Well, we’re the first to admit that we can’t compare to celebrity Elizabeth Hasselbeck. That said, lilbethy27’s tweet to “The View” star did spark our interest.

@eHasselrack the 23 quadrillion visa charges people have been finding in their statements! Hilarious!

So what exactly happened here? And how can you make sure to avoid it?

CNN reports that New Hampshire resident Josh Muszynski noticed that he’d been charged $23 quadrillion for a pack of Camel cigarettes (for the numerically curious, the exact amount is $23,148,855,184,500).  That’s worth a lot more than a single pack, in case you didn’t notice. Apparently, the error showed up on as many as 13,000 customers’ statements, many of whom were using the Visa Buxx card. For a while, Visa referred complainants to Bank of America and vise versa, but the error was quickly corrected. Any and all charges and associated overdraft fees were promptly removed from customers’ accounts. Tech geeks can read one theory behind the blooper at computer forum Slashdot.

These credit card errors are in no way exclusive to Visa or Bank of America, and are minor glitches that are usually fixed quickly. Billing mistakes are common on the merchant side of transactions, and they can occasionally necessitate jumping through some bureacratic hoops. Any credit card company may fall victim to the occasional computer snafu. Just this February, a Washington man paid for an $84 billion tank of gas with his PayPal debit card.

Typically, these computer programming errors are corrected quickly and automatically. But what should you do if an erroneous charge sticks? It’s as simple as calling your credit card company and alerting them to the error. You’ll find the number on your statement or online. In some cases, you may have to endure a few minutes on hold. You also might have to convince a customer service representative that you didn’t actually buy a $17 trillion candy bar. However, credit card companies have procedures in place for chargebacks and should be able to follow them when their own computers are the source of the mistake.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, in New Hampshire, Camel cigarettes cost about $5.40 a pack. So $23,148,855,184,500 would get you about 4.2 trillion packs. For the record, the Surgeon General doesn’t recommend it.

Tags: bank of america, billing mistakes, camel cigarettes, chargebacks, computer snafu, customer service representative, customers statements, elizabeth hasselbeck, minor glitches, muszynski, overdraft fees, programming errors, quadrillion, single pack, visa buxx card, visa charges