A man in West Yorkshire received a surprisingly huge compensation payout from Northern Powergrid over the weekend.
Payments designed to help compensate for the huge power cuts caused by Storm Arwen at the end of last year are currently being distributed to residents across the north of England, but one local man got more than he bargained for.
The energy supplier sent out a cheque for over £2 trillion to Gareth Hughes from Calderdale, in a blunder that has caused some amusement online after he tweeted an image of the cheque over the weekend.
In a post that has since gone viral, the Calderdale resident wrote: “Thank you for your compensation payment @Northernpowergrid for the several days we were without power following #stormarwen Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this? #trillionpounds”
After the tweet went viral, Northern Powergrid was forced to reply to Mr Hughes to apologise for the incident, explaining: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please DM us your contact details including address and postcode so we can correct this oversight.
Mr Hughes later told Sky News the letter “just made me laugh”.
“I knew straight away it wouldn’t be honoured, but it was nice to dream for a couple of minutes,” he comically added.
Within hours of sharing the photo of the hilarious mistake, the tweet went onto amass tens of thousands of likes, retweets, and comments from people unable to believe the situation had happened, wishing they’d got a cheque with that sum too, and telling Mr Hughes they “so would have banked it” if it was them.
It turns out that Mr Hughes wasn’t the only one to have received a cheque with an accidentally-inflated sum though, as other people have since come forward to say the same happened to them, and the energy supplier has also confirmed that 74 of its customers had been given compensation cheques with an incorrect payment amount.
The company thanked those who were “honest” about the error.
Featured Image – Wikipedia Commons
