An English energy company has wanted to compensate some of its customers very generously for the power outage as a result of Autumn storm Arwen last year. Hundreds of homes were without power for almost a week and therefore received a check of more than two trillion pounds this week.

And that check was very official and legally valid, although it is not clear how a bank employee would have acted if these customers reported to the counter.

The case came out when one of the recipients posted a photo of the check on twitter saying, ‘ Thank you, but are you sure you can afford this?’

This Gareth Hughes was entitled to compensation of 2,324,252,080,110 pounds. In comparison, that is about eight times as much as the entire government budget for many countries. And Northern Powergrid, the energy company in question, had sent these types of checks to 74 customers, British media report.

The cause of the generous compensation was a human error: two columns in the Excel file had been exchanged with these customers: not the ‘amount to be paid out’ had ended up on the check, but the identification number of the energy meter.

The energy company told the newspaper that they have already spoken to all 74 customers. They thank them for not trying to collect the amount. They will soon receive a valid cheque.