable for a programmer to allow 'billion' or 'trillion' in an automated check printing routine.
 
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  • #15
The article said that the root of the error was that the power company mixed up the meter serial number field with the money amount field. If they did that, then maybe the sanity tests would have looked at the wrong field. We'll never know for sure.
 
  • #16
sysprog said:
Why would the character string 'trillion' be available to the program? Would 'octillion' be available too? What's up with that?
Never underestimate programmers.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/33/7#subj1 by Steve Bacher <sebmb1@verizon.net>
Common Lisp, for example, has the numeric-to-English-output feature built in
to the standard format function.I wrote code to implement this in the Lisp
system that I built for the IBM mainframe in the 1980s, so I know how it
would work. Once you have established the algorithm to handle thousand,
million and billion, it is fairly straightforward to extend that to trillion
and up. My code was written to handle amounts up to a vigintillion [?],
with little effort.
He expanded my vocabulary too -- vigintillion !
 
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  • #17
anorlunda said:
Never underestimate programmers.He expanded my vocabulary too -- vigintillion !
Are you a 63 or 120 person?

I was surprised to find different naming systems of numbers in English.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/number#table
Check out the above-one-million section.
 
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