Gas bill of 26 million euros: two young men were horrified by the amount

Two young parents in the province of Antwerp in Belgium almost had a heart attack when they received an annual gas bill of more than 26 million euros (about 37 million Canadian dollars) due to a simple mistake.

“I didn’t know where to turn. We don’t use much gas. Our daily shower only lasts about seven minutes.” […] 26 million euros? There is enough to cause a heart attack in that amount. “My heart was racing,” said Nick van Hooydonk, interviewed by German media HLN, according to Belgian media 7sur7.

After taking an extra half-hour break from work to pull himself together, the man realized by calling customer service that a small error had slipped when he entered his annual gas consumption data into the app.

In fact, if he had to ignore the last three digits after the decimal point, Dad would have indicated that he consumed 10,772,407 cubic meters of energy, instead of 10,772 cubic meters. So it would have cost him €6.56m a month for the next year, which is more than C$9.4m.

But after the correction, the man started breathing again.

Then the simulated gas balance suddenly reached €1,994.25 (about $2,860 Canadian). It made me smile,” he captioned according to 7×7.

Usually, a warning “if the meter reading deviates from normal consumption” is displayed, but the customer can “ignore the message”, indicated by the gas company Luminus.