What is certain that we're all going to make mistakes, constantly. And while they have a tendency to vary in their size and cost, hopefully, none of your recent ones have been like some of the items on today's list. In that case, you might find yourself several million dollars worse off. In this article, I'm showing my picks for the most expensive mistakes ever made.
1. Mizuho
In December 2005 Mizuho intended to sell one share of a job recruiting firm called J-Com Co, a new addition to its economic portfolio, for 610,000 yen, roughly equivalent to $5,500. Unfortunately, the trader accidentally sold 610,000 shares at 1 yen, an amount worth less than one cent. This one simple but monumental transaction caused Mizuho to lose $225 million in just one day.
The company soon after said that another trader attempted to cancel the order multiple times, to the response that the Tokyo stock exchange doesn't cancel transactions. This event was so notable that the Japanese prime minister at the time Junichiro Koizumi ended up issuing a statement to reporters considering safety measures to prevent further confusion.
2. NASA
The Mars climate orbiter probe had its origins in 1993, when NASA began the Mars surveyor program, with the intent of exploring Mars in greater detail than the current Viking probes. In missions like this, reaction wheels on spacecraft like the Mars climate orbiter help constantly monitor the probes angular momentum.
I'm sure you can see the problem when you're dealing with a distance of 140 million miles, or 2,250,000,000 km. A miscommunication between NASA and the engineers at Lockheed Martin; the former using metric, and the latter using imperial, caused the $125 million probes to be lost in space, as navigational information couldn't be transferred between the Mars climate orbiter and the team at NASA.
3. James Howells
The number 3 slot goes to a blunder made surrounding Bitcoin back in 2009. The ledger wasn't launched until 1/3/2009, a time when each Bitcoin was worth significantly less than it is now.
James Howells, a man from Newport in the United Kingdom, participated in mining back when the currency first appeared, and ended up collecting 7,500 Bitcoins, but didn't think anything of it at the time, and this hard drive setting his drawer for a few years before he ended up throwing it out.
In 2013 the value of Bitcoin reached $1000 for the first time. In an interview with BBC Radio Wales, James Howells mentioned going back to the landfill site in South Wales where it's hard to drive was taken, and told the station how the manager of the site told him he had no chance; the site being the size of a football field, and it's hard to drive potentially being buried up to 5 ft deep.
Four years after this interview, the value of a Bitcoin reached $19,783, which meant that James investment would have earned him $148,372,500 if he hadn't thrown out his old hard drive.
4. The customer who lost 7 million dollars
There are two sides to every story, and in this story, one side lost $7 million. Michael T. Donnelly was a grocery store clerk in 2016, when he accidentally generated a Cash4life ticket, after being asked for a Powerball ticket by one of his customers. The customer declined the accidental ticket, and Michael bought it back out to the customer to correct the mistake.
The customer really should have kept the ticket, as it contained all six numbers needed to win the prize of $7 million. According to Michael, he didn't even realize he had won until a customer said he heard on the news that the winning Cash4Life ticket had been sold in the Michael' store.
5. Bell Alliant vs Rogers
Two Canadian telecommunications companies, Bell Alliant and Rogers communications, found themselves on either side of a legal battle in 2006 for C$ 1 million over a misplaced comma, leaving a sentence open to interpretation.
Bell thought that the comma ended successive five-year terms unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party; while their competitor believed it meant the contract would last for five years but could be canceled afterward.
In the end, Rogers won the case, but the moral of these two stories is to not overuse commas in case it ends up costing you a lot of money.
6. A comma leads to cost $2 million to the U. S
In 1872, a comma in the U. S. Tariff Act caused the meaning of a sentence to be dramatically changed; the section of the act mentioned that "tropical fruit-plants would be exempt from tariffs", but a comma was used in place of a hyphen.
The sentence reads as follows after the error
"fruit plants tropical and semi-tropical for the propagation of cultivation".
This wording opened the door for orange and lemon importers to use the act to their advantage; all tropical and semi-tropical fruit is now exempt from the charge, which led to the U. S. government missing out on $2 million in the nineteenth century, a number higher than you might otherwise think when adjusted for inflation. It took 2 years for the act to be amended to close the accidental loophole.
7. A car dealership in Mexico
In 2007, a Roswell business used to scratch card competition as promotional material, mailing out 50 thousand of them to local residents, so there was only supposed to be one winner. The company behind manufacturing the cards for the competition accidentally put the winning combination inside every ticket. The total amount of money this error would cost the car company was $50 million, that one surprisingly they weren't able nor willing to give the prize of $1000 to every single cardholder.
Instead, they offered a $5 Walmart voucher for each winning car, this doesn't sound like much in comparison until you consider that this still amounted to a quarter of $1 million.
8. Alitalia Airlines
In 2008 Alitalia airlines tried to mark their Toronto to Cyprus route as being worth $3,900 on their website. There is zero key must have been broken at the time, however, as the route was put on the website being priced at just $39. The mistaken price was listed on a flight comparison website and as many as 2000 tickets were sold at this price.
The Airline initially tried to cancel all tickets purchased for $39, but after backlash from customers who bought tickets at an incredibly low price, they agreed to honor the fares. 2000 people managed to bag a flight to Cyprus, adding up to a $7,720,000 loss to the airline.
9. PepsiCo
PepsiCo spent $2.4 billion on marketing worldwide in 2017 alone. "Come alive! you're in the Pepsi generation" was the slogan of the company in the mid 19th sixties, which sought quite the response from the target audience at the time. Some considered the advertising underperforming until this time.
The "Come alive" section of this slogan really sparked this tale of localization gone wrong, as Pepsi is said to have lost significant sales in China; as the campaign was translated into something akin to "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead!"
regardless of whether the story is actually true, it does join the list of horrible localizations from around the world that almost definitely did result in loss sails.
10. The Walkie Talkie building in London
If you've ever been to London, one of the first things you'll notice is the incredibly modern approach to architecture; every building is shiny and made almost entirely out of windows; It looks beautiful from the perspective of a tourist, but can also definitely pose some problems if executed poorly.
The Walkie Talkie a 525 ft tall building in Fenchurch Street, cost $250 million to make, but had one fatal flaw; it reflected sunlight really well. According to the mail, the concave design in mirror glass caused the sun to shine powerful focused rays of light on to the street below. One motorist car left exposed for only an hour, received damage on the wing mirrors and panels with the smell of burning plastic.
In 10/20/14 the building was fitted with panels to the sunshine and stop the building from melting cars. Who knew that a building could cause so much damage?
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