Time Warner Charges Man $16.4 Million Cable Bill

It's easy to rack up a huge cable bill, but not $16 million easy.

Lt. Daniel DeVirgilio of Beaverton, Ohio was more than stunned to learn his credit card had been rejected by Time Warner Cable. He was even more surprised when he learned just how much the company had tried to charge him.

The number totalled $16,409,107, according to MSNBC.

Apparently his March Madness charges had gone a bit haywire. He had been charged over $1 million for each game of the March Madness Sweet 16 he had watched, according to the Dayton Daily News.

But he was humorous about the whole affair.

"Had I known this I would have bought Showtime," DeVirgilio, an engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, told the Daily News. "Five bucks more for Showtime is a bit much, but heck -- $16,409,112. Who cares?"

The bill was ultimately attributed to human error. DeVirgilio never actually received a paper bill for the amount, and it wasn't charged to his credit card, according to MSNBC.

"We apologize for the inconvenience that it caused," a spokesman for Time Warner said. "We are going to work with the customer to get this resolved."

Comments

[jddluv]

05:42 PM on 04/06/2011

I once got charged $16,000 for a month's worth of city water in Brentwood, California (Contra Costa County). The city had just installed a new remote-control metering system, and my new meter was running backwards, starting from the highest point. My bill said I had used 10 million gallons the previous month. Luckily, the city admitted its error.

[Tim Clarke]

05:35 AM on 04/06/2011

It's Beavercreek, OH, and it's the Dayton Daily News.

[DCvote]

12:17 AM on 04/06/2011

it's outrageous how much we pay for time warner here in nyc. also it's absurd that time warner owns HBO yet our hbo on demand doesnt come through in HD (like it does on every other provider) so it's kind of stretched and blurry.

[YOKEL13]

07:30 PM on 04/05/2011

"We're going to work with the customer....." Like maybe they'll get it resolved, maybe they won't, but they're committing to "work with the customer". Funny!

[pita143]

07:19 AM on 04/06/2011

Actually I have TWC in Central NY and I have NEVER had a problem. If I have an issue I call them and I usually get it resolved. The very first thing I do is YELL at something before I even pick up the phone, so I am not yelling at them. I had a slower than expected Road Runner connection and complained about it. They sent a tech out two days later and found a problem in a connector down the block. They fixed it and upgraded me to Turbo RR for free for a year.
A great deal of the problem is people love to YELL at the Cable Co or the Phone Co or any other Company instead of talking nice to the person on the phone. They didn't cause the problem, so I talk to them nice and usually get what I need, not always what I want, but at least what I need.

[YOKEL13]

11:45 AM on 04/06/2011

I know they appreciate that you're "working with them"!

[aaronssongs]

08:11 AM on 04/05/2011

That's why I got rid of Time Warner Cable....customer service "sucked".

[roch20]

06:43 PM on 04/05/2011

Same here! TM sucks!

[CobraMonkey]

08:05 AM on 04/05/2011

and I thought my AT&T bill was high

[mapleaforever]

04:28 AM on 04/05/2011

That's a heck of a lot of downloads.

[AllAmericanAmericanBoy]

02:40 AM on 04/05/2011

If they charged him 1 million each for the sweet 16 games, and he watched every game from 16 to the championship, that adds up to 15 million, so the additional 1.4 mill must be additional charges of some sort. When they say that they are going to work with the customer to get this resolved, does that mean they'll waive the 15 million in (oops) accidental charges as soon as he catches up the other 1.4 million?

[YOKEL13]

07:32 PM on 04/05/2011

They're saying it's really the customer's fault, but they're going to give him a break.

[steph81]

02:04 AM on 04/05/2011

Human error? I thought all billing was automated these days?

[TheBear]

02:51 AM on 04/05/2011

no kidding how in the word can it be human error, how dumb does someone have to be to actually see this bill and send it out anyway?

[mapleaforever]

04:29 AM on 04/05/2011

It was never sent out in paper form.

[cdianek]

01:35 AM on 04/05/2011

I'm glad this was resolved, and there's no way anybody is going to get anywhere near a million dollar bill paid off my debit card, but this is the reason I won't sign up for auto-pay on anything. I can at least look at the total I'm paying before I authorize the charge. I'm not necessarily afraid of something grossly elevated like this, but if it's an error that doesn't ding a "funds available" bell with my bank, it goes through, right or wrong. I might have trouble with some company, but I'm going to have less trouble if they don't already have any of my money that they shouldn't have.

[YOKEL13]

07:34 PM on 04/05/2011

You're right.... whoever has access to your account can take what they want, whenever they want.

[dteg]

01:35 AM on 04/05/2011

These cable companies and telecom are the same people we are supposed to trust with our data usage. It doesn't make me feel good.

[Steve Rockett]

01:21 AM on 04/05/2011

A little research can dismiss the premise of this article. In old Burma, there was discovered a Toucan named Alfredo. He was named by a German woman, Hecka Klowen, who adored tropical birds and mites. Her collection of mites fit into a thimble, but that is another story. Hecka specialized in giant sized tropical birds. She had a large group of giant Minah birds. They were six to seven feet tall with the wingspan of airliners. There was Major Minah, Cee Minah, Coal Minah, Gold Minah, and Fluffy. One day a Toucan flew into her aviary and he was gigantic. He made the Minahs look like butterflies by comparison. She called him Cable, oddly enough, because he loved to sit on a bridge cable near her house. Now that was the biggest Cable Bill.

[YOKEL13]

07:36 PM on 04/05/2011

:: nods patronizingly ::

[floydcash]

01:06 AM on 04/05/2011

Why is this even news? Have you seen cable prices lately?

[Bobolini]

01:04 AM on 04/05/2011

This should be expected from Time Warner Cable. They have a monopoly in our area and they are a notorious nightmare. We had cable, phone and internet with them and our lives and business were in a constant state of disruption because of them. They provide horrible service, bad scheduling and are totally unresponsive to billing problems unless you threaten to go to the PUC.

Monopolies and dictatorships suck, because the monopolists and the dictators can do whatever they want and you don't get any choice. Fortunately for us our building elected to get a small provider who provides hospitals and large complexes with telecom and internet, while they are not perfect, not having Time Warner in our life is a real pleasure.

Monopolies always claim they can provide better service at a better price because of their position. Time Warner proves that the opposite is true - Monopolies don't care and don't need to.

[YOKEL13]

07:37 PM on 04/05/2011

Monopoly is the logical end result of capitalism.

[roger g]

12:44 AM on 04/05/2011

What a whiner--Just pay the 16 million-it's not worth arguing about