It's never a fun time when your monthly bills start rolling in, especially when it is close to Christmas. Many families are already strapped for cash during the holiday season, so bill payments can and will cause an undue amount of stress. But the reality is, they need to get paid.

One woman from Erie, Pennsylvania opened up her electricity bill this month and nearly dropped dead of a heart attack. Mary Horomanski opened up her bill and was blown away by a 12 digit sum of money she apparently owed the electricity company. Based on her bill, she allegedly owed them $284,460,000,000.00, for those of you following along at home, that is $284 billion.

The good news was she had a full year to pay the balance, with a minimum monthly payment of $28,176.00. Being the sharp woman that she is, Horomanski figured that there had to be some sort of error with her bill, and she decided to call the company, Penelec, to inquire.  

"My eyes just about popped out of my head," said Horomanski. "We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong."

They had not put them up wrong, in fact when she contacted Penelec they immediately acknowledged the error. It turns out that moving a decimal point a few extra places had turned what should have been a $284.46 bill into something that read like combined budgets of multiple states.

Mark Durbin, the spokesmen for Penelec's parent company, First Energy, came on record and said that he had never heard of, let alone seen a bill that had reached into the billions of dollars. He also expressed his gratitude that Horomanski had reached out to them so quickly.

After the situation was resolved, Horomanski decided that she needed to add another item to her Christmas wish list, she told her son that she wanted a heart monitor.

Have you ever been hit with a massive over billing? How bad was it and what happened? Let us know in the comments.