A MAN was sent a whopping £2TRILLION cheque by an electricity firm – only to send it back.
Gareth Hughes received the cheque, worth £2,324,252,080,110. from Northern Powergrid as compensation for outages caused by Storm Arwen in November last year.
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He spent three days without electricity due to the storm and the Yorkshireman would have become the richest man in the world had he banked the cheque from the power company.
While many would have cashed in without hesitation, Mr Hughes kindly decided to take to Twitter and see if the power giant was mistaken, Yorkshire Live reports.
Gareth, 44, wrote: “Thank you for our compensation payment Northern Powergrid for the several days we were without power following Storm Arwen.
“Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this? #trillionpounds”
The honest tweet has attracted over 8,000 likes as others were quick to joke about the error.
One Twitter user wrote: “Bank it! Then share it equally between us all.”
Another quipped: “No wonder are bills are big!”
Gareth added that the energy company might want to check their records regarding the humungous error in order to spare their blushes.
He said: “You might want to check what other payments you’ve made, as I’m aware of at least four other cheques for the same value sent to neighbouring properties.”
Seventy four different customers were beneficiaries of the clerical error – but not all may have been as honest as Gareth.
However, Northern Powergrid said that as soon as they aware of the error they prevented the cashing of all 74 incorrect cheques.
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A spokeswoman for Northern Powergrid said: “As soon as we identified the clerical error, which was caused by the electricity meter reference number being incorrectly quoted as the payment sum, we ensured all 74 customers’ cheques were stopped so they could not be cashed.
“We have been investigating how this error happened and carrying out checks of previous payments.
“All indications are that this was an isolated incident.
“We thank those customers who were honest and contacted us and we have been making contact directly over the weekend with all 74 customers affected to make them aware, apologise for the error and reassure them that a correct payment will be issued to them on Monday.”
Thousands of customers are being paid compensation after they were left without power after ferocious winds swept across the UK in November last year.
